Ni hao! Now you know a little about where we live when we are in Beijing 北京, and about the nearest area around us. You also know a little bit more about Beijing, if you have been reading my blogs. Right now I feel like I would take you out on a shopping round in this lovely city.
Firstly Beijing is a fantastic and wonderful place to go to when you want to shop. You will find all kinds of things to buy, and it´s very cheap. So one good tip is to come here with very little in your bagage. You will fill it here. There are many places to go when you want to shop, and they are spread all over the city. The first place we went to was the area near the Drum Tower. Here we found two department stores. One with clothes, shoes, perfume and so on, plus one with everything from electronics to clothes. In fact this last one had everything. I bought sunglasses, memory cards to my mobile phone, t-shirts, thing to use when sewing, umbrellas you name it! Fill up your bagage before going home! 
In the first department store we bought clothes and shoes mainly. A few days later we went to Xidan. A very large area with many department stores and smaller stores. Here we looked at mobile phones, but we bought one later nearer our home in Dongzhimen. But we bought winter clothes on sale for the last week, and also other clothes. I also bought a second battery for my Olympus digital camera in Xidan. As I told you Beijng is full of shops all over town, but there is also special areas or streets where you go when you want to buy a special thing. Like a street with music stores or department store with curtains for your windows! It´s really very much a paradise for shopping. Though you have to know that I had my special guide, Liping born in and living in Beijing for 40 years with me. 
So here is what you can do before you go there. Read and learn a lot from the internet and write down the names of the areas where you want to go and shop. Anyway I went to a special musical instruments street to buy a guitar. And found an accustic in green and black for only 380 yuan with case, strap and plectrums! I will not tell you about all these areas in this blog spot. It will come later. But there is one that I just have to tell you about right now. It´s the Wangfujing. It has very many department stores, and also many smaller stores on side streets. It is very exclusive and is very popular among young people and the tourists. We didn´t buy many things here, but we did buy t-shirst, Beijing 2008 caps, souvernirs, and some books(a Beijing Guide book and a Mandarin language book). 
On this street you will find China´s largest book store. It has 6 floors and some 200.000 volumes of books and CDs! You have to read on a sign at the elevator to find out on which floor the books that you are looking for are placed! Anyway the toilets are on the sixth floor! In my mind comes up the one question that I would like to answer about Beijing! I would like to describe Beijing with three words. Very difficult! But I found out that these words are: large, friendly and building! Both the way people are friendly, helpful, understanding and temprament is the same I have only met in Rhodes, Greece! Zai jian!
Peter
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