Busy Day of Touring #2

Today was another whirlwind day of touring. All, or most, of the families are in Beijing today so we have officially split up into our province travel group. Our once small band of new friends is now split up between 4 different tour buses. We also met our guide, Kelly, today. She is very sweet. She said to us today, “you were the first family to arrive and you are the last family I met!” We talked to Kelly on the phone early on and have been pretty self-sufficient here in Beijing and I guess we didn’t need too much help.

Our first stop today was to Tiananmen Square. It is approx 60 soccer fields in size and I can believe it. On the north side of the square is the Forbidden City and on the south, Chairman Mao’s tomb. To the east is the Chinese History Museum and the west is the Hall of People which Kelly described as “it’s like Congress.” Uhm…China is communist, I don’t think it’s quite the same as our US Congress, but I digress. The square is large enough for ½ million people to be in the square at the same time.

We then traveled across the street to the Forbidden City, the former residence of the Chinese Emperors. It is quite an impressive compound in person. Everything has meaning somewhere and Kelly described many of the formal traditions surrounding the gates, buildings, and courtyards. One of the most interesting facts was that there are no trees in the Forbidden City. Why? Well, the Emperor ruled over China in the Hall of Supreme Harmony and that was the tallest building in the Forbidden City…nothing was allowed to be taller than that building. Unfortunately trees grow and they just couldn’t have a tree grow taller than the Emperor’s ruling seat! Things are being renovated in the Forbidden City to prepare for the Olympics so many of the buildings were under the cover of scaffolding.

On a side note, the Forbidden City was very crowded today. Kelly told us that Yao Ming was going to make an appearance there today so many people came to see him. Near the end of our visit the crowd was quite unbearable and we were ready to leave. I am a little disappointed that we didn’t get to spend a little more time exploring the city, but with the crowds I don’t really know how much we would have ventured out.

Kelly then took us to a nice Chinese restaurant (Ha ha, again!) for lunch. This restaurant was attached to a Friendship Store where we could shop if we wanted to. We also were shown the process to make Cloisonné here. For those who don’t know, Friendship Stores in China are government run stores, there are only fixed prices and they tend to be quite high, but you are guaranteed to get authentic items in these stores. Most of what was in this store we know we can buy in Guangzhou at the end of our trip. We just window shopped today.

Next stop was the Great Wall. Hubby was like a kid in a candy shop. He practically sprinted to the first tower. I climbed a little bit, but mostly just watched and waited for Hubby . We were given 1 ½ hours to climb the wall. He assured me he wouldn’t be gone long, so I waited for him. It wasn’t crowded today so I didn’t mind waiting a bit. About 45 minutes later I was still waiting so I went back to the bus with a few other families, the sun was quite strong today and I felt I was out in the sun long enough. He came back to the bus 1 minute late…he climbed to the 8th tower along this portion of the wall! No one else in our small group traveled that far. He took many pictures and returned with a small plaque commemorating his achievement. He also came back with an “I climbed the Great Wall” T-shirt. Apparently they have shopping opportunities everywhere in China!

Well, we are pooped from our long day of touring and we have to leave for the airport at 5:50 am…our flight leaves at 7:25am to Nanning. So we may be able to post tomorrow evening to talk about meeting Jenna on Monday. Until then, goodnight.