I have been watching the Summer Olympics in absolute awe. I was last in Beijing in 1992! I can't believe what I see each morning on the Today Show and other programs. The major mode of transportation back then was the bicycle and the oxcart!! Really, I'm not kidding. There were so few cars on the road and thousands of bicycles.
We rode around in a shuttle bus-there were six of us. Three couples from the US who never met before until we joined our tour guide outside of immigration and customs in Beijing at the airport. We were taken to the Great Wall Sheraton, one of the few high rises at the time given time to freshen up and then off to dinner.
We met the next morning to visit the Forbidden City and then Tiananmen Square. When one of the group asked our guide where exactly on the surrounding street the famous student in front of the tank standoff occurred, she looked at him and straight faced said she didn't know what he was talking about! I should mention that she was married to a journalist and they lived in an apartment in Beijing. We stopped for lunch at an approved restaurant, no deviating to the at the time largest Mc Donald's or KFC. When my husband got up to use the restroom the guide went running after him followed him to the men's room door and waited until he came out and followed him back to the table. We were allowed to shop at the government stores. There were 2 types of currency then also- the yuan-the peoples money and the renminbi-tourist money. As a tourist, you weren't supposed to have the yuan. At the end of the day, we were being dropped off at the hotel we saw a night market being set up-we were told in no uncertain terms that we were not to leave our hotel rooms. Oh those were the magic words, so we walked down the stairs and out the door to the wonders of the night market....I have to go through pictures to see if I can scan a street scene-I had the video camera but no digital camera back then!
