This morning, we went to breakfast and then to Beihai Park. Beihai Park is a park in Beijing that the elderly and retired people seem to gather at to engage in activities and shared interests. In China, women retire at age 50-55 and men at age 55-60. Longevity is considered the key to happiness, so they do these things to try to stay young. While we were there, we saw retired people doing Tai Chi, aerobics, line dancing, ribbon dancing, playing flutes, singing Chinese opera, and playing hacky sack (a lady who appeared to be at least in her 70s was very proficient, working multiple sacks at a time). Some of these activities are not necessarily things these people knew how to do previously. Many of these people are using this as an opportunity to learn a new hobby and socialize. It was interesting observing all of this and it was a pretty and peaceful location.
After returning to the hotel, we ate lunch and Glen and Lynda departed for Xi'an. This afternoon, we camped out in the hotel room and did some early packing and consolidating for our upcoming travel to Guangzhou. We also played an Elmo video on Matt's Netbook and Elmo seems to have captured Zachary's imagination for the time being. His heat rash is completely gone, but he does have some rough, dry skin so we moisturized him after bathtime. He is now playing with his burgeoning bottlecap collection and we are kind of planning to chill out for the remainder of the evening.