Beijing Part 2

05/04/2015     In the morning we were driven to the Summer Palace: the royal gardens, lakes, and dwelling place for emperors, but most especially the Dragon Queen, Empress Dowager Cixi.  She was the effective ruler of China for about 47 years, finding clever ways to do away with her detractors. Again the beautiful but selfish surroundings were astonishing.  How can one person feel entitled to so much and at such expense in terms of money and lives?  Oh well, it all belongs to the people now.  After looking through the windows of the buildings and walking along the ornately painted Long Corridor, we took a trip across Kunming Lake on a Dragon Boat. 

Summer Palace Complex

The Long Corridor

Dragon Boat on Kunming Lake

Next we were taken to the Olympic park to see the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube.  We never really got near them or went inside, just took pictures from the outside.  But I remember seeing all of that on TV during the 2008 Olympics here.  We were in Beijing for such a short period of time that our guide was trying to squeeze in a little of everything.

Olympic Park - Bird's Nest

Olympic Park - Torch Tower

Olympic Park - Water Cube

And then on to our favorite part, the Great Wall at Mutianyu, a section that is supposed to be less crowded, which it was.  This was about a 45 minute drive outside the city and into the mountains.  We appreciated being in the back seat of a comfortable private car rather than standing up on a bumpy bus.  It was a gorgeous day, clean and crisp air.  To our surprise, we bumped into another BYU China Teacher couple there, plus other young LDS with tour groups or summer teaching jobs.  You could tell them by their clean cut good looks and knee length shorts.  Our guide was so surprised that we “knew” people.  Once you get to the village below the wall, you have three choices to get to the wall:  walk up the mountain, take a gondola to one end or a chairlift to the other.  We chose the chairlift.  Good choice!

We loved seeing this, definitely a highlight of our time in China.  We appreciated the clear, blue skies that allowed us to see far off into the distance.  The section we walked on dated from 1368 and was built on foundations of an old wall built as early as 550 AD.  Parts of it were repaired, and other parts showed where nature had taken over.  Some sections were extremely steep.  In fact, just the week before a young Canadian tourist was enthusiastically running down a part of it and ran into an old lady.  The woman hit her head on a stone and died.  We walked one way until the signs said to go no further (even though some people did) and then turned around and walked the other way.  (To be honest, we did go a short distance on the non-repaired wall to see what it was like.  It is amazing to see how easily nature takes over man-made structures.)  The wall seemed to go on forever.  We were told we could see Mongolia from there.   (Funny – looked like China to us.)

On the Great Wall

The Wall looks like it goes on forever

Tobaggan Slide to get down

Of course you have to get back down to the village and we chose to take the toboggan slide.  It’s a metal half pipe you ride in to the bottom.  Fun!  We did a little shopping there and ate at a Burger King (not enough of those in Chengdu) before getting back in our car for the ride to our hotel.  

05/05/2015    The Silk Market and Pearl Market are not night markets and close early.  So for our last day, we asked Cool to pick us up a little later in the morning so we could visit the Pearl Market one more time.  We just don’t have shopping like that in Chengdu!  Then we were taken to see the Drum Tower where one large and 24 smaller (but still big) drums used to be beaten to mark the hours of the day.  There were really steep steps to get up to where they are in the tower.  After that we were taken on a rickshaw tour, being driven through some of the narrow alleys (Hu Tong) of old Beijing.  We actually have been to old alleys like this in Chengdu so this was not our favorite activity.  Besides it’s hard to see around the rickshaw driver.  We toured someone’s home and communal courtyard/kitchen, and walked down an 800 year old street (called Tobacco Pipe street), which is now a lot of boutique stores.  

The last part of our trip took us to the Yonghe (or Lama) Temple.  We have seen so many of these compounds and they are mostly all alike.  But this one was especially nice.  Built in the 1600’s it’s a mix of Han, Mongol, and Tibetan.  The highlight is a 55 foot tall Buddha that was carved from a single tree.  I think they built the pavilion around it.  And then we were taken to the airport and flew back to Chengdu.  We loved Beijing.  It is a modern, world class city.  Driving along the rose lined freeways we felt it could have been any city in the US.  And we didn’t stick out since there were so many foreigners there.  Of course being a tourist is a lot different that actually living in a place.

Inside the Drum Tower

Rickshaw ride in Hu Tong

Lama Temple (Buddha is made from single tree)

Beijing - Part 1

05/02/2015     Our students (not our bosses) let us know that some holidays (May Day and Youth Day) were coming up so they would not be attending classes on Monday.  When we emailed our bosses to see if this was correct they said they would think about it and get back to us.  (Don’t they plan these things years in advance – so frustrating!)  Finally, a few days before the holiday we were told that we did not teach that day but we would be expected to make it up sometime. (We doubled our classes up the following week to make up for the missed classes.)  That gave us a five day weekend in early May with not much time to plan to go somewhere.  But since you can’t come to China and not see Beijing, we called a travel agency and set up a trip.

We were sold an idiot-proof package (since it was last minute and we didn’t know what we were doing) where the private driver and tour guide are with us from airport pick up to airport drop off.  Looking back, we know we could have done a lot of it on our own.  We were met at the Beijing airport and driven to our very nice hotel, the Park Plaza.  We were given some suggestions for things to do for the rest of the day and then left alone for the afternoon/evening.  Beijing has 16 subway lines, Chengdu only has two.  One station was right behind our hotel so we went there and figured out our way to the Pearl Market.  

We loved the Pearl Market!  It is a multi-storied building full of small shops and people who speak English and are eager to sell stuff to foreigners (very unlike here in Chengdu).  The bottom floor is typically full of souvenirs, while the goods get fancier and more expensive (like purses and clothes, then electronics, then jewelry) as you go up floors.  The merchants start out at a ridiculous price and then you offer about 10% of the original amount and end up paying about 25%.  Anne even thought the bargaining part was fun.

We ate dinner at a local Subway sandwich shop (those are all over China and have saved our lives).  After bringing our purchases back to the hotel we asked for directions to the Food Street Market: Wangfujing.  That place has to be seen to be believed!  Food vendors set up on one side of the long street cooking and selling items you might never imagine edible, and calling out to you to try them.  We didn’t buy anything but we took a lot of pictures.  And perhaps because it was a holiday, it was very crowded.  It was a sensory overload!  Some things we saw on sticks:  lizard, snake, scorpion, tarantula, grasshopper, sea horse, gonads, giant centipedes, starfish, snails, of course the usual squid and octopus, plus so many other things we couldn’t identify.

Wangfujing Food Street

Put it on a stick and call it"Food"

Our hotel was very nice, even by US standards.  We had a wonderful buffet breakfast every morning, stuffing ourselves so we wouldn’t need more than a granola bar for lunch.  Our personal guide, “Cool”, and her driver picked us up at 9AM.  Because it was a holiday weekend, the factories were shut down and the air was pollution free and crisp and clear and windy.  Our first stop was to see the outside of the Bird’s Egg, their cultural arts center.  It did look like a giant silver and glass egg stuck in an artificial lake. It’s so large that it can host several different events at one time.  We walked past the Great Hall of the People, where the BYU teachers in Beijing were honored at a banquet during National Day.  By contrast, we were given a box of moon cakes for National Day here in Chengdu.  (Think of a moon cake as a Chinese version of a fruit cake in America – not very desirable.) 

The Bird's Egg

Great Hall of the People

Entrance to Forbidden City

Then on to Tiananmen Square, the “largest square in the world”, and the entrance to the Forbidden City.  I remember seeing all this stuff in miniature at that defunct historical China park in Katy, Tx. (we miss that place).  I couldn’t help but think of the excessive demands of the emperors who lived there and the suffering they caused their people.  Maybe it wasn’t so different from the European/England royalty of the past.  Being a holiday, the place was very crowded and we could only peer into the windows of the buildings.  Being with a tour guide allowed us to enter sites without having to wait in long lines with the locals.  The place could have used a little sprucing up.   

We walked on to Jingshan Park, which used to be a part of the Forbidden City until they pulled down some walls and gates to put a city road through in the early 1900’s.  The park is located on a hill, made from the dirt which came from the moat dug around the Forbidden City.  From the pagoda on top we could see all over the city.  Another nice benefit of having a tour guide is that we had someone to take pictures of both of us in front of sites. Normally we have pictures with only one or the other of us.

One of many Thrones

Huge Stone Carving

View of Forbidden City from park

From here we were driven to the Temple of Heaven.  This beautiful building was created as an altar.   The emperor would come here once or twice a year to pray to the heaven for an abundant harvest.  Again we were only allowed to peek in from the outside.  It is elaborately painted and decorated.  I am glad we saw a replica in Epcot Center in Florida to know how it really looked inside.  It was set in a large, beautiful park with a few other blue tiled buildings and gates around it.   

  

Temple of Heaven

Temple of Heaven Park

The "Legend of Kung Fu"

It was still early in the afternoon so we had the driver drop us off at a metro station where we were able to travel to the Silk Market.  This place is like the Pearl Market only a little more upscale.  We had fun participating in more bargaining and shopping.  We found an Indian restaurant inside and ate our dinner and then took the subway back to our hotel.  Our driver and guide came back to get us in the evening and took us to a musical extravaganza show at the Red Theater called, “The Legend of Kung Fu”. (Our other choice was the Chinese acrobats, but we’ve seen them a couple of times in Houston already.)  The show is about a little boy (8 years old) who enters a monastery, learns Kung Fu, and eventually becomes a master warrior monk.  It had a little of everything:  singing, dancing, special lighting, and lots of stylized martial arts.  It was very well done – reminded us of a good “Vegas-type” show, only without the half-dressed women.  We were totally entertained.  Our driver waited in the car and took us back to the hotel at the end of the show.  I am not used to this level of pampering and was frankly getting a little tired of it – we can do some things by ourselves.  But that’s what we paid for I guess.