Once again we left early and went to our one attraction of the day. We have a lot of extra days in Beijing so we can take our time. Which is nice since the traffic here is pretty bad, it lets us take things slow and relax. Today we saw the Temple of Heaven, where the emperors since the Ming dynasty have been worshipping Heaven, as early as the 1300's. It was kind of overcast but still pretty cool and exciting. We walked around the whole park which had some awesome trails through rows of trees. When worshipping Heaven there were many different phases throughout the ritual with ceremonial sacrifices. There was also a phase of dancing and singing. Walking along the path you could see many people singing or dancing to music or doing Tai ... read more

Today we had an early flight to Beijing through Eastern China Airways. As soon as we got out of the plain I felt the humid weather and it was very foggy due to the humidity. Beijing has 5 rings of interstates around it so we went from the fifth to the second, where our hotel is. We relaxed for a little while in the hotel and then Jie and I set off for the Beijing Zoo to see Pandas! We took a taxi into downtown and found the Zoo, paid for tickets, and ran inside to find pandas. They had a huge part of the zoo dedicated to pandas and the different kinds. Haha, they had olympic games pandas, asian games pandas, and baby pandas. Overall we saw 7 of them. The first two were behind ... read more

Today was a really awesome day. First Jie's mom drove us to Purple Mountain, a big mountain in Nanjing, where we saw a bunch of different attractions. We met Jie's cousin there and he went with us too. First we saw Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum. We saw his tomb and where he's buried. He overthrew the Qing Dynasty and pretty much founded the Republic of China. His tomb was a huge park enclosure and then 300 steps up to his tomb. We climbed a lot of stairs throughout the day. Then we took a car tour of the mountain where we saw a lot of monuments for veterans, and also climbed a 9 story tower. It had a spiral staircase and at the top had a great view of the mountain and the city of Nanjing. We ... read more

I'm writing this July 25th, Chinese time, because I was too tired last night to write it, but its from yesterday: We had an awesome touring day yesterday. I woke up early and couldn't get back to sleep so I went down to find the hotel's gym. No one really spoke English but I could say enough for them to figure out what I wanted. I'm understanding more and more and more Chinese. We eat in the hotel restaurants a lot, because they're usually big, nice, and have enough room for all the guests. I met Jie's dad and he's really nice. So anyways, we always eat with about 5-8 people. Last night we ate in a hotel restaurant with friends of Jie's dad and I could understand a lot of the conversation, and sometimes when ... read more

We spent the night in Jie's father's home town of Kun Shan. I had my first Chinese meal last night and it was delicious. I'm really tired. I couldn't sleep on the plane and only slept a little last night. But at least I'm closer to being on Chinese time now. Kun Shan is right outside Shanghai. Today we will go around the city a bit and then head for Nanjing. There's also a city we are stopping at on the way with the small rivers running through it and the fishing boats that I wanted to see. We are about to have a special noodle breakfast now :)... read more