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Adult Work Out Center
Why can't Americans be like this? OMG, today was absolutely amazing! I’ve wanted to go to the Great Wall of China for the longest time and today, we did! I’ve finally completed my goal for the trip and now every thing else is just a bonus, haha.
So anyways, today we started off by going to look at the suburban housing of China to understand how fast the city was growing. It reminded me of the Phoenix area where people keep building on the outskirts of the city. We went to this apartment complex where the very wealthy people reside and got to hang out for a little bit. Each apartment was about 600 sq. feet!! That’s smaller then what I have in Tempe and entire families live in these! Ning, our professor on the trip, was telling us that the average salary in Beijing is $36,000 RBN/year which is roughly $4,743 U.S/year! That is insane! Then you have people in Beijing paying $2000 RNB/month for rent for each 50 sq. foot of space! They also are not allowed to own the land so they end up leasing it for 35 years at a time from the government. Way to go communism!
What was
Porcelain Factory
These people work so much for so little really cool in this apartment complex which is seen all over China is outdoor adult work out centers. They look like a play ground but the adults go out there everyday to work out since physical fitness is very important. Why can’t we get Americans to do this? This isn’t your normal gym like you’d see in America though. I’m not sure how to explain it…the workout equipment reminded me of just ways to stretch or things we’d see in the gym in the 1960’s. There were a lot of residents on the equipment while we were standing around talking and as soon as the professors allowed us to go check it out, all the locals left and we swarmed the workout center!
Afterwards we went to a porcelain factory and learned how it was made. They showed us how they first hammered the copper in a specific shape, then each individual design piece was hand glued (and there were thousands and thousands for each piece!). After placing each piece in the correct pattern, they filled the copper design with many different colors then it is sent to the kiln to be fired and melt the color. They do
We climbed the Great Wall, Literally
Me, Allie, Missy, Jess, Maggie, and Chloe, we literally climbed the Great Wall, how many people can say that! the color process 5 times since the color shrinks and they need to build up the surface. I don’t remember how long we were told it takes to make a piece but it appears as if each takes one month at the rate they were going!
Then came my favorite part of the trip, THE GREAT WALL!!! I can’t believe how huge it was! We walked the wall for a good 45 min before turning around and this was no easy hike. It had ‘sleep slopes’ (steep slopes) as the garbage bins said and crazy slanted stairs. We almost fell trying to walk back down! I can’t believe that 1 million people, 1/5th the population at the time, worked on building the Great Wall; it is incredible. The area around it is beautiful as is the wall but I had a bit of an emotional displacement while walking. It made me think about China’s history and where is has been and where it is going today. It is interesting that most historical sites are being destroyed in China yet the government keeps the Great Wall in tact and keeps renovating it. Why do you think that is? I’m trying
Dress Up!
We had a huge crowd when we got dressed up like this, Sean and Missy are trying to kill me! to figure this out myself.
Anyways, on the wall there was this really bad traffic jam of people trying to get through this one door. We must of waited in line for a good 20 minutes on the one side of the door not understanding why people were having such a hard time getting through and when we got to the door, we just pushed through and there was NOBODY on the other side!!!! We though Tempe had bad traffic but this was worse! There was no reason what-so-ever for there to be a jam!
So Jess and Bret both have blonde hair and blonde people are pretty much an extinct species here in China so people were stopping them to take picture with them, it was so funny! Me, Sean and Missy (red-head) thought that was funny and so we found this place halfway up the wall where we could put on these cool costumes and take pictures of ourselves! So we all got dressed up and joked around and before we knew it, we had a crowd of tourist taking pictures and videos of us! Who wants pictures of random people, in particular, a bunch of
One World, One Dream
Beijing is really marketing big for the Olympics
they even have it at the Great Wall!
Americans?! Gotta love dem Chinese!
Exhusted, we walked back to the bottom of the wall and we had class…this is when it hit me that we were on a study abroad trip. I completely forgot that this wasn’t a vacation and as soon as we started learning I walk like ick, I was so over the trip at that point. Then the greatest thing happened; we were all sitting there and we heard this buzzing noise getting closer and then all of a sudden this guy with his buddies appeared and one of the guys was shaving with an electric razor!! We all just sat there in dead silence as this guy walked past us as if it was completely normal! As soon as he passed we all busted out laughing not sure what to make of that. He just made our day.
After the Great Wall we went back to the hotel and we were all pretty exhausted. Phil and I just went out to dinner near the hotel and talked about how amazing New York was (he used to live there). We pretty much came to the conclusion that New York is the most amazing place
I love ASU!
Randy, Jess, Missy, Noddles (named him myself) me, Rob and Sean going back down the wall. in the world.
I’m pretty exhausted and I have nothing left in me. Fei is already passed out and I think I’ll do the same. Tomorrow is the Summer Palace, nite!
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