Day 12 - July 12

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No scheduled sightseeing which was a nice break from the routine.

Time to explore on your own.

Today, most of the participants got up early at 3:40 a.m. to meet at 4 a.m. in the lobby to travel to Tiananmen Square to see the flag raising. Walked from hotel with the group and then put Lucy in a Pedi cab to save time. She rode with Julie. We arrived at the square by 4: 30 a.m. and waited until about 4:55 a.m. for the flag raising. The members of the Chinese Army marched to the square from the Mao mausoleum and then across to the flag pole. They surrounded the flag pole and the flag unfurled and then slowly raised while the Chinese National Anthem is played on the speakers around the square. We had a good spot until about 10 tour busses came down the street by the square and stopped right in front of the flagpole. We were still able to move into place to see the flag raising, which was somewhat anticlimactic. I am still glad we had the chance to do it, though. We took a cab back to the hotel and went to bed since it was just after 5 am.

After breakfast, this morning, we had to time to call home on Skype and talk to Monica and the girls. We then departed for our last and final trip to the Silk Market. Now that we have taken the subway a few times we are pretty good at it. Matthew can tell you which line, how many stops and the name of each stop in Chinese. We are at Dong Dan and we had to get to Yonganli today. When we exited the subway there were 2 young girls having trouble because one girl’s card would not work. There are gates that open to le you exit the subway. I offered to let her squeeze through with me, just to make it easier. Of course the gates squashed me because they are really designed to only let one person through at a time. What else is new….I am in China and still breaking the rules. We spent the morning and most of the early afternoon bargaining with the locals to get the deals on the souvenirs we wanted to bring home. It really is an art to bargaining and by the end, even Matthew was pretty good at it. Lunch was at O’Brien’s, where they serve sandwiches called toosties (think they mean toasties - because the bread is toasted), but whatever they are called, it was a sandwich with good bread. They offered Lays chips in either “classic American” flavor or “fried chicken” flavor. Matthew learned to hail a cab and then how to communicate with the driver to get us home by showing him the hotel card which has the name and address of the hotel in Chinese on it. This is a tip they told us about the first day. I can imagine many tourists getting in a cab at their hotel, with the help of the hotel personnel who speak English, and then getting stranded out somewhere because they can’t communicate to get home.

When we returned to the hotel we had time to just chill out before dinner, which was open not planned tonight. Some of the group members planned an evening at an Italian restaurant at the nearby St. Regis Hotel. We were planning to go but Lucy was tired and wanted to stay behind to pack, so we decided that we would just find something close by and maybe take a break from Asian food. Then my friend, Ma Jing, called us and plans changed. She was the tour guide my dad and I met in 2006 when we visited China. She was driving back to Beijing from a conference she attended and she planned for us to go out to dinner.

We met her at 7:30 p.m. at the hotel and she drove us to a local restaurant near the Temple of the Earth. Of all the restaurants in Beijing, what are the odds that the one she chose was one we had already visited? So I didn’t know if I should play dumb and pretend we had not eaten there or just be honest and say it was a repeat. After a few seconds I decided that I didn’t want to eat in there again, the first time was enough. She quickly changed plans and went to “Plan B” as she called it. Of course we continued to drive around Beijing and it was getting later and later. She would have her husband pull over because they kept calling someone to get information or directions. At this point it was 8:30 pm and I would have been just as happy to go to McDonald’s. Anyway we got the restaurant, called A Fun Ti Carnival, which she said was an “ethnic” place meaning Chinese minority. They people are from western China, near Russia and Tibet. It had a Middle Eastern flair with a Moroccan influence. The food that they served, although it was called ethnic Chinese food, did not seem Asian to us at all. We had lamb kebabs; a cucumber, onion, tomatoes salad, square noodles and a type of lamp stew served on pita bread cut in triangles with gravy. The best part of the meal was that they had live entertainment: Russian dancing, belly dancing, singing, kung fu dancers, Chinese break dancers, and a young boy demonstrating kung fu and back flips. They also had audience members come up to sing and dance and do the belly dancing which Matthew thought was pretty wild. We had a table at the front row so Matthew was paranoid that he would get selected to dance or sing! It was a really fun way to spend our last night in China. Since Lucy wanted to stay close by, she connected with Donna (Cheryl’s cousin) and they made plans to go to Outback. We had heavy thunderstorms so in the end they just had dinner in the hotel.

Tomorrow is another “down day” to regroup and pack up for our journey home.

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Photos

Square at dawn
Chinese Army marches out of the mausoleum across the square and encircles the flag pole.

China History Museum
Opposite side of Tiananmen Square. Giant clock is counting down to Shanghai Expo in 2010.

Mao Zedong Mausoleum
view of the square and mausoleum after the flag raising at about 5 a.m.

Chinese Guard
You have to "sneak" a photo because it seems they really don't let foreigners take their picture. I snapped it and then wondered what might happen if discovered.

Jinguo Garden Hotel
Our home away from home for 10 nights.