Yeah, I hiked the Great Wall today.

The following is a joke that Jonathon told us on the bus at some point in Beijing:

A man who was bad in life died one night and was told he had to go to hell. When he got there, there were two lines. One line had a sign in front of it labeled "Capitalist Hell" while the other had a sign labeled "Communist Hell" and the line for Communist Hell was considerably longer than that for Capitalist Hell. The man started weighing his options and asked God, "What happens to you in Capitalist Hell?" God responded, "You are boiled in hot oil and chopped up into little pieces." The man flinched a bit and then asked, "What happens to you in Communist Hell?" God said, "You are boiled in hot oil and chopped up into little pieces." The man was confused. He asked God, "Why is the line for Communist Hell so much longer than Capitalist Hell if the same torture exists in both?" "Well," God replied, "In Communist Hell they tend to run out of hot oil and knives more frequently."

Maybe it was a "had to be there" moment, but we thought that joke was hilarious. One more: "A person who speaks two languages is called bilingual. A person who speaks three or more languages is called multilingual. A person who speaks only one language is called an American." Now that one is also funny, but also a little sad because it's absolutely true. It made me really want to start taking Spanish again, and to learn other languages as well (though we'll see if I actually follow through with that).

Anyway, our first stop of the morning was Tiananmen Square, which Jonathan explained means "Gate of heavenly peace" (Tian= heaven, an=peace, men=gate). I don't know if I've ever heard anything more ironic. Not that I would have known anything about Tiananmen Square beforehand if I hadn't researched on my own, because like the Vietnam War, it was never covered in my public grammar school or private high school. The real travesty of it, though, is that the 1989 massacre wasn't even discussed in Global Studies either by SAS professors or by the interport lecturer. So the majority of my group walked into the square completely ignorant of what happened there until a few of us filled them in quietly while nervously eyeing the guards standing in place every few hundred feet. (I'm not sure if anything would have actually happened if they had heard us talking about it, but we figured it was best to be quiet about it anyway.) Jonathan also told us that the monument in the middle of the square says something along the lines of our own military oath about fighting against "all enemies, foreign and domestic," and I just couldn't help but think about the new meaning that the term "domestic enemy" took on when I thought about the events that took place right around that monument. It's strange to think that even our soldiers pledge to kill any enemy the government designates as such.

Before I go on, I do just want to give a quick summary of the events that took place in Tiananmen Square in case some people reading this aren't familiar with them, as many of us were not before arriving in China (or even while in China because of government censorship). In the 1980s, China's economy was still liberalizing (becoming more capitalistic), and a good number of educated young people thought that this would lead to the institution of a more democratic political system as well, which would include more rights such as free speech and civil liberties. In 1989, tens of thousands of college students staged a pro-democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square that attracted international media attention. After letting the protest go on for a few weeks, the Communist Chinese government reacted to the embarrassment it felt for the events by attacking the unarmed students in the square. The Chinese army killed hundreds and injured thousands at the Party's command, and others were persecuted for "spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda" (according to my port-to-port). The world reacted by protesting against the government's brutal actions through cutting off investment and stopping tourism. However, in the years since, economic ties have been resumed and human rights abuses by the Communist Party have been largely overlooked. World governments did not even use the publicity that the Olympics brought to pressure the government to stop or reduce its repressive policies. So yeah, that's a little recent history- pretty important to know before visiting the square, in my opinion.

A few kids in our group went to see the corpse of Chairman Mao, the former leader of the Communist Party in China, whose body is preserved right next to Tiananmen. I chose not to do so, because honestly, it's a corpse. I walked around the square instead watching the different policemen and tourists that stood around.

From there we walked the length of the square and crossed the street to enter the Forbidden City. Now I know there are pictures, but in case you don't know which picture it is, here's a little hint: the palace in the Disney movie Mulan seems to be depicting the Forbidden City, although that is historically inaccurate because the capital of China was not Beijing (or Peking) during the time of Mulan. So anyway, now that you have a mental picture, I'll continue: the Forbidden City was almost as crowded as the Summer Palace, but the group broke up anyway so it didn't really matter when a few of us got completely lost. Luckily we were listening to those little sound boxes that tell you about things you walk past and they had maps of the grounds on the outside, so we were able to find our way out to the Imperial Gardens and back gate easily enough after an hour or so of wandering and being accosted by schoolchildren who wanted to take pictures with us. So the Forbidden City was definitely worthwhile and a must-see tourist sight, but on a trip with a long list of historical sights (Spain, Morocco, India, Thailand, Cambodia) it kind of was just another palace- beautiful and awesome, but not very impactful.

After buying a few things I don't need (like a deck of cards with the pictures of 52 different Chinese rulers and philosophers on them) I got back on the bus and we headed to the airport for our flight to Xian (pronounced "she on"). The flight was not nearly as stressful as the last one, and we landed smoothly around 6pm (I think). Before checking into our hotel, the Tianyu Gloria Plaza Hotel (which had great beds and free internet in the rooms), we went for a dumpling dinner at De Fa Chang Jiao Zi Guan. (I know it's a mouthful, but the dumplings were well worth the effort, so I wanted to publicize.) We learned on the way there from our local city guide, Shirley (which is not her name, according to Chris), that dumplings are good luck. We also heard that Xian served as the capital city for 13 dynasties and that it is the oldest capital city in China. It is the original starting point of the Silk Road, and is now the eight largest city. It served as one of the four great capitals of civilization, and the oldest of them (the others being Istanbul, Rome, and Athens). Basically, the city is incredibly rich in culture in addition to just being kick-ass. But back to the dumplings: they weren't quite as good as those in our hotel in Beijing, but are apparently some of the best in China. We had pork dumplings, walnut dumplings, chicken dumplings, pumpkin dumplings, and about four other kinds I can't remember. There were also shrimp dumplings, but of course I omitted that choice. Dinner was great overall, and we checked into the hotel feeling full and content.

I decided to stay in that night because I was still dead from weeks of travel with late nights and early mornings, so I was a loser and went to bed after finding out there was free internet in the rooms at around 11pm.

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