Up with the chickens

I managed to 'sleep in' until 4:30 today, the latest yet. I've been getting a lot less sleep than usual but have so far not felt it. I went walking in the little streets around my hotel, watching the city come to life. In every hutong and every block of the main street, there are small restaurants selling hot soup and steamed little packages for breakfast, small shops selling sundries.

There are public toilets everywhere, all of the stoop variety. Those on the hutongs tend to have waist high dividing walls, or none at all, meaning that you can line up with your neighbors and chat while attending to business.

I passed through various police checkpoints walking around, and while most just checked bags and passed you through a metal detector, a few asked for ID. Yesterday, a police officer I approached with my passport took a glance at what I was holding and just waved me on, didn't even want to look at it. I usually don't carry my passport when I'm walking around, but I'd been to the Forbidden City, and needed a passport to get in. The checkpoints seem to be a part of everyday life, and people don't seem concerned about it. Once or twice I saw someone pulled aside, and I'm guessing their experience was a little less uneventful.

I just remembered that Starbucks opens at 8 am, so I'm going to have coffee, on the theory that it will become scarcer as I move away from the big city.

My hotel