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.