Loads of work is going on all around the city in advance of the Olympics next year. We saw the stadium (under construction) from the train. Maybe the excitement is catching and that's why Beijing was so amazing to me, I'm not sure. Jaysus, there's so much to say about Beijing that I'm going to make a separate entry - otherwise I'll fall asleep at the keyboard.

Custom Mancala Board Game Gift Set - Folding Personalized Mancala Board, Birthday Gift, Father's Day, Family Gift, Game for Mom and Daughter Inside the wallof all cycling around ringing their bells like crazy. The Beijingers also are fierce fond of tiny dogs, really cute ones, that they are terribly affectionate to and these little yokes sit like royalty in the bicycle baskets being cycled around at a fierce pace. After years of excited and nervous planning we took the plunge and left our jobs, rented out the house, said goodbye to the folks and friends, got married (well, you've got to be sure your travel buddy's there for you!) and headed off for places unknown.

Who slipped a lizard into Lady Char Ming’s tea? Who is the despicable villain going around pulling the braids of Peking’s residents? Was it the suspect Ping Pong? The mysterious Ai Olie?

The death of Pamela Werner seems to be one. The 20-year-old college student, was murdered and dumped below the old walls of Beijing on a cold night in 1937. The killing filled the city’s foreign community, already on edge over the growing Japanese army to the north, with dread. She had been mutilated. Someone had slashed at her over and over again, broken her ribs outward with great force and cut out her heart. The murder has never been solved. It has spawned two very good and very different books.Vintage Fisher Price Little People 1960's 70's Fisher Price White and Green 2 Seat Car, Garage Playset, Little People 2 Seat Car The Chinese detective game: lead your investigation and solve the puzzles that will lead you to the culprit. The vertical climb to the Great Wall looked easier from the bottom - did someone say cable car?said, Dad would be very popular here), self-sufficient (this is a real entrepreneurial place with trades of all descriptions being plied in every nook and cranny across the city). And as for the food... We played this for the first time today and absolutely loved it. Better with more players for sure. The rules seems complicated at first but once you have am initial run through and grasp how everything works it's not that difficult. Really good fun and every game is different. Highly recommend it.

The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war saw files destroyed, people detained or scattered. Civil War after 1945 and the eventual victory of the Communists completed the process. Sheppard is very good on the terrible aftermath of these events. Whereas, French tends to follow Werner’s investigations down into the Badland bars and brothels, then stay there, Sheppard follows his characters through the years of war, imprisonment and death. One of his most astonishing findings is that Werner and the men he accused of killing Pamela ended up in the same Japanese internment camp. The old man would shake his finger and hiss at the men that he knew what they’d done. For Werner (if he was correct) and the men (if he was wrong), it must have been a terrible psychological burden even in the midst of a Japanese camp. Keep collections to yourself or inspire other shoppers! Keep in mind that anyone can view public collections - they may also appear in recommendations and other places. So how is that given the same set of facts that French and Sheppard can diverge so markedly? The answer is in their view of Pamela’s father, Edward Werner, 72 at the time of her death and, quite possibly, the oddest of all the odd characters. He had been born to British and Prussian parents on board a ship in Dunedin harbour, hence his full name Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner. He joined the British consular system in China, rose to be a consul and, depending on one's view, was either a rather disagreeable man or alternatively the most disagreeable man in all China. Thank God for a very patient waitress, who first off tried to communicate using language (not possible - we just kept saying, 'Hello, thank you, thank you') and then writing (not possible, we had only figured out one Mandarin character which was 'Men' - not as in Men, but as in Tiana-MEN... we didn't even know what it meant, so pretty useless), and then by Lonely Planet guidebook language glossary. Werner believed the police were not doing a good job so paid local scouts for information. He wrote voluminous reports and sent them to the consulate, the British foreign office and MPs. Most of his reports have survived the war in China; most police reports haven’t. Werner came to the conclusion that the killers were the nudist-loving dentist Prentice, a shady ex-Marine Knauf who seems to have spent more time than was good for him running bad bars and the fascist Italian doctor Cappuzzo. They were all deviants, in Werner’s thinking. They were up to no good, frequenters of the Badlands, seducers of innocent young women and, finally, capable of killing to cover up their foul deeds. In Werner’s view, poor Pamela had been seduced by Prentice, taken drunk to a bar, then repeatedly raped by his friends, killed when she stood up to them and disembowelled to make it easier to get rid of the body. They all loved hunting so they were used to dismembering things. The fact that no-one would listen to him was because the American, British and Italian legations were incompetent and protecting their own. An alternative view was that no-one was listening because he was wrong or intensely disliked.Vintage Fisher Price Little People 1960's 70's Fisher Price White and Yellow Car, Garage Playset, Little People Yellow Car w/ Gas Tank Hole