Day two of Beijing: time to really practice our listening skills. We tried some various types of fried eggs, rice soup, greenery, and filled baozi (steamed buns) for breakfast, wandered along the quite disgusting 
looking river (but the riverbanks lined with willows are gorgeous!) into an alleyway, which took us through a gas station, which led us to a tour bus just for us. Our drive to another part of the gigantic city was narrated by a tour guide who didn't speak English, so as we approached Tiananmen and the Forbidden City, we tried our best to pick up bits and pieces about the history of these places. What I found interesting was that people had to wear different colors based on their relationship to the emperor (very Confucian - strict determination of relationships). We passed by Beijing's oldest train station, and then headed to more of Beijing's historic sites, the first being Tiananmen Square.
Looking at Tiananmen Square today and trying to place myself in the scene of twenty years ago was impossible. To even get to the square, you have to basically tunnel down under a wall and come back up inside the square itself. Tourists galore, we didn't stick out, and the various traffic police, people selling wares, and guards who did speak to us were surprised we could semi-function in Mandarin. Even with the 
large numbers milling about, many with their umbrellas to ward off the beaming sun, admiring the huge flashing screens and the various statues strewn about, I can now see how thousands of protesting college students crammed in here and camped out for weeks while their conflicted government debated endlessly over how to deal with the situation. The closer we got to the famed Mao sign, the denser the crowds became. Thankfully even if we stopped to take pictures, we could reunite with our group by looking out for the tiny blue flag waving in the air. Mao's mark on the Forbidden City (Gugong) is behind us as I pose with my roomie, Kellianne, and then my friend, James.
What I didn't realize beforehand is that Tiananmen is connected to the Forbidden City, the place where the emperor went to relax in his day. The whole concept of China doing everything on a grand scale? This palace is a perfect example. Our tour guide told us that there were so many houses for family, servants, and guests attached to the emperor's quarters that if a child slept in different house every night of his or her life, if would take them 28 years to sleep in every one! After tunneling once more, we reached the most crowded section: everybody funneling into the Forbidden City. 
Going under the giant arch, we rubbed the giant gold knobs covering the huge scarlet doors for good luck like I learned in Karate Kid. We weren't the only ones being that silly - real people were touching them for luck too!
Emily and I also picked out the perfect vendor out of the maybe twenty who had shouted "Yi kuai yi kuai yi kuai!" at us from whom to buy a what was apparently a banana flavored popsicle. Yi kuai is about 15 cents - for a thirst quencher, not bad!
One of the huge palace courtyards. As I looked back at all my pictures of the intricate architecture, I feel kind of sad about it, but as we went through courtyard after courtyard of huge pavilions, everything seemed to look the same...
A giant virtually open space? Quite a rare occurrence in China!
Another thing I found really cool was that it wasn't until the Qing Dynasty (the last dynasty before the Republic of China) that the emperor started bringing in princesses from outside the palace to choose his empress. This complex is what I think are the princesses' quarter, what our guide called "a place of politics" because marriage was still used as a tool for political strength.
We kept meandering through the various hallways and archways to peek into some of the preserved ancient rooms and were also politely reminded to "no scratch" the "protected relics." We then found ourselves in a garden with some really awesome rocks!
After resting for a few in the excellent shade, we made a few zhongguo pengyou (Chinese friends) who wanted pictures with the white people! The guys were already taking pictures with this Chinese woman when we found them, so I tried to sneak a photo of them and she waved me over. After much protest, I jumped in with them, and then she squeezed me tight but ushered the guys out of the photo so she could have one with just me!
Shifu (masters) selling their various snacks and knickknacks lined the sidewalks as we exited, and a couple of our Dragon Riders stopped to barter on the way to our bus. Our group crossed the street and turned down another, and upon reaching the bus, we realized we were missing three! It took about twenty minutes of standing around, a few phone calls, and our tour guide running back to that sidewalk, but our students were found. All for a few bites of a granola bar creation!
Then we all headed out for lunch as a large group, which definitely received a few stares. The restaurant gave us our own room, which was pretty cool, but as our two large tables flipped through the large picture menus, we just started asking the waiter what he recommended. That just made things more complicated as he could understand us, but we couldn’t understand his thick accent! So we just started pointing at things and ended up with some jiaozi (dumplings), cooked veggies, soups, noodles and meat, plus cute individual-sized bowls of rice. I really enjoy the family-style eating, as all of the dishes go around the table on what basically is a giant lazy susan. What a messy situation, but still some excellent food!
We then reunited with our tour guide, and headed to Bei Hai, which is apparently a famous park with Buddhist temples. Outside was a little convenience store selling some unexpected items: ornament-sized globes filled with water and tiny fishes or turtles! Not the most humane concept ever.
Inside the park, Emily and I used a public restroom for the first time – an experience in itself! We definitely needed our own toilet paper… Unfortunately, we could not take pictures inside the Buddhist temple, but seeing three huge Buddha statues surrounded by beautiful cloth draped from the high ceilings was lovely. The group had free time to explore the park, so she and I followed some random paths and eventually found some of the others. A couple of the boys in our group paid the fee to dress up in cool outfits and take pictures, and apparently some of that store’s xiaojie (young women) found it quite amusing to see a huge, blonde young man in Chinese traditional dress.
We rested a little in that peaceful park, and then our bus took us to our last destination of the day: Silk Street, which, strangely, is actually basically a gigantic indoor market. Four floors of insanity. If you can imagine a level of a huge department store, instead of being devoted to one store like Macy’s, filled with myriad stalls of basically the same category. For example, one of the floors was clothing, so as we foreigners squeezed through the tiny aisles between stalls, we were shouted at from various directions in many efforts to trade our yuan for shoes, athletic clothing, Chinese traditional clothes, trench coats, etc. Taojia huanjia was the name of the game, AKA asking the stall staff to name their price for an item you’re eyeing, hopefully cutting the price by about 80% and then hoping you end up somewhere close to that. I wanted to pause and take pictures of this incredible experience, but you couldn’t help but speed past all the stalls you didn’t want to get roped into! I got about eight compliments on my hat, received suggestions to buy items for my family, husband, nan pengyou (boyfriend), and even was asked if I wanted a Chinese boy. No thanks! 
But I did end up finding a pretty cool Nike athletic shirt that would normally cost about $40 in the US and bartered it down to about $11! I made off with a couple other cute things to cross of my “buy in China” list, including two really pretty Chinese traditional style paintings. The artist worked right in front of us (though Emily and I bought already completed paintings), so after our purchases I got to snap a photo of him. Other random things I observed:
- Compared to US large cities (the ones I've been to at least), there are a lot more trees in Beijing than I expected
- There is literally always construction somewhere - always trying to get better
- Red Bull's caption translated from Chinese is "vitamin functional drink"
- Kellianne and I were trying to figure this out, but we were wondering why the city as a whole didn't really give off a new, fresh, and exciting feeling like we've experienced in other cities. We came to the realization that there are extremely new buildings but also extremely old buildings, piles of demolished whatever lying around, etc. There's both new and old but nothing really in between, as if the semi-new is not maintained, the old isn't worth renovating but worth destroying.
For our dinner for our last night in Beijing, Rob took a bunch of us to a place he liked when he did a summer Chinese language program in Beijing. This restaurant, once we found it (we got a few stares after getting turned around a couple times in random dark neighborhood streets), specialized in Muslim Chinese and Tibetan food, so in addition to some of the more familiar dishes, we tried chuars – huge skewers of meat. The ones Rob ordered were nice and soft lamb that you just bite off all barbarian-like! Yum. A pretty chill night after dinner and some packing because we set of for Tianjin tomorrow!
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