Beijing 3rd Day

Another 7AM wake up call, this time to go to Tiananmen Square, also worth it, especially looking forward to the nap on the train ride home.

Tiananmen Square - luckily no tanks, but thousands of people still. The tunnels that go under the roads that they use a lot of the time instead of bridges, (which is great because they are nice and cool) are all over the square and lead to the Forbidden Palace. Both have security checks to get into them.

Kris found this t-shirt of Mao eating a cheeseburger outside McDonald's, I got the ObaMao t-shirt.

The Forbidden Palace - More white jade than I ever thought existed and all of it carved into animals or bridges or stairs.

Tea testing, the black tea was probably my favorite, but we also tried white, jasmine, pu-erh and Oolong or Black Dragon tea.

Kris holding up the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, because were tourists, and that's what tourists do.

Standing on the Heart of Heaven at the Temple of Heaven, where the Emperors once stood to pray for favorable weather.

Beijing 2nd Day

It turns out it is much easier to wake up at 7AM when you know that you are going to go see the Great Wall of China. We went to Badaling, the most visited part of the Great Wall, just north of Beijing.

There were almost equal amounts of Chinese and tourists climbing the wall.

The wall didn't see to be guarding much more than empty hills, there wasn't a bad view anywhere.

A long way to the top, and when you're almost there, what do you find? A tourist store. I don't envy those shop proprietors having to climb the entire wall every morning just to go to work.

After the Great Wall, it was off to the other major tourist site outside the city, The Summer Palace.

A picture within a picture, the entire lake was dug out and now forms the hill that the summer palace is built upon.

Chairman Mao said, "He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man," encouraging the populace to visit the Wall, some say to increase national pride, others say to increase revenue.

The Summer Palace, as seen from across the lake on the island where they sent people with no food or water to die. On the plus side, they got to walk across a beautiful bridge to get there.

The Bridge of 17 Arches, because, well, as the tour guide put it: there are 17 arches. Every one of the pillars on the hand rail are carved lions with cubs, with 544 lions across the entire length, all carved from white jade.

Home of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Pangu 7 Star Hotel, the Water Cube, the Broadcast Tower, and the Bird's Nest.

Peking Duck, quite delicious. 

Beijing Walking Street, on Chinese Valentines Day. We took the subway back to the hotel. They are still building the line to the hotel though. They are going to add many miles of track to the Beijing subway system. They are constantly building in China, always expanding. And since this is part of their 5 year plan, its not just talk. They haven't missed anything on any of their plans yet.

Beijing 1st Day

Kris and I spent this past weekend in Beijing to tour the city. You are supposed to have four days to get cover the whole city, but I think we did a pretty good job in three.

We took the bullet train on Friday morning and so instead of the 13 hours it would take by normal train, we were able to make the trip in 5, arriving at 4PM. We then had to get to our hotel, and so without further ado, we proceeded into the subways. 

They are trying to get a subway system up in Suzhou, but it is still a work in progress, so this was the first time we used the subways to get around on our own.

First stop: The Capitol Library. Quite large and impressive, and probably even more so when the fountain right here is on. It was only 2 blocks from our hotel.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to get in much farther than this, but it was still interesting and definitely worth it.

After we checked in we headed over to Tian Tin Park, where we were able to watch a little Tai Chi Sword Dancing, and wander around looking at the old temple there and enjoy the fresh air. Beijing's air is more polluted than Suzhou's, but I stopped noticing Suzhou's a few weeks back. I would hate to have to ever get accustomed to that bad of air quality.

We ended the night at a local night BBQ that they had set up for just this one night. It was delicious.

Happy 21st, Kris

In China, they consider babies to be one years old on the day they are born, and so technically this was Kris's 22nd birthday, but they only put 21 candles on the cake.

After Frank's party, the cake to the face did not come as such a surprise.

About 5 minutes after the party and I thought all the cake was gone, Kris came by...

His first drink. Gan Bei! (Cheers!)

Dumplings

On Saturday we all went to one of the companies buyers houses to make dumplings and then out to KTV as it was his birthday.

Everyone helped make a few, and it turns out that Jevous is a pro dumpling maker, so I learned from him and Lilian, who made the stuff for inside.

When it came right down to it, mine looked the same as everyone else's did, so I must have been doing it right. Kris, however, says that he is not very hands on, but still managed to make two that didn't fall apart.

Lunch time, and only the guys eat apparently. Everyone snacked on the boiled dumplings all afternoon, but then this meal was at 3, and all the guys ate all this. After lunch they fried the dumplings we hadn't eaten yet, and we ate more. After that we went to karaoke, and they brought a cake with for Frank's birthday. What were surprised to learn is that when you have a cake in China, apparently the normal thing to do is smash it in each other's faces. So as cake was being passed around on plates, it was also being passed around on hands and faces. Unfortunately due to the large amount of cake covering my face, hair, hands, and shoulders, I was unable to take any pictures, but I think Kris managed to get one before he went to take a picture of Frank and turned around to receive a face full of cake instead. 

Tiger Hill Pagoda

The most famous pagoda in Suzhou, and known as the leaning tower of China, the Tiger Hill Pagoda has been one of the places we have wanted to visit since we got here. Juliana was touring Suzhou this weekend after I had gone and toured Shanghai with her.

Everything was going well until about 2 minutes before we got there, when the sunny skies clouded over and poured. Ah well, so much for plans. We toured the pagoda wetly.

The tower is much older than, taller than, and actually leans out further than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 

Buses

Apparently the proxy server that allows us to access such sights as Facebook and Blogger was down last week, so here is the wonderful backlog of posts.

The buses in Suzhou are only 1 yuan for a non air conditioned bus and 2 for AC. So $0.15 or $0.30 but you get what you pay for. The bus drivers don't seem to know what the clutch is for, they always seem to think they have the right of way, so cars have to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting them, and there is no personal space. But still an effective way to get across town. At least until they get their subway/light rail system online.