{ First of two parts }

BEIJING, China -- As the GPS chirped away in Chinese, our car zig-zagged amid pedestrians and cyclists on the clogged dusty road as we searched in the dark for the Yang Gang Victory Hotel.

Returning from the mountains north of this city, we were looking for what our friend called a hodgepodge restaurant, although its brochure described it in English as a "victorious instant boiled mutton workshop."

When we finally arrived -- the only Westerners in the place -- we landed a table right in front of the stage where four young women danced in ethnic costume to a flutist.

We consumed beer by the liter and went to work on our dinner. The "workshop" meant we cooked our own goat meat and vegetables in a pot of boiling water at our table, then dipped it into a sesame sauce laced with peppers.

The weird-looking stuff we started tossing into the pot was dark like a mushroom and had bumps on one side. It emerged from the pot all tough and tasted like rubberized brussels sprouts.

"What were we eating?" I asked our Chinese friend. He consulted his pocket Chinese-to-English translator.

"Goat stomach."

Such was one of many eating adventures my brother Joe and I experienced during a recent week to China.

In eight months, 1.5 million visitors are expected to descend on China for the XXIX Summer Olympics in Beijing. If our culinary discoveries are any indication, it's likely to be one wild ride.

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Our trip began in late October on the tightly packed Boeing 777 that descended from 39,000 feet over Mongolia and into Chinese airspace. Soon we saw a huge fluffy pillow spread out below, smothering any view of what the pilot announced was Beijing.

Not to worry, the pilot said, because Beijing Capital International had the world's most-sophisticated guidance equipment to land in the fog. Indeed, he brought the plane down like a feather.

As we exited the terminal, we realized -- through stinging eyes -- that the pilot meant smog, not fog. The Chinese might have bought the best in airport technology, but surely they still had the worst air for breathing.

We later learned in the New China Daily newspaper that only 62 of the airport's more than 1,000 flights arrived on time that day. The paper blamed the "fog" on one of Beijing's famous temperature inversions.

Such stark contrasts were constant companions in Beijing, home to the mysterious temple of Chairman Mao and Communism and a marketplace of as much in-your-face commercialism as anyone might expect in Midtown Manhattan.

We were picked up at the airport by John Zambelli, a friend from North Versailles who lives in China several months of the year for his consulting business, and his Chinese business associate. Having a friend to show us around this chaotic city and its unfamiliar customs was invaluable.

Our 30-minute drive on the eight-lane airport expressway to central Beijing and the Wangfujing Grand Hotel wended through canyons of angular office towers, sparkling hotels, high-rise apartments and construction cranes building all of them.

Along the way, the Chinese careened in five or six lanes on a highway marked for three or four, but, amazingly, no one honked and not one of the big Mercedes, Toyotas, Hyundais or Buicks (the latest Chinese status symbol) had a dent.

The road signs included some English translations, but you had to read through three to four lines of Mandarin Chinese before finding them, and by that time you had missed the exit ramp.

Travelers at the airport could grab one of the relatively new, clean Hyundai Elantra taxis that whisk them to the center city for 120 yuan, or about $16. A few jitney drivers hawked customers, but apparently for safety's sake, almost everyone avoided them.

Well-prepared visitors might request that their hotel mail them a stack of business cards with the hotel name and address in English and Mandarin. Give one to the taxi driver and he'll say something like, "America is a very powerful nation. It is my dream to learn English and go there some day." But that will be the extent of it.

So Olympics visitors can expect a tough time communicating their destination without having it written in Mandarin, no matter how slowly one can say "Waaaang -- fooooo -- jing Ho -- tel."

The 405-room Wangfujing Grand Hotel was rated five stars among the Chinese-operated hotels in the city. (On some American Web sites, it gets just three stars.) We settled in to a $120-a-night double room on the executive floor, equipped with a laptop computer, unpredictable Internet connection and a fax, a half-dozen herb-filled pillows for easing our headaches at night, a thermostat for decorative purposes only (no air conditioning ever came on), and most of the amenities one would expect at one of Pittsburgh's big hotels.

The bathroom had a Western-style toilet and a good shower, but the light bulbs -- the Chinese are very worried about energy conservation -- burned only about 20 watts, making it tough to shave in the mirror.

No one on the smartly uniformed hotel staff could have been older than 30, and they attended the guests in legions. Most spoke English a little better than the cabbies, and all engaged the guests with a slight bow and a smile, showing no apparent wear from working six, 12-hour days a week.

The young woman at the currency exchange desk smiled as warmly as the rest, but she rejected any American bills that were dirty, ripped or had writing on them. In a dining and shopping paradise, you don't want any trouble with money.

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Our foray into Chinese food begins at Wahaha, a restaurant within walking distance of the hotel.

The Chinese eat around the same times of day as Americans -- there are no midnight early-bird specials as in Latin cultures -- and, yes, everything is served family-style.

Richard Nixon is said to have practiced for weeks with chopsticks in preparation for dinner with Zhou Enlai during their historic 1972 meeting. The Chinese still use chopsticks, but all week our watchful waitresses arrived with knife and fork as soon as they saw anyone struggling with the native utensils.

Typically, dinner began with a bowl of peanuts or cashews in light vinegar, then noodles and tofu; steamed greens and white vegetables and mushrooms; fish, lobster or crab; poultry and pork, and soup.

We picked our seafood fresh from one of the aquarium tanks bubbling away along the walls, and the server brought it flopping around in a bucket for inspection before taking it to the kitchen. The fried or steamed fish returned whole, cut in a shallow crisscross pattern, a tomato or grape in its mouth. (The crisscrossing allowed us to pick off pieces with our chopsticks.) We drank hot tea by the pot and cold beer by the liter bottle.

Dinner generally costs between 100 and 150 yuan, or $14 to $20. Diners don't tip in Beijing, but the service was so attentive and gentle that we felt compelled to offer some gratuity. We pressed 40 or 50 yuan (10 percent) into the hands of the server who gladly accepted it, even though employers frown on tipping.

An Olympics visitor might dine this way and come home exhilarated, looking to replicate a meal at Pittsburgh's many Asian restaurants. But like the workshop of goat tripe, the way some meals were served may never be replicated here.

Such was the case with our dinner of Peking duck.

At the wildly popular QuanJuDe restaurant at HePingMen, we chose our roasted bird from among a half-dozen hanging at the dining room entrance. A chef wheeled it on a cart to our table and sliced it into three types of servings: the skin, which came away in chunks, fatty meat and lean meat. You put one piece of each into a thin pinyin wrap, top it with some small scallions and a bit of plum sauce, then fold the pinyin like a note to an elementary school classmate.

One bird fed five of us this way. They served all of the duck, including the head, which tasted like liver, and a soup made of the bones. The restaurant gave us a certificate for the duck we ate (even the Chinese collect these). Our delightful bird, number 1.15iz 123975, and the rest of dinner cost about 220 yuan each, or about $32.

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On another day, we were off to the Silk Market, the beehive of Chinese knockoff merchandise. We soon found our comfort zone in dealing with the young girls in the sales stalls as they grabbed our arms and pleaded: "You buy, you buy for wife. You buy for girlfriend. I give you best price, top quality."

Silk Market, in the Xiushuidong Jie district near the U.S. Embassy, operates in a six-story building that's departmentalized. On the basement floor, they sell only luggage or purses and shoes and belts. As you go up and down the escalators, you find sweaters, scarves, golf shirts, dress shirts, pants and suits and leather jackets; or sunglasses and watches; or gold or pearls and jade; or sporting goods and electronics.

You learned quickly not to ask for a price unless you intended to buy, and you never paid anywhere near their opening offer. I generally countered at 10 percent to 12 percent of that, then we worked up and down until we got somewhere near 25 percent of the opener.

We bargained on a pocket calculator that we passed back and forth: She'd punch up 800, I'd clear that and key in maybe 75 or 90. Both of us shook our heads and grumbled or laughed and passed the calculator again. When I felt frustrated or the price wasn't moving enough, I'd walk away, and I could hear her mantra as she chased me down the aisle: "You buy. You buy. I give you best price."

I bought.

A Rado Jubile Diastar watch retails for about $2,600; the one on my wrist set me back only $95.

However, you had to try on everything because the sizes ran very, very small. I wear a size large sweater, and the 3X large cashmere crewneck I bought is a little tight.

The "ECCO" walking shoes that I bought for $16 (ECCOs generally retail for almost $200) fit perfectly, though.

And I needed them as our week went on.

We had some serious walking to do in the coming days -- Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall at Badaling.

Next week: A day trip to the terracotta warriors in Xi'an -- described as the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century -- and the royal treatment at a massage parlor.

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Tips for travel to China

The XXIX Summer Olympics in Beijing will run from Aug. 8-24 and information on the games and activities is available at www.beijing2008.com.

Seven million tickets went on sale beginning in April, in the first of several phases of ticket sales and lottery applications. Seventy-five percent of the tickets will be available to people in mainland China, with the rest available for those outside the mainland. You can find out all the details at www.tickets.beijing2008.cn.

Here are some tips and observations that might help travelers heading to China next year:

• Tap any and all personal contacts you might have there because Beijing is huge and very dense, and it's an enormous advantage to have someone pointing you to the right places. Never leave your hotel without getting business cards for your destinations from the concierge, and always carry at least one such card for your hotel so you can get back.

• If you haven't started already, begin now trying to find a room. We stayed at a Chinese hotel that we found very comfortable and well-equipped and, surely, no one would be disappointed there. There are many pricier places, but like all else in Beijing, the price will be negotiable and will rise as June approaches. We got our room a little off-season for $120 a night, but the place won't guarantee a room in June for our friend who stays there for 12 or 15 weeks a year. He predicted our room will be $300 or more by summer.

• Take only fresh, unwrinkled dollars because the counterfeit-leery Chinese will reject any bills that are torn or written on. You can access your checking account at many hotel and sidewalk ATMs, and the fees aren't unreasonable. Also, make sure your credit card company knows you're going to China, and confirm it with them at least twice. Take multiple cards; one of our cards was rejected, even though we had called the issuing company well in advance.

• Allegheny County Health Department offers vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (www.cdc.gov) for travel to China, which include hepatitis A and B. Travelers also should be protected against measles and mumps (MMR) because of recent outbreaks there. Depending on where travelers plan to go (rural or city), protection against typhoid and other diseases might be recommended.

• Take all your prescription medications and as many over-the-counter drugs as you can carry. Beijing has many pharmacies, but even buying cough medicine, which my brother did, can be problematic. The pharmacies have big signs that describe your symptoms in English -- "I have a cough" -- and you can point to it to communicate with the clerk who'll be wearing a nurse's uniform.

• Don't even think about driving. The traffic is too frenetic, and the English translations on the road signs are difficult to read. If you've had trouble driving the Beltway around Washington, D.C., multiply your experience sevenfold. Beijing has six beltways called "Rings" around the city, one inside the other, and by the time the Games begin, a new expressway will be open to the Olympic venues.

• The taxis are very clean, cheap and plentiful, but make sure the driver turns on the meter and establish and bargain for the fare as soon as you get in the cab. Cabbies don't speak much English, but they will be very attuned to numbers. It's enough to say 100 or 120 (yuan) in English. They'll understand and turn the meter off when it reaches the pre-arranged amount. A subway system is being built directly to the Olympic venues, and if it's anywhere near as efficient as the taxi system, the ride should be smooth and easy.

• We noticed surprisingly few police cars, and those officers we saw did not display weapons. Nonetheless, we felt safe on the streets, day or night.

• The Chinese seem to yell at each other a lot, so get ready for a loud environment. They also elbow their way through lines and could be seen as rude and inconsiderate in crowds.

• Don't worry about the toilets. We did a lot of hand-wringing after reading about dirty, squatting-style toilets in Beijing, but we found clean, Western-style facilities everywhere, even in some of the public toilets along the streets and especially at attractions such as the Forbidden City and the terra-cotta warriors in Xi'an.

• The local beer is great and cheap, but avoid the domestic wine, which is expensive and had no bouquet, body or finish. If your taste runs to hard liquor, they pour Chivas Regal for 30 yuan ($4) a drink. Most of the good nightclubs have a cover charge, and the bartenders at the really popular spots expect a tip. Also, avoid the hotel and restaurant coffee and find a Starbucks if tea doesn't do the trick.

• Don't drink -- no, don't even brush your teeth with -- the water. Even the natives buy theirs in bottles, which are sold everywhere. We bought the local brand, which was much cheaper than what was sold in our hotel. Our maid delivered two fresh bottles for free every day, but that was barely enough.

• Be aware of even the smallest trash and just carry it in your pocket until you find a trash can. As dirty as the air can be, Beijing is completely litter- and graffiti-free. Shop owners even run electric vacuum cleaners on the sidewalks at day's end.

• Buy Olympics souvenirs only at the official, government-run outlets. The quality there will be much better than the knockoffs that already are available, and the sizes, which are metric, will be consistent after you find a fit. The lettering on the knockoffs will be poor and the sizes will vary dramatically. Anyone want to buy a man's T-shirt, size extra large, that my cat won't fit into?

• The airport is very efficient, with English signs everywhere. The only trouble we had was in leaving, when the porter told us to follow a sign that said "Way Out." in English. Way out of what? It meant international departures. And hire and double-tip one of the airport porters wearing a red hat when leaving. For 20 yuan ($2.70), he'll take you and your bags right to the front of the lines at the check-in counters, apparently in collusion with the women handling the ropes. That will save you a lot of time and aggravation.

-- Tim Martin