My Month Long Travels Part 10

  I returned back to Beijing to meet up with a friend visiting from the United States (home). I was also ready to see some well known Chinese landmarks.

 The first place we headed the day after airport pick up was the Tiananmen Square to view the lovely portrait of Mao ZeDong. It is well know in western history because of the tragic events that have occurred here, apparently it is not as well know in Chinese history. If you do not know who Mao is you can see a picture of him below. Also, he was the leader of China following World War II. You can find people who think he was a great leader and helped his country and you can find those who lay many atrocities at his feet.

  After viewing Mao we headed into the Forbidden City, which is not what the Chinese refer to it as, they call it the 'Palace Museum.' When I was telling English speaking Chinese individual that I was going to the 'forbidden city' they gave me strange looks followed by an 'oh' of understand when I explained further. It would be strange hearing what foreigners call your countries major attractions. The Forbidden City is located just behind the square. It was once the palace of the Chinese Emperor and contains many, many buildings. We wondered around for about four hours and did not see all there was to see. 

  The passageway below is the center gate/tunnel into the palace. There are two slightly smaller entrances on either side (see second picture). The center entrance was reserved exclusively for the emperor, the only other person who was able to pass through that door was the future empress on her wedding day. Unfortunately we were not able to pass, I did try but a guard stopped me. 

   This building was the main building in the palace complex. It was where the Emperor lived and conducted his business. Surrounded by a huge stone courtyard, it did not look very homey to me. Would not suggest living there. Surrounding this huge courtyard were then many, many buildings making the entire palace much larger. These buildings were actually a collection of different complexes or palaces that were connected together around the main Palace. In these buildings lived others of the royal family and court, from eunuchs to concubines from consorts to servants.

   The throne room or I believe it is.

   The decoration in all the buildings were really impressive. The details were intense. You can see that from the picture of the ceiling below.

   This is the royal wedding chamber. The character that you see draw on the wall is that character that you will see at all Chinese weddings today, especially on the wedding invitations.

   Once you left the main courtyard you wondered through passages like the one below from complex to complex within the Forbidden City. While you can wonder without a map to the point of confusion everything was built in a specific order and for a specific reason.

   From outside the Palace, you can see the moat that goes around it.

  The next day we meet up with a friend of mine who lives in Beijing and all headed out to a section of the Great Wall called Badaling. Since the wall is so long there are many different section you can see, the main tourist ones have been rebuilt but you can still go to sections of that wall that are essentially rubble. During different periods in Chinese history stones from the Great Wall have been scavenged for other building projects. 

  It was a very windy day which did not make the climb any easier. I say climb for a reason because at some places it was as if I was climbing up a wall. I sat down and scooted for some of the sections while I had to lean forward using my hand to get up other parts. It was, without a doubt, my workout for the day.

   You can see the steepness of the wall in greater detail in the the next two pictures.

   That evening we had dinner with my friend, his girlfriend and his father. They took us to a restaurant were we orders a dishes which they highly recommended: mashed potatoes with blueberries. It was really, really good.

  What you see in the following pictures is a stick of fruit covered in sugar. I had previously talked about this when I went to Harbin, but this one was actually good. As a note, the fruit that you see on the very top is a tomato which is eaten more as a the fruit it truly is instead of the vegetable that we make it in America.

  That evening we went out for Peking Duck, the specialty of Beijing. If you go to Beijing and do not try this you have failed as a tourist, or you just do not like duck. Chinese people will keep telling you to try it. It is actually very good and there are several different way to eat it: in a wrap, in a soup, dipped in sugar, and in a roll. I was able to meet up with my friend from the Netherlands that I meet in Datong. She found a place that had good reviews and although it was pricey it was delicious. She is traveling around Asia right now and takes some amazing pictures, better than mine, if you want to you can take a look at them, here is the link: http://moniquejoris.com/tagged/asia.  She puts them up as postcards so they are just glimpses of Asia, the ones for Beijing are around her 50th postcard.

  The following day we did nothing. It was the eve of the Chinese New Year so we relaxed and watched movies all day. We went to bed that night and were woken up around 11:30 that night by the sound of fireworks going off all around the city including right outside our building. We were on the 20-something floor therefore we had a great view of the fireworks from all around the city. I, for some silly reason, had forgotten how much the Chinese love to set off fireworks on holidays and special occasion and was wondering what was going on until I remembered what day it was. 

   The next day we went to the Beijing Zoo to see Pandas! They are quite lazy animals.

   The next day we went to the Temple of Heaven. I was told that it is somewhat of a tradition to go to a temple after New Years, so we went, along with many, many other Chinese.

   The Temple complex was quite large and laid out like a park. We were able to wonder around enjoying the nature.

   Here are some pictures I took while wondering around a touristy part of Beijing.

  The Bird's Nest Stadium that China build for the 2008 Olympics. 

   The last day in Beijing we went to an Art District of Beijing called 789 Art Zone. It is the artsy part of town and several small art museums are located there. When we went it had an abandoned feel to it with not many people around. Guessing it was due to the Chinese holiday. The entire area was covered in graffiti, except the shops. Here were a few I thought were neat, strange or funny.

   This one made me laugh, just the wording and location.

After the Art District we headed to catch our plane to Seoul, South Korea.

My Month Long Travels Part 9

  At the Harbin train station I ended up meeting with some college students that were returning to Beijing after taking a trip together. They were gone for several days and between the four of them (two guys and two girls) they had one suitcase and three backpacks. I was impressed. They started talking to me because . . . wait for it . . . I was white and therefore I must know English. If you have not noticed you must realize that me being white causes people to want to talk to me or just stare at me. It can be fun but it can also be really annoying because the only reason people want to interact with you is due to your skin color and the physical features of your face. 

  Well these college students were really nice and took it upon themselves to make sure I got on the train. They then rearranged where they were sitting and I was sitting so we could sit together and talk. It was the most enjoyable slow train ride I had taken on my trip. The guy who sold things on the slow train (kinda similar to what you would see on late night TV commercials) started to joke with us and asked me if I thought he was handsome, of which I assured him that he was, in Mandarin. I got a kick out of what the college students brought with them on the train. They had packed a bottle of wine, a bottle of baijiu (strong Chinese drink with alcohol content of upwards around 45% and higher), and different types of meat and pigeon eggs. I told them they know how to take the slow train, at which they agreed that they did. 

  After the 11 hour return trip to Beijing I was invited out to lunch by two of the four college students, the other two wanted to go to sleep. So they took me out to a Korean Hot Pot. See the picture below for the food.

  My friend I was meeting up with to head to Datong kindly let me use the shower at her hotel room so I could get the slow train stink off me and after my hot pot meal with my new Chinese friends she and I wondered around Beijing. Our train left at 2 the following morning so we did not book any hotels and just hung out at the train station until it left. 

  During our wonderings I came upon my first every McDonald's drive through in China. They are just not really a thing here. 

  We also saw a monkey outside of a foreign language bookstore. I was proud of the fact that I was able to leave the bookstore with only two books!!

  This is of our wait in the train station. It was my friends first every experience taking the slow train so it was fun for me. There is quite a difference between the two train experiences. I actually enjoy the slow train but it is certainly not an experience for everyone. After this trip to Datong my friend decided that she would be taking the fast train from then on.

  We arrived in Datong and found our hostel. It was her first hostel experience as well and the hostel in Datong was a really great one. There were quite a few foreigners as well. We ended up making friends with a woman from France and one from the Netherlands, there was also a French chef who came to learn to cook Chinese food.

  What you are viewing below is the best food I have eaten in China. Please give it the respectful glance it deserves as its statue as my favorite dish. This is something that I dream about eating again. It is just too bad that it exists at least an entire days journey from Changzhou.

  After a day of relaxing I headed to the Datong Grottoes with my friend and my new French friend. At the Grottoes there was a temple and then grottoes themselves.

  The entrance.

The next few pictures are of the temple.

  The next pictures are of the grottoes.

  My two friends.

  The next four pictures are of the inside of the building in the picture above.

  The following day we headed to the city wall and walked along it for a good ways. It was very similar to the wall in Xi'an but this one had cartoon like statues made out of something like silk.

   It also has a plaster of a giant fat man hanging from the wall.

  Looking out from the wall. There was construction being done on buildings inside the wall.

   The other place we went was the dragon wall, which was really old. It contained the nine dragons talked about in Chinese History. I do not understand their means or their role in history but the wall was gorgeous.

   We went back to the noodle place for dinner since it was so amazing. The little boy in the green shirt kept staring at us while we were eating. He was really cute.

   We took the train back to Beijing the next day. I bought a lunch box on the train and this is what it looked like. It was pretty good.