Blue Skies and a Going-Away Party

I've got a queue of things to write about. Let me get started. For those that don't know, Genny and I went to China last week. Fil is there working for Microsoft Research as a Scholar, so he's stuck there. Either way for us, it was a great excuse to get out of the frying pan and into the dust bin. China is a crazy, amazing, food-tastic place. But - it is dirty.
There are sections of Beijing which are 15 km away from the Gobi desert. Every year the Gobi gets 2 km closer. Beijing's reaction to this is to plant a huge line of trees, "The Green Wall of China" to comabt this menace to 10-15 million people. Apparently, when finished it will be longer than the Great Wall. Some think that grass is better than trees, but tress are forthcoming.
The Chinese have an answer to everything it seems. Environmentalists probably wouldn't love it, especially the "Blue Sky days". In 2008, the Olympics come to Beijing. To make the country seem more beautiful, they are artificially creating rain, which in turn creates a blue sky. The rain is created by shooting chemicals into the sky which create downpours. There are quotas for blue sky days each year (which they won't meet). Anyhow - I'm not a big fan of the potential environmental impact, but it is nice to see the mountains surrounding Beijing.
Anyhow - pictures. We went to a going-away party for Steffi (one of Fil's friends) where we had a huge buffet with all sorts of random food. And beer. lots of watery beer. Please sign in to see some of these pictures. Afterwards, we went to a bar and then a club. The club was a little too much, so we decided to go back to Fil's. I'm definitely a fan of late-night food, and so is Fil. So we stopped by this Xi'an Jian (sp?) place for some random food. Popoular dishes with me were egg and cheese mix, tofu anything, these fried egg sandwiches (Jiá ji dàn), and dumplings. Xi'an Jian is actually a Muslim autonomous region, so they don't have pork (not that it affects me). But it is definitely odd to see Arabic writing in China. Especially because there isn't much English.