Silence from Beijing.

OK, so Beijing was a lot busier than I thought it would be. I caught up with folks at BeiDa, got my paper finished with plenty of time to spare for a trip to Wudaokou (where I had my first and only hamburger in China--my friend Ben didn't want to change locations), and wound up being invited to the conference's banquet for the foreign friends.

I also got to hang out with Zhang Li one more time. We had hoped to go to the Fragrant Hills, but rain made us change the plan to the 798 gallery district. Yet more art!

the banquet last night turned out to be mostly a fish banquet, and I sat with all the Chinese guys. There was one table of 外国人（foreigners, all men except 1 wife) that had one host, one table of Chinese living abroad with a couple hosts, and my table, which was all Chinese, including a few who had travelled far to be here. It was one good last practice session. The host of my table told a couple really lengthy stories. At one point someone leaned over and asked how much I was catching. I said "Well, he started out by talking about food, then about something that happened 18, 19 years ago, and now he's talking about why Canadians are happy people. What about the food, what exactly happened 18, 19 years ago, and the precise reasons why the Canadians are so happy escaped me. Everyone got a good laugh at this, but also said they were surprised I could get that much.

We mostly talked about food, as I asked the names of various things. Sometimes there was a little arguing about exactly what something was (so even the Chinese have problems!) and there was much discussion about what region some of the dishes and ingredients came from.

So now I'm heading out for my last evening in Beijing. I'm going to hit up a park that I have never been to, then pick up some airplane reading material and have a snack.

Thanks for everything China. And to you my loyal readers. I still owe you details about Shanghai, another photo album or two, and I am sure there will be the inevitable post-mortem of my trip--so don't tune out just yet!