Beijing

Our first afternoon in Beijing we spent shopping at the Pearl Market for copy-cat Toms and other various items.

Our first morning was spent at Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Hutongs.
Day two was the Great Wall of China and The Sacred Way.
Day three was the Temple of Heaven and The Summer Palace.

Because I have blogged about these places before, I have just put all the good pictures in a slideshow. To see more about my previous trip to Beijing, see these posts.



We also had a few adventures in Xiamen. Those are next.

Beijing Part 7 - The Forbidden City

This is best done with a .... slideshow. Enjoy.

Beijing Part 6 - Tian An Men Square

*So I wrote a great post about this last week, scheduled it to publish and then blogger had a brain fart. It was supposed to publish four posts I had written over the last week. Today when I went to force publish this one, the whole thing had disappeared. Blogger - don't fail me now. I don't want to have to leave you.

Have any of you ever seen the Simpsons episode where they go to China with Selma to get a baby and they go to Tian An Men Square? 

It was totally like that. Here is what really happened.

 This is their National Museum. You have to have your passport to get in. Odd.

 That is a government building.

So Mao Zedong rose to power on the ideas of equality. He joined the war efforts in 1911 that ended Empirical China. Then he joined the beginnings of the Communist Party in 1921, during the rule of the Kuomintang. Then he lead the Communists to power in the 1940s, succeeding in establishing the the Communist Rule in 1949. Then the Cultural Revolution that was the end of so much of China's heritage. So then, when Mao dies, after he's cut down the emperors, warlords and destroyed treasures, he gets memorialized in this giant mausoleum. Hypocrite.

 Some sort of patriotic mumbo jumbo about establishing the communists as rulers.

 The square.

 It was warm and sunny, but in a polluted air sort of way.

The infamous watcher of all the goes on.

Next post: The Forbidden City.

Beijing Part 5 - Duck

That's right. Duck. Worth it's own post. We had Peking Duck in the oldest restaurant in Beijing for lunch after we left the Temple of Heaven. I want to say it was amazing, but I just didn't love the taste.

This is the street the restaurant is on.

 An old building.

 The sign at the restaurant. They are doing a lot of reconstruction outside the entrance.

Cutting our duck.

 The hungry crew.

 You get pancakes that you put the duck with sauce and garlic inside. One of the "best" parts is the deep fried skin with sugar on it. It was okay, but pretty fatty. I can say now that Peking duck is not my favorite food.

Interesting fact: The Chinese now call it Beijing Duck. The capital used to be called Peking, thus Peking Duck. But now that the capital is called Beijing, they changed the name to Beijing Duck. If you ask them about Peking Duck, they ask you what you are talking about.

Next up: Tian An Men Square. Where nothing happened.
No really. That's what the Simpsons told me.

Beijing Part 4 - The Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven is a Buddhist temple that has had a long history of being rebuilt.

Mostly, it's just pretty. There is a huge park surrounding it. Every morning it's packed full of people, mostly retired age, exercising and dancing. It's awesome. The you have people singing amateur opera, gambling, and playing bridge.

Here's a short clip of the various things we saw.



Here are the buildings we saw there.

 Doing their exercises with poles.

 Tai qi.

 One of the walkways.

 Temple of Heaven

 The patterns.

 The colors were the most beautiful blues and greens. I think they are my sister's favorite colors.

 The Beijing smog. It's like a really bad Utah inversion, but it never goes away.

 Proof we were there.

 Ceiling patterns.

 My sister-in-law played this game with this guy. We bought a set. It's kind of like lacrosse but with a sweeping motion and you stand pretty close together. The really good people do it with two paddles each and use some of the Tai Qi moves to transfer the ball. It was cool.

 A blue ceramic dragon.

 Carved posts around where a temple use to stand.

Those brushes are used to do Hanzi (the chinese characters) with water on the ground. This girl was playing with her grandpa's brushes. It was cute. It's a fine are to be able to write these characters well. We used to have something like this in the states. It was called penmanship. But that's a lost art.

And then we have  - Singing for Mao. We heard this music from 30 yards away. A huge group of people making an ipromptu choir. Their song was something about the greatness of Chairman Mao.
Creepy.

Beijing Part 3 - Summer Palace

The Summer Palace was probably my favorite place.

It has a large lake in the center. There are a bunch of lower buildings and garden spaces. Then we walked up tons of stairs to the Temple (the large round pagoda) and around the gardens behind. The Emperor created a smaller version of a famous city, Suzhou, just south of Shanghai. There is a Tibetan style temple, among other buildings. After walking the grounds all over the mountain, we walked down and then rode a small boat across part of the lake to a man made island in the center, with a bridge to the exit gate. It was beautiful. I will be going back this summer and I am very much looking forward to it. Except the heat. I don't like the idea of the heat. Instead of posting all the pictures individually, here is a slide show.

Beijing Part 2 - Ming Tomb.

The Ming Tomb. All I can say about this one is "meh."

The saddest part of all is that once it was opened for excavation, the political turmoil and lack of knowledge meant the destruction and decomposition of most of what was in the tomb. During the Cultural Revolution the main archaeologist was targeted and died in jail. The bodies of the Emporer and his Empresses were taken out, desecrated, and "denounced." It was awful.

Mao and his crazies destroyed so many of China's historical treasures. There is currently a stance of no excavation unless to rescue things from further damage. Hopefully in the future China will have the experienced people and resources necessary to deal with their remaining treasures.

It was large and mostly empty. A small museum had a few of it's treasures and some replicas. 

 

 People were throwing money on the thrones that were outside the room with the tombs.

The tombs. The largest three are the Emperor and his two Empresses.

 Money on the tombs.

 A small artifact behind a magnifying glass.

A turquoise gilded crown.

It was okay, but I don't need to go there again.