In Beijing

Today began with an early flight to Beijing, but the flight was on time and was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long, so it was an easy trip. We all just brought a backpack or similar overnight bag so we didn’t have to lug any luggage around. After landing in the very hazy (from air pollution) Beijing, we boarded a bus to our very nice hotel out in the third ring of the city. Beijing is divided into rings with the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the middle. We had a quick lunch at our hotel and then we traveled to Tiananmen Square. This is the famous gathering place in Beijing/Chinese history with several government takeovers and protests happening here—with the most recent famous event being the uprising in 1989. Try Googling Tiananmen Square and you will see the amazing history of the place. Below is my picture in the center of it. Off to my left is the mausoleum where Mao Zedong’s body is still kept and viewable to the public. We did not have time to visit Chairman Mao unfortunately.

We walked from one end of Tiananmen Square to the other end to enter the Forbidden City through the Tiananmen Gate. You can see me in front of the famous gate below, with Mao’s huge portrait hanging at the entrance.

The Forbidden City is a huge sprawling complex that was built starting in 1406. It has an amazing history that even includes being partially destroyed during Mao’s reign, and then sealed-off from everyone after that. They are renovating it currently to get it ready for the Olympics, and are in the middle of an overall renewal of the city to past glory. The grounds are immense and there is history everywhere. Enjoy two pictures of the city below--none of mine really do it justice.

After several hours of walking through the Forbidden City (we could have spent two days to try to see everything), we were off to navigate the gauntlet of street peddlers that were selling us everything from Gucci bag knockoffs to fake Rolex watches to pirated Beijing Olympics gear. Once they see Westerners, they flock and are quite persistent (until the police show up….the police seem to let them sell, but they don’t like it if they are harassing visitors). We did get on our bus and then went to a restaurant to have the famous Beijing Peking Duck.
The duck is actually carved in front of you into small slices of breast meat each with some of the crispy skin intact, and then you take some and place it into a thin pancake with some plum sauce and some onions and cucumbers and then eat it. It was quite good, and I will say we had a great feast.

After the feast we headed directly to see some Beijing Opera. I didn’t know anything about it, and to be honest, I still don’t. It was very beautiful and colorful, and at times even very acrobatic. However, it was in Chinese, as were the subtitles displayed at the side of the stage. Also, the singing sounded like a cat screaming, so just imagine that for two and a half hours. However, I am very pleased to have gotten to see it, and the Chinese people there seemed to really enjoy it, even shouting out and clapping at random spots. We never did figure out what happened, but our ears are still ringing… It was then time to head back to the hotel and get into bed exhausted after a very long, but good day.