Today the team had an early breakfast that consisted of Seaweed, some unidentifiable soup, some unidentifiable stringy brown thing, fried eggs and warm milk.

Shortly after our... interesting... breakfast we took a subway to Tian'anmen Square, right in front of the Forbidden City. The City proved to be far more spectacular than I ever imagined, its sheer size overwhelming and its colors fascinating. We had a very friendly tour guide named Han who showed us the city up and down.

"dado" kuljasevic, your dear blogger and Jack blending in.

Some of the players and chinese representatives in front of the gates, and Mao

I apologize for the quality of any picture I am in, the substitute photographers seem to fail

We also had the great honor of meeting the nephew of the last emperor. Since the last emperor, Henry Puyi, never had offsprings, his nephew would have become the new Emperor since he is part of the Qing dinasty, the Imperial Family of the Aisin-Goro clan. It was really quite an honor! He is now one of the most famous calligraphers in China, and his works are collected and exhibited around the world.

This is how amazing the service is in China.
Later we had lunch at a restaurant where the speciality was duck. Again the food was simply unbelievable, exquisite and abundant. No words can really describe it so I will just leave you with the following image:

Amazing.

After eating we visited the Pearl Market, where we found everything from Silk to Ipods, Iphones, chess sets and Rolexes, all for 1/10 of the price they would have in the U.S.A. You also have to wonder how authentic these things are... but that's just, of course, a small detail. Bargainning was fierce, and we managed to bring many things down to 40% of the original cost. The girls that sell... stuff (stuff is really the only term I can think off, they really do sell everything) in this market speak enough english to bargain very well.

Exhausted from our adventure through Beijing the majority of team crashed immediately after returning to the hotel. Tomorrow we will play against our Chinese rivals. I personally know I will be playing Wang Yue, who is an incredible opponent. Wang recently won the First FIdE Grand Prix tournament in Baku, Azerbaijan, in front of the top players in the world. Wish me luck!

p.d. yes I know there aren't any images, Chinese internet is being difficult... I will try in the morning -

edit2: Pics are finally uploading!!!! also I apologize for the formatting, but remember that due to china's firewall I cannot access my own blog, and thus can't view it at all.
Alejandro