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Published: June 23rd 2006
City Tour
Tiananmen, the gate of heavenly peace, is the gate to the Forbidden City. Today we toured the city of Beijing. All ten of us students, plus our guide, and the driver piled into a 12 seater van this morning. The ride alone was an adventure, there do not seem to be too many rules to the driving game on Beijing's streets. There is no such thing as "pedestrians always have the right of way", it's more like "travel at your own risk" no matter if you are a pedestrian, bicycler, or automotive operator.
Our first stop was HouHai park. Here we walked around the lake. It was very much a tourist destination with lots of bars all around the water and little boats in which people could take a ride. Here we saw old men playing mahjong, a game that kind of looks like dominoes. Then we walked across the street to BeiHai park which had a river through it and seemingly more of a park for local Chinese. All around were older people "playing". Some were dancing, others playing with a toy that I would compare with the yoyo. There were two sticks with a string in between tied to each of the sticks at the ends. Then there was a
City Tour
Heroic statue yoyo like plastic thing that they put on the string and then performed tricks. There were also several women that were wielding swords around. It was very refreshing to just see people enjoying themselves. Then we drove to TianAnMen Square. This was probably the highlight of the day, because I have heard most about this landmark in Beijing, out of all the rest. The unfortunate part was that the fog was so bad it was very difficult to take clear pictures of the various buildings and statues around the square. I'm not sure if the fog is due to the humidity or the pollution, or a combination of both.
After spending some time in the square, we drove to a restaurant for lunch. This restaurant happened to be Chinese Muslim, so no pork. Once again the food was very delicious and served in the same family style. One of our leaders said that the reason for serving the food family style is to make eating more of a social event, not everyone just eating food off of their own plate but rather everyone eating off all the serving plates.
To end the day we stopped at a Carrefour.
City Tour
Tiananmen gate Yes, it was weird going into a French "Wal-mart", in China, with all the products having at least the product's name in English, all the while listening to a Ricky Martin song which was apparently on a loop. It was a long day, so now I am tired and feel incredibly dirty. Even though the city is relatively clean with respect to litter, just the act of walking around in the heat with the normal city dirt leaves you incredibly dirty at the end of the day.
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Carla
non-member comment
Thanks for the blog!
Thanks for keeping this up, Tek! I'm having fun on your trip! Harry's past hour 18 on the car. He says he's going to win! His competition is stiff, tho, and they're watching him like a hawk since he's already won a car!