China Day 3

After some sleep, Tuesday came quickly and we started at a run.  We wasted no time getting to see Beijing.  We got on the bus by 8 am and started driving to our first stop.  Along the way, we got to see a bit of the city.  This is a building that was down the street from our hotel:

(It was this hazy the whole time we were there.  We didn't see the sun all week.)

Our first stop was Tiananmen Square.  We didn't have a lot of time so we didn't go into any of the buildings, but we did get to walk through the square.

I was surprised to see two of these large "TV" screens in the middle of the square:

From the square, we went into the Forbidden City.

(Notice the frozen river...it was really cold)

(My brother and our tour guide, Ronald, he was pretty cool)

Two of these lions guarded the gateway, you can tell this one is the female because it's holding the baby.

These pots could be found all over the city.  They were used as a form of fire prevention since all of the buildings were made of wood.  They are all sitting on top of a stone circle so a fire could be built underneath each pot in the winter so the water wouldn't freeze.

Carvings of animals were placed on top of important buildings to protect them.  The more animals, the more important the building.

Entering the living quarters of the city:

This was used in communicating with heaven.  Circles represent heaven and squares represent the earth. Jade was used as it was seen as pure.

These mosaics lined the pathways.  They're over a hundred years old.

We went on a rickshaw ride to get to our lunch location.  We had to go through some ancient hutongs (narrow alleyways) to get there so we couldn't take the bus.

We had a traditional, family-style meal in an old traditional courtyard home.  These are a few of the dishes we sampled.  At this point, I realized that I should have kept the fork I got on the airplane.  I'm ok at using chopsticks, I just can't eat very quickly.  I'm pretty sure I lost some weight on this trip.

After lunch, we went to to the Temple of Heaven.  It was a place the emperor went to communicate with heaven.

This is where the emperor would perform all of the sacrifices, etc.

We went back to the hotel and then decided to check out Beijing.  The building next to ours was the tallest in Beijing with 80 floors.  The top floor had a type of tea room/bar so we were went up there to see the city.  It was way too hazy/cloudy so we couldn't see anything so we came back down.  Michael, Nick and I got directions to a local street market and hopped on the subway.  It was an interesting ride as it was during rush hour.  I didn't have to worry that I couldn't reach the handholds because we were so crammed in there I wouldn't be able to fall over.  It was very exciting.

Some of the food available (oh don't worry, those scorpions are fresh!  So fresh their legs were still moving!)

Right around this time, I was kidnapped by a friendly vendor who practically dragged me into her booth to sell me some paintings.  I did end up buying one that was very pretty.  I bargained her down from 180 yuan to only 50...I probably should have gone for 30.  She then tried to get my brother to give her money to let me go, don't worry I walked away just fine.