Forbidden City and Awful Cabbies

We met at 11AM and headed to the metro station. On the way, Wayne bought dumplings for everyone to eat because we had a long trek and very little time ahead of us! We took the metro to Tiananmen Square and then traversed the massive plaza south to north. We passed the "Maosoleum", the Beijing Museum and the Chinese House of Parliament before crossing the street (underground) and emerging in front of the Forbidden City.
After going through what seemed like an endless set of ornate and enormous gates, we finally reached the ticketing stand. We got our passes and went inside... through a further-unending set of gates and giant-sized red doors. Wayne led us on a speed tour of the Forbidden City as we saw all of the highlights - the main hall, the emperor's chambers, the concubine's dwellings, and the quarry-rock garden.
Near the end of our visit we did an impromptu number, "Good Lovin'," near the garden for a crowd of 150 gathering tourists. After we sang we quickly left (just in case the guards weren't the biggest fans) and then climbed up to a beautiful overlook that gave us remarkable views of the Forbidden City and the entirety of Beijing... at least as far as we could see in the smog. The complex was absolutely beautiful and well worth the voyage over here.... but then our day turned a bit.
Beijing is a bit more polluted and dirty city than we'd expected. It's impossible to see clouds... or even sky from the ground. Instead, you get a mist of grey smog and a dim yellow sun that bears down on you nonetheless. After spending a day outside, we all came back coughing and struggled to sing in the evening. Even from the top of the overlook, most of Beijing was blurred behind walls of smog and dust.
After leaving the overlook we took a long hike back to the metro (the long way around a no-re-entry Forbidden City) and then took the metro to our stop near our hostel in Sanliturn. After a quick turnaround, we took cabs to the St. Regis Hotel, a place nearly impossible for cabbies to find (allegedly) because the hotel recently changed its name. We think they're lying... and that Beijing cabbies don't like tourists.
We performed for the President and over 300 guests and enjoyed meeting the new generations of Wahoos. The hotel was a wonderful venue with great acoustics and we met, before and after the gig, with some remarkable alums and really eager future UVA students. Talking to them about my University experience just made me miss Grounds even more. Afterwards we cabbed back to the hostel but Dreddy, Joe and Paul faced a new kind of awful cabbie - one who looked at our hostel address in English, Mandarin, nodded, and then took them to the completely wrong place and dropped them off. When they finally made it back, Paul, River and I went out for some food and used the point and smile method to order some truly delicious and timely food.
We're looking forward to our trip to the Great Wall tomorrow - the group is aiming to get out of smoggy Beijing proper and see the world's most famous landmark!