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Published: August 11th 2010
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Mao Zedong
You can't take pictures inside the mausoleum so this is a picture of a picture in a brochure I bought One of the buildings that sits in Tian'anmen Square is Mao Zedong's mausoleum. I'm actually surprised we were able to see it because tons of mishaps have stopped us so far; I got sick, its only open from 8-12 in the morning, and today it was raining, but we toughed it out anyways. Mao obviously didn't want an American visiting his body, but after waiting for an hour, in the line that loops around the building, we got in. After climbing the front stairs into the building you see a statue of Mao in the first room. People stop to give flowers and some of them bow to the former revolutionist. The line breaks into two, left and right, around the statue to go into the next room, "the solemn hall of last respects". There sits Mao, in a crystal coffin, with a bright light shining from the ceiling illuminating his face. It was kind of creepy seeing him there, like some kind of idol almost. Jie muttered, "1 down, 4 more to go, at least when Fidel Castro dies." You didn't get much time to see the actual body because soldiers ushered you along quickly. I guess to "get more
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Yesterday was another relaxed day in Beijing. We went to a cool marketplace though, that was underground, and bought a lot of food and other supplies. Apparently, Chinese people believe that Asians don't smell bad, so they have no need for deoderant. This isn't exactly true, and you would know that if you step on a subway car in Beijing. So, after I ran out I had a pretty hard time finding some. Finally, we checked this marketplace, and found some. In the body soap isle, they had about three choices. I barely even saw them on the shelf but at least now I've got some haha. I also got skim milk (Jie didn't
know what this is, they drink soy milk or whole milk here), shredded wheats cereal, and some bananas (semi hard to find in China).
We also visited the "GNC" in the mall....yea..."GNC". On google they said there was a GNC store inside the mall. It sadly turns out that it was a small vitamin shop that sold three different imported GNC products. So that wasn't what I was looking for. But at another grocery store we found a vitamin shop that had protein powder so I've got a good amount for awhile now.
I think we're leaving for Hong Kong tomorrow or the day after, definately one of them though because we're running out of time. We still have to see Hong Kong, Macau, Shanghai, and the world Expo in Shanghai.
I have to go now, only four seats left on the plane to Hong Kong tomorrow, so we have to go buy them now.
EDIT: We had to change the flight to Friday, which kind of sucks because it'll give us no time in Shanghai. Here's the semi-finalized plans up until the end of the trip:
(today) aug 11 - Beijing
aug 12 -
Beijing (maybe seeing Lama Temple)
aug 13 - 8:50am fly to Hong Kong about 12:50pm land in Hong Kong
aug 14 - take ferry to Macau, spend the day in Macau
aug 15 - come back to Hong Kong, spend the day there
aug 16 - fly back to Beijing around 5pm, fly to Nanjing 8pm
aug 17 - jie packs in Nanjing for trip home
aug 18 - travel to Shanghai
aug 19 - fly home
no more Expo (world fair) 😞
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