The Overseas Adventures of Steven and Annie Berger

We spent several hours one day at Beijing's Behai Park, which was also close to our hostel. Sounded like a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle of a huge city and our very busy days seeing the sights (and doing the odd bit of shopping too) for hours on end.

It was a fun place to stroll around and watch even more calligraphers practicing writing Chinese characters. (i.e. letters) on paved slabs with just a brush and water, see impromptu shows of people dancing to recorded music in lakeside pavilions, playing the clarinet or a dice game, etc.

Also spent a few hours at another of Beijing's famous markets, this one being the Pearl Market. It was different from most other markets we'd been to in that this was not an open air one but like a 4 storied one with easily a thousand individual stalls or so it seemed anyway.
There was no space at all between any of the stalls, nor any storefronts either.
The moniker Pearl Market is a bit of a misnomer as it had anything you could want in terms of electronics, enough shoes to almost make Imelda Marcos happy, leather purses, Chinese arts and crafts, silk and other scarves, clothing galore and yes, even pearls too.
Seeing the sheer size and scope of the place was overwhelming just like at Beijing's Panjiayuan Market initially. Got my/our sea legs pretty quickly though as we had a sort of list going in what we were looking for.
I'd read about the far more aggressive sales force in place there but it wasn't nearly as "bad" as I'd thought. When we expressed even scant interest in anything, they were on us like fleas on a dog, saying "Hello, my friend" constantly and pleading with us to see their wares. Never had so many "friends" as I had that day!
We knew the so called bargaining rule of thumb for that market and that helped us when we did want to buy something and they offered an outrageously high price initially. When we looked at them incredulously, the price was immediately dropped significantly, and a calculator was thrust in our hands so we could name our price. Counteroffers were made and if we walked away when the price was still more than we wanted to pay, the seller would most often come after us with a hand on our arm saying "Final price, final price" which was a lower price than the previous one. We got wise to the game pretty quickly and generally got the items at prices we wanted to pay, even if the sellers would say "You're killing me, you're killing me, my friend." Another ploy of the sellers was to say "You're my first customer of the day" which meant that they were willing to drop the price or at least that's what we were led to believe. Somehow though, it was hard to think we were still their first customers after noon!
After doing, shall we say, a fair amount of shopping from Iceland to Beijing by that point AND my lugging all that stuff across many countries (don't you feel just the teensiest sorry for me now!), we decided that a trip to the post office was in order so we could mail a parcel home and thus make room for more souvenirs, etc going forward on the trip. We had decided that we weren't comfortable with the prospect of sending a parcel back from Russia so we trotted off to the local post office with plastic bags in hand after scoping out the situation ahead of time.
Everything had to be "inspected" ahead of time, thus the reason for the items in the bags; a staff member then wrapped in newspaper and bubble wrapped as necessary all the items into a box provided by the post office; the box was then sealed with red tape by a neat machine and I was able to then take it to another counter to determine what method of transport I wanted to get the parcel home. It ended up weighing 6 kg or 13 lbs and we chose the SAL rate or the sea, air and land cost of 368 yuan ($60) for delivery in one month from 9/19. Keeping my fingers crossed it gets home before we do.
Our last afternoon in the capital was at the Summer Palace, located about 9 miles from downtown and the largest and most well preserved royal park in China. Construction began in 1750; it's 742 acres in size and has over 3000 man made statues. Another wonderful spot to wander around and, after the Forbidden City, the guidebooks all say it's the must see place. Gotta agree too.
It was the one tourist attraction in Beijing that had many, many more Chinese visitors than Western appearing tourists. A huge number of the tours comprised older seniors, i.e. older than us! They all had special baseball style hats on, in pink or red, etc indicating which tour they belonged to and were led by guides holding flowers to corral their group which reminded us of the large tour groups we saw in Russia.
We felt very safe the whole time we were in Beijing even when we were in massive crowds as at the Summer Palace.
One side note: a huge number of times I particularly was asked to have my picture taken with the Chinese. Got to be a tad unnerving after a bit until someone explained to us that so many Chinese come to visit Beijing from far away and may not have ever seen a Westerner before except on TV. Think my "red" hair might have something to do with it too as I was often the recipient of many stares too!
Time for photos

A nighttime view outside our hostel.

Certainly can't plead ignorance wondering where to stand waiting to get on the metro!

Our hostel's shower/toilet area.

Our room at the hostel.

At Behai Park.

Behai Park

Behai's White Dagoba.

I loved listening to this duo; the woman reminded us of a younger Yoko Ono.

Behai still.

Out of order but have spent 30 minutes trying to get this and other photos in the right spot! This is at the Summer Palace by the Queen's (cement) Barge.