Beijing
So lets see where to begin…I went to Beijing with 5 other students from BGSU during our Easter break. Dr. Bennion, a Bowling Green professor, met us their and planned two days of tours for the group and a meeting with the American Embassy. Three of us opted to take an approximately 3 hour flight, and the other three chose to take the train for about 25 hours. My group included Melissa, Liana, and myself. To insert an interesting point, the stewardesses came around and collected all foreign newspapers before we landed, because they are not permitted in China.
Now for some photos:
Outside the forbidden city--that mote is 3,800 meter long!
Scorpions and seahorses on a stick…the scorpions were still squirming. The guy would cook them up fresh for those interested. No thanks!
Beijing at night
The Forbidden City
The Forbidden City with Mao Zedong picture…facing Tiananmen square.
Tiananmen Square
Temple of Heaven
Andrew and some ladies that wanted their picture with him. This happened sooo many times! People who probably hadn’t seen many westerners wanted pictures with us. Some even took our pics while we were weren’t looking. It was crazy.
We took a tour of a Cloisonne Pot factory, which I really enjoyed. Cloisonné, an ancient metalworking technique, is a multi-step enamel process used to produce jewelry, vases, and other decorative items. (from Wikipedia, of course :)
All of us and The Great Wall of China!! We were pretty excited.
That was 454 steps, in case you were wondering :D
Our fancy restaurant dinner on Thursday. Peking Duck with Liana’s roommate, Sophie, and her mother. They live in Beijing and very generously took us all out to eat and taught us about all the dishes on the table. Sophie’s dad couldn’t make it due to work, but it was great meeting her mom (who doesn’t speak English) and a few of her friends.
The Summer Place. It is a huge garden/lake place where the emperor would retreat in the summer. Absolutely gorgeous.
Well that’s it for the pictures. I can’t do the trip justice with a blog entry of course, but it at least shows a bit of the experience. We had great, clear weather for sightseeing, which Jamie said is not usually the case. One place I didn’t get a picture of was the silk factory we toured. It was interesting seeing how silk is made, starting with the silk worm, and moving through a series of phases. Did you know that the little strand of silk on one cocoon can stretch longer than a mile!
It was strange not having a working cell phone and Internet connection. For some reason calls to the US didn’t go through, even on Melissa’s calling card. I definitely realized how much I like being able to contact those I care for, and it was a long time without talking to my mom. :)We managed to get to an internet café to check our emails and let our parents know we had arrived safely, so we all felt a little better after that. It only cost 3 RMB for an hour! That’s about 44 pennies US$. For a little info, the Chinese Yuan is also known as Yuans, and RMB. It was weird getting “change” in bill form. For instance, if you pay with a ten you might get 2 fives back. The fives are smaller in size, and represent half a yuan, but it definitely had me confused at first, especially because coins are used too.
It was neat being able to recognize that the language is different in the Mainland than in HK. Granted, I still have no idea what is being said, but I could recognize that it sounded a bit different. HK has 2 official languages, English being one of them, so it's pretty easy to get around. However, in China, that is not the case. All of us felt a little more challenged than usual in the communication department. While traveling back to HK, we were excited to return to a place where we feel comfortable...or at least familiar.
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