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Published: April 8th 2010
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Beijing
We arrived in Beijing to very cold weather. We made our way through the convenient subway system to our hutong. A hutong is a traditional style of housing in the city that is a one story brick building. We went to a famous peking duck restaurant for dinner and had a delicious meal. Our first day in Beijing we went to the forbidden city which is where the emperors lived for centuries with their wives and numerous other women. We went to Wangfujing Snack Street which is very popular with the local people. The food was mostly meat on a stick, but it was very popular. They also had starfish, bugs, and sea horses on sticks. We were not that daring but we had a few of the common meat sticks. It started snowing as we made our way over to Tiananmen Square. It was the last night of the Chinese New Year celebration and there were lots of festivities in the city. We were told that there would be a lot of lanterns. We quickly realized that "lanterns" was not the correct term as we should have been told "fireworks". The city turned into a noisy yet colorful
scene as people set off their own fireworks displays on every street. It was a real sight to see as the police cars drove by or set off some fireworks of their own. We arrived back at our Hutong to find the owner and employees celebrating with food and drinks. We were warmly welcomed to their party and had a wonderful evening getting to know them all better. The next day the owner of the hutong invited us to have lunch with him at the hutong and we enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal. We soon discovered that the amount of meat consumption in China is absurd. We went to see a famous Lama Temple and the Confucious Temple. The Confucious temple had all of his writings inscribed in marble blocks on display. In the evening we went to a Chinese Acrobat show and we were truly amazed at the performances. We now think that the Chinese should win the gold medals in gymnastics at every Olympics. We decided to take a trip to a section of the Great Wall which was further away from Beijing than the typical tourist section. We did a 4 hour hike from the Jinshanling
section to the Simatai section. The experience of walking the Great Wall was awe-inspiring. Even though Rachel had seen pictures of the Great Wall before, the actual experience of being at the Great Wall was surprisingly a moving experience which was unexpected. The sheer size of it is astounding. We were glad we went to this remote part of the Wall as we were the only group there. At the end of the walk we did a zip-line over a lake to get down from the wall. The following day we went to the Temple of Heaven Park where we saw several Temples and Pagodas dedicated to an annual ritual performed at harvesting time.
Xi'an
We took an overnight train to Xi'an which was actually pretty comfortable. We were the top bunks which were stacked up three beds high. We went to see the Terracotta Army which are clay warrior figures that were built at the request of the first emperor of China sometime around 200 BC. They surround his tomb and were made to protect him in the afterlife. They were all underground and not discovered until 1974 and many of them have not even been excavated
yet. So far over 8,000 warriors have been discovered and what is amazing is that each warrior has different facial features, clothing, and hairstyles. They also made different officer rankings and provided horses for the soldiers as well. We walked around the Muslim quarter of Xian and tried some local dishes, including a famous bread and mutton stew.
Luoyang
We took a freezing cold and long bus ride to a small town named Luoyang. We decided to stick with the trains after the experience. This town is famous for the Longmen Caves. The caves were incredible with hundreds of little caves containing Buddha statues of all sizes. We spent the day walking around astounded by the amount of caves and carvings. One of the caves has thousands of tiny Buddhas carved in its walls which are each the size of a thumb but contain detailed characteristics.
Shanghai
We arrived in Shanghai and discovered that the city was doing numerous renovations to prepare for the World Expo in May. We spent a lot of time walking around different parts of the city as Shanghai is an extremely modernized city, lacking the historical sites that the other towns
in China had. It rained and snowed our first day so we walked around the Shanghai museum and were intrigued the most by a collection of ancient coins and money that were found along the silk road trading route. We discovered probably our favorite food in all of China which was a steamed soup dumpling, which is a specialty in Shanghai. Inside of the bun is meat and a very flavorful soup that bursts into your mouth. We also walked to the bund, a famous walking street in Shanghai, only to discover that it was closed for Expo renovations. We somehow managed to find a way onto the street and snuck in a few pictures!
Tai Shan
Tai Shan is a holy mountain in China where the Taoists make pilgrimages. There are over 6500 steps to get to the top of it. Devout pilgrims are supposed to touch their head to every step as they ascend the mountain. We got to the mountain by an overnight train from Shanghai and we were leaving that afternoon to take the train back to Beijing. So we started our climb at 7:30 AM and we were able to reach the
top by noon. Along the way we saw numerous temples, many of which had locks all over them. We met quite a few people who wanted to take pictures with us as we were the only non-Chinese people there that day. We were able to descend rather quickly and our legs were pretty exhausted at the end.
Beijing
We spent the last day in China visiting the Summer Palace used by the Emperors. It was a serene place on a lake and had a boat made out of marble. We had Peking duck once more and did a little shopping.
Overall Impressions
We felt that of all the places we have been to, China was a little more difficult for us to travel through. There was few people who spoke English and most of the signs and menus were in Chinese characters. The people who did speak English were very friendly and treated us well. Many people liked to take pictures with us since we look so different to them, which is weird to us since we are accustomed to a diverse population. The food is nothing like Chinese restaurants in America and other
than the dumplings and Peking duck, none of the food was appealing to Rachel. Ian was really disappointed at the lack of the excavations of the Terracotta Warriors since he had last been there 10 years ago. In his opinion it looked like the same number of soldiers were unearthed now as when he was last there. Finally, the amount of fatty, oily meat on sticks consumed by the Chinese is astonishing and a sight that we will never forget.
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Traci
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Chinese Food
So next time we go for Chinese Food, you guys will be our meat experts??