The second day, I woke up in the caress of sunshine. It was North Korea time 6:30 in the moring, one hour earlier than the Beijing time. The sun had fully risen and was sponging the mist that had filled the upper space of the Taedong river. Our hotel was located on an island of the river. The view out of the window was great, fresh air flowed into the room with warmth. A river makes a city vigorous, even though it is Pyong Yang.

The first breakfast in Pyong Yang was as disappointing as yesterday’s dinner. I asked the waitress for a cup of coffee after I found the German guy beside me was drinking one. She denied. “It is just a cup of coffee!”I insisted. “No, he paid more than you did.” Later, when I chatted with the German guy, he told me he paid almost 5000 Yuan to the travel agency for the trip and it was as twice as my payment.

After breakfast, we got on a bus. There were four Koreans with us: one Chinese guide, one English guide, one bus driver, and one camera man who makes DVD for the entire trip. “You really cannot tell if one of them is from the ministry of the national defense.” One murmured into my ears. The bus took us to all kinds of halls, statues and monuments in the city. Without those landmarks, Pyong Yang is a clean and quiet city. Adding those landmarks in, Pyong Yang is the capital city of DPR Korea.

The rest trip of the day defined North Korea. We first went north to the Exhibition Hall of International Friendship where all the gifts received from other countries, the third world countries, were stored. The exhibition hall was built in the Mountain Myohyang. We skipped the peaks, the valleys, the streams, the caves, the rocks, and the waterfalls, but glanced over the paintings and calligraphies from China, the ivory and furs from Africa, oh, and the wax figure of Kim Il-sung. What’s more? Take a bow!

……

In the afternoon, I was listening to the chorus of a group of school girls in a daze. It reminded me of those footages captured in the Culture Revolution of China in the 1960s. Their facial expressions looked alike and their performances were extremely well-organized but artificial.