Island Time: Beijing Day 2: walking, walking, walking....

Oh, my Buddha, how many miles can we do in one day?

The answer is about 10. But it felt like 50.

Daniel and Katey outside of the school

The first real day of sit seeing in China began at about 9 am after breakfast and a short bus ride into town. We stepped off the bus across the street from Tiananmen square to visit Qianmen Foreign Language School. The school year was about up for these students, but we were lucky enough to be able to visit and check out a classroom. Most students were getting ready for a four day period of rest before major exams and a national holiday. We handed out gifts and took a few minutes to talk to the students.

Afterwards we walked across the street to Tiananmen square. It's huge. It's busy. It's overwhelming. There are people everywhere. Most of them are tourists just like us--and they delighted on taking pictures of the laowei--the white people (laowei roughly translates to "big nose.") As you head across the streets and through the underground crossings, you come across security. The Chinese government wants to check your bags---if you are Chinese. However, since we are in a tour group, we can just glide on through. Our city guide, Katey, asked on the bus to refrain from asking about the incident in 1989 while we were out in the square. With the presence of Chinese soldiers, this was very easy to do.

And then we were also bombarded with street vendors--both of the illegal and legal kind. If you want to buy a cheap watch or some post cards, you can haggle with the peddlers. We were advised to not buy from these guys at all. To peddle your wares on the street, you must have a government issued license and these guys didn't of course. But I did not get taken advantage of today.

Chairman Mao's portrait still hangs above the temple of peace in the square (as well as his corpse that is still in a mausoleum for spectators.) We did not visit the mausoleum, but there were many lined up to pay homage to the former leader. Many people still believe he was a great man and helped China progress.

Across a major street is the entrance to the Forbidden City, called as such because when the emperor lived there, no commoners were allowed in. We began the long walk through the city which would take us a couple of hours. The city is HUGE. It has exactly 99,999.5 rooms. If you watch the movie The Last Emperor, which was filmed here, you will see all you need. I filmed a few 360’s. You can check them out here.

So after braving the heat (sucked down 3 twenty ounce water bottles) we boarded the bus for lunch. As it turned out, I traveled over 8 thousand miles to eat at a KFC. What???

Back on the bus to head out to the emperor’s summer palace. Our tour guide tried to sweet talk us on this one and say that there wouldn’t be as much walking because we were going to take a boat out. Well, he was right--we did take a boat out, and then proceeded to walk back. Maybe tonight is when I really need that reflexology. But we did see some beautiful art and a fantastic lotus field.

Somewhere also planted in this day was some pearl shopping at Longing Pearl Company. This place is owned by the Chinese Government so they guarantee their pearls. They also did a pearl demonstration which was way cool.

After all that walking, we needed some food! So we headed to a restaurant somewhere in the city for our Peking Duck dinner. I have no idea where we were, but I did manage to take a picture of the entrance of the restaurant. Notice the duck in front.