For the past month we’ve been enjoying the kind of weather that makes even a city as urbanised as Beijing look rather lovely. The days are getting shorter and cooler, but the weird summery pollution haze that hung over August and September has disappeared, the sky is a ridiculous shade of blue, the trees are slowly undressing and the sweet potato, chestnut and satsuma vendors are lining the streets outside every subway station, making everything smell Autumnal. I haven’t even seen a little kid shitting in the middle of the pavement recently. It’s almost paradise.

Thanks to the National Holiday and a half-day week last week we’ve had plenty of opportunity to enjoy it, and we seriously made up for our neglect of sightseeing while mum was here. As well as the great wall we managed to squeeze all of the following sights, which, to avoid boring you rigid, I’ve attempted to describe in fifteen words or fewer:

The Summer Palace – built by a mad, megalomaniac empress, beautiful lake, nice crazy paving, fifteen million people there.

The Forbidden City – absolutely enormous, eight thousand rooms, austere atmosphere, fifteen million people there.

Tiannamen Square – Imposing, grey, brings to mind the worst of China, flags everywhere, fifteen million people there.

China National Art Gallery – fascinating exhibition on 60 years of communism (we think. The signs were in Mandarin).

The Temple of Heaven – gorgeous grounds, lots of people dancing, singing and strolling around, peaceful despite the crowds.

The Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium – Immense, but depressingly unused. I got more excited than James and mum.

Jingshan Park – lovely little park with an amazing view of the Forbidden City. Fab.

Houhai District – sat on a roof terrace bar drinking beer and watching pigeon fanciers at work. Clever pigeons.

The Confucian Temple – crowd-free temple of learning and music, very reverential towards the great man.

Wangfujing shopping district – mum nearly shed tears over the loss of communist values. A commercial frenzy.

Here’s a small selection of the photos – apologies that they’re not up to usual standards; James was busy working many days so I took most of them.