So I just got back from Beijing, and my impression of China is wildly different than it was before I went there. The cultural revolution really hosed things up there, and they lost a lot of their national identity, character, and culture. This is especially evident in Beijing, where the entire city is centrally planned and very, very vanilla outside of the famous landmarks. They do seemingly have individual freedom of speech, but collective freedoms are still highly restricted (all meetings that are religious or political must be registered with and approved by the government, foreigners are not allowed to proselytize, the Internet is tightly controlled - I probably wouldn't have been able to make this post from inside the 'great firewall' as most social networking sites are blocked.) I was surprised to see so many foreign TV channels that were seemingly unblocked, maybe they were just available in Hotels....
All in all, the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, and The Great Wall are must-sees. We had a great Christmas and although we probably won't go back to Beijing, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and would like to see more of China in the future.
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