We woke up at 0540 to a smoggy sunrise with the Victory Gate illuminated from our Hotel. We were able to see the morning bicycle traffic begin (I know, bear with me, there really are a LOT of bikes here, modified to fit every need you can imagine). Our itinerary for the day was:
0800 Breakfast (Dawn was able to ask for tea in Chinese) at the hotel, blog update, local shopping for water and tried to get postage stamps.
1000 Met with our guide Marsha and started a very full day, going to the Temple of Heaven first. Tina made friends with some folks, exchanged names, candy, and some post cards of the Northwest. She drew quite a crowd. All but one child was eager to interact with us. She was leery of taking the candy but definitely wanted the post card...Her mama must have taught her well not to take candy from strangers..
There are a lot of performers here and we met a woman who played a flute beutifully. At the end, we exchanged names with her and she tried out here very bad English on us, while we tried our our very bad Chinese on her. Not so different after all!
Lunch was at an ethnic restaraunt, served family style. VERY yummy food, served with dancing performances. We even got drug up on stage to dance with them! The beer was not microbrew but it went well with the lunch! Tina even tried fish, duck and shrimp...its amazing the things she has been willing to try.
Then we went to a government silk factory. Very interesting, and some serious, persistent saleswomen! Don't let that demure exterior fool you!
Next was Tianneman Square/Imperial Palace/Forbidden City. I have seen video and read about this site many times but it was still shocking how vast this complex is. It is like the Energizer bunny, it just keeps going and going. You could spend days there and never see all of it.
When we left from there we went to a Tea House (Tina's request) where we got a tea ceremoney from the "tea lady". Very intertaining and the tea was excellent! Much like the Silk factory regarding the saleswomen though!
By the time we got back to the Hotel we were ready to crash. No jet lag until we quit moving and then BAM! That's why now I'm WIDE awake at 0430 local time working on pictures and the blog!
Random synaptic firings...
1. The play of new and old is incredible here, ancient sites next to torn down buildings, next to the great new architecture for the Olympics.
2. Lots of smog, you can actually feel it on your skin and in your eyes.
3. We are definitely the ones in the fishbowl here, but people seem willing to interact with poor speaking foreign "big noses", and put up with our attempts to communicate.
4. In speaking with our guide about daily life in China, we are reminded of just how good we have it, in so many little ways, in the U.S.
More later....
Oh yes, and one more thing we had an experience with the squatty potty and as Dawn says, the "mystery moisture" on the floor...we'll save that one for later...Let's just say we had a great belly laugh on that one....
1 comment:
I can't believe you are there! Whoo Hoo! Enjoy every second!
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