My parents came up from Hong Kong to visit during the "5.1" Labour Day holiday week. They stayed at the Beijing Hotel, which looks fairly glitzy from afar, but is in fact a bit rough around the edges. Their room had a balcony with views of Tiananmen square to the West. The large crowd in front of the hotel in the first picture is waiting for Lien Chan, the Taiwanese opposition leader, who was staying at the hotel at the same time.

Most of these pictures were taken on a small hike we did outside of the city, near a village called Huang Hua Zhen. It's near an largely-unrestored section of the Great Wall. Our taxi driver, Mr. Yin, was concerned that there wasn't much to see, but the scenery was beautiful, and the lack of people was a pleasant change from Beijing during the holiday week.

The last photo is of the 29-storey atrium in the Grand Hyatt hotel in Shanghai. Unfortunately, my time in Shanghai was mostly spent in our hotel (the Jinjiang) recovering from a stomach bug, so this is pretty much the extent of my Shanghai photos, taken shortly before I made the transition to invalid.

I will get a slideshow function working eventually. Until then, just click on a thumbnail and photos will appear in a new window.