June 30th Beijing

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June 30th Thursday
Ok. I was so tired yesterday I couldn’t even change out of my clothes or write the blog for what I did. I don’t remember when we got back but I do know that I was awake at 530am and we walked all day till nightfall.
Yesterday we did 4 things: first we went to Jingshan park, then the Forbidden City, then traveled to the opera house (which was shaped like an egg), then we saw then we saw a kungfu show.
When we arrived at Jingshan park first thing I noticed was the row of bicycles at the entrance. Basically Jingshan Park is where one of china’s emperors, I believe from the Ming dynasty, climbed up the hill in despair at not being able to save Beijing and then hung himself on a tree we walked passed. The park itself was very high. We climbed up what felt almost like a mountain of stairs to the top where people were selling souvenirs. At the top of every stair case was a small temple looking building and at the very top of the hill was a temple with a giant golden Buddha. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of it though, when I asked one of the girls why she told me because it’s impolite. We walked back down the hill, where I ended up buying a pack of Michael Jackson cards for like 20 Yuan.
After Jingshan Park we headed to Forbidden City. Now my earlier assumption about the Forbidden City is completely different from what we actually experienced. First of the all the Forbidden City is an actual CITY. I thought it was more of a palace that only the royals were allowed in, but no, it’s quite literally a forbidden city. We were in the Forbidden City for at least 2 hours—I don’t know the time exactly—and all we did was walk in a straight line! But it extended beyond the eye (and smog) could see! We went into several artifact museums, which I took pictures of. We left the City to go eat at some restaurant that literally had a foreigners section in the basement of the store and a Chinese section on the top. We ate there twice actually, first time after Forbidden City then again after the Beijing opera house.
After eating we went to the opera house which was very large and shaped like an egg under water. It was cool when you went inside the entrance because then you could see the water above you on the glass ceiling. The opera house was HUGE! There were like 4 floors in the building and a huge open space in the middle, so if you had a fear of heights this wasn’t the place for you. Upon entering we saw several people—a man and several women—singing opera very well in what I’m guessing is Latin (although at times it sounded like Italian as well) while waiting to go into the opera room we went into the gift store. I didn’t buy anything this time because I knew I couldn’t spend all of my money on the first day at Beijing. Then we went into the opera concert room. It had really good acoustics but we weren’t allowed to sit on the chairs and take pictures…I’m presuming for cleaning reasons since the entire opera house was spotless all around.
I just have to pause here and say: its VERRRY scary looking outside. I saw the sun come up at around what I think was 530am but now at 720am it looks BLACK. Almost like nighttime right now, and it’s really scaring me! I can’t tell if it’s a storm or smog or both but it looks like a tornado is coming or something.
Anyways, the bus from the opera house was pretty funny because we went in a complete circle around the giant egg once –courtesy of Dr. To—before we spotted the bus again and ate. Everyone was EXHAUSTED by this point, I mean we were just falling asleep on the bus by now, but we all knew we had one more event to attend to and that was the kungfu show (which I had been looking forward to). But before that, we had our first group convenient store shopping experience which was very neat. After some time, the doors opened and we were allowed into the show. IT WAS AMAZING! The special affects we so awesome, the martial arts was cool, the colors, it was so incredible. But I was SOOOO exhausted I actually fell in and out of consciousness about half way through the show so I really didn’t see what the end was all about. But likely someone bought the DVD so we can all watch it later on during the trip, I guess. When we got back to the hotel I literally crashed on the bed. A few minutes later Jackie knocked on the door to see if I wanted to go clubbing with her and a friend last night but I told her I was too tired. (And this is coming from someone that usually doesn't turn down this kind of offer!) I told her to ask me next time before we leave Beijing and I would go.
So we ended up skipping Tiananmen Square yesterday which is unfortunate, but today we’re supposed to be visiting the great wall and eating lunch around it too.

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