Beijing, Day 1

We flew out of Xi’an early in the morning. The flight attendants on the plane wore plum colored uniforms; I noticed because I thought it was weird. The flight was definitely taken over by SAS. There were a few Chinese people and I think they were really confused as to who we were and what 100 of us were doing on their plane haha. After a 3-hour plane ride we landed at Beijing International Airport and went to the hotel.

Friday the 19th was pretty free because we were traveling, so we had the afternoon and evening to do what we wanted. I wandered around Beijing with a small group (Zach, Patrick, Mike, Matt and Carson). We wanted to visit the (Hong Qiao) Pearl Market, which is a 5 story indoor market full of vendors, basically five stories of bargaining and cheap shopping, but we heard it was closed because of the New Year. We walked into a mall for a second just to look around, discovered an ice skating rink in the middle of it, took a few pictures and left.

Then we stopped at a 24-hour bakery called 85 and bought delicious donuts. We met a guy who works there named Jordan (I don’t remember his Chinese name) and he told us about another market and a cool bar to hit up that night. He was excited to have people to practice his English with. We walked over to the market he told us was open and it wasn’t what we expected/were looking for, but it was interesting. I was looking for knock off Coach wallets and this market was more of a local food/small household street. It was down a back alley and super dirty, but I have some unique pictures and it was nice to see the non-touristy markets.

On our way out we decided to swing by the Pearl Market even though it was closed because we could see it in the distance. As it turned out, our guide was wrong. We actually had thirty minutes or so to look around inside the market because it closed at 6pm, not 4. It was overflowing with people. As you walk by, the vendors yell at you. “Lady, Lady, you want purse? Girl, look, wallets! Lady, Lady, Lady!” It was certainly an experience.

Next we walked over to the Temple of Heaven. It was built in 1420 and it was the Ming and Qing emperors’ personal place of worship (we weren’t far from the Forbidden City). We were too late to go inside the Temple, but we were still able to walk around the huge park surrounding it. The park itself was really cool and we met three girls who are taking a year off of college to teach English in China. They were visiting Beijing for the holidays and we chatted with them for a while. Inside (and outside) the park everyone seemed to be selling these weird little hackysack things. They almost look like badminton birdies, but they have brightly colored feathers and they’re heavier. You’re supposed to kick them around to each other, which didn’t seem that unusual until we witnessed them in action in the park. Groups of 6 or 7 people were standing in circles playing an intense game of kick the weird feather thing and they were REALLY good.  The funniest part was that they weren’t young at all. Some of the groups had people who looked as old as 50 and they were lunging and jerking around to kick the birdie thing. I have pictures. It was cool. Then we bought a birdie thing and we sucked at it. American fail.

After it got dark we went back to the hotel, showered and went out to find a place to eat. After a couple weeks of eating Asian food all day we were really in the mood for a pizza or a cheeseburger, so we found a sketchy looking place called Big Pizza. This place is on the second floor of a building up some gross back stairs, but once you get inside it’s awesome. It was 49 (about 7 bucks) for an all you can eat buffet, which we assumed would just be pizza. Wrong. Big Pizza had EVERYTHING! (Nicole, you would have loved it). They had tons of pizza, chicken nuggets, salad, wings, fries, popcorn chicken, slushies, pop, beer and even soft serve ice cream (plus about a million things I didn’t eat). Let’s just say that we got our money’s worth.

Big Pizza closed at 9:30, so we headed back to the hotel and met up with a bunch of other people heading out to Bar Street. There aren’t too many bars in Beijing because people tend to drink less and drink in restaurants, but there is Bar Street. There were a few places with live music, which was nice and we bar hopped for a while, but then we found a sweet place packed full of SASers and locals. Everyone was dancing and there was a strobe light, which always make me a more confident dancer because I know people can’t tell quite as easily how awkward I am haha. Good times. Around 1am I dodged peer pressure and took a cab back to the hotel with Mike. A bunch of other people took cabs out to Club Mix. I’m glad I went back and got some sleep. We had to be up early.

Beijing, Day 2

We woke up early, grabbed breakfast at the hotel and took a 10-minute bus ride to Tiananmen Square. I had always picture Tiananmen as a small area, but this place is huge (I think someone said 13 acres… I’ll look it up later). I also didn’t know that it backs right up to the Forbidden City. In China you’re not supposed to talk about the student protests of 1989; the government doesn’t official recognize any memorial of the event. I read that they allowed the news to cover a memorial ceremony for the first time a few years ago, but it was broadcast as a service to commemorate victims of a more recent earthquake instead of all the dead kids. There are cameras EVERYWHERE.

Our tour guide was open about the protests, so we got a few historical tidbits. No one knows exactly where the kid stood to block the tanks, but based on the angle of the pictures Jason (guide) led us to the general area of where it happened. They also don’t know exactly who he was. Most people think he was a 19-year-old college student and after it happened he was dragged away. There are differing stories, however, about who dragged him away: friends to protect him or the police. Either way, most people say that he was killed.

 When I think of Tiananmen I think about the student protests, but to the Chinese the square is a symbol of all political power and action in China and it’s a landmark. They’re very proud of what Tiananmen Square represents; they simply don’t talk about 1989.

Anyways, the mausoleum lf Mao is there, too. It’s friggin huge. There’s also a big red gate with a gigantic portrait of the chairman. We walked through the square to the Forbidden City, which was cooler. The Forbidden City was the home of the last 28 emperors and they call it a city instead of a palace because it’s as big as a city. There are 1,000 buildings for everything from judicial proceedings to housing for the imperial concubines. Each emperor had a different number of concubines. The last emperor (circa first half of the 20th century) had two; an earlier dude had 3,000. We couldn’t go inside most of the buildings, but we did get to see the throne and a couple other ceremonial buildings. Also, every section was separated by a threshold, which we learned earlier, is meaningful. If you’re a girl, you have to step over with your right foot first and you can’t step on the threshold because it’s ridiculously bad luck. Also, the higher the threshold, the wealthier/more powerful the people in the home are; there are some obnoxiously high thresholds.

After the Forbidden City we walked a bit to meet up with our trishaws, which were going to take us to lunch. We turned a corner and there were fifty of these things lined up! Nick and I rode together. You just sit in the back and put a blanket over your lap while the driver hops on his bicycle and takes you down all these winding back alleys that the bus could never dream of fitting through. A vendor trying to sell us stuff jumped on his own bike and rode next to us trying to bargain.

The drivers dropped us off and we were divided into groups based on the size of the houses we were trying to fit into. Our group was shown to a small door flanked by two black and yellow birds in decorated cages. They can talk and they have the strangest voices; I took a video of them. The house belonged to a middle-aged woman and was surprisingly comfortable on the inside in comparison to the location. She showed us into the back room and taught us how to roll out the dumpling dough and fold it up. Then we ate and it was definitely one of the most delicious meals of the trip!

After lunch we took the trishaws back to the buses and jetted over to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Birds Nest and Water Cube! It was amazing to see the two buildings and think of the incredible things that happened there. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. Wow. We didn’t get to go inside the water cube because it’s being renovated, but we did get inside the birds nest. They’ve made the entire inside into a winter park. They have tubing and sledding and skiing and ice skating.

We had a little time to wander and then we headed over to the Yuan Hou Silk Factory. It was advertised as a tour of the factory and it started out pretty well. The tour, however, only lasted 10 minutes and was more of a sales pitch because then they led us into a store and that was the end of it… Lame. It was the only let down of the entire trip, so to make up for it they bussed us over to the Pearl Market and let us spend an hour.

We had to be back at the hotel by 6pm to leave for dinner. We went to a nice restaurant for Peking duck, which ended up being great. After dinner a lot of people went out, but I was exhausted, so I stayed in and watched a movie with my roommate.

I’ll post about the next two days later (including the Great Wall!).

Love,

Molly