Tiananmen Square

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Day 1

We arrive in Beijing at 12:30pm. The flight was about an hour and a half from Shanghai to Beijing. We were greeted at the airport by our tour guide Ve (which means rose bush in Chinese) her English name is Vera. It was about 80 degrees, and very dry. I was surprised that the temperature in Beijing was much warmer than Shanghai. Although my mom arrived one day prior to our trip to Beijing, she was doing surprisingly well (the jet lag did not get to her too bad). After getting in the car, Vera informed us of our change in itinerary. Since we visited Beijing during "May Holiday" (China has a labor day week instead of day) she thought it would be a good idea to get as much done in the first few days as possible since more crowds and people were expected in the upcoming days. After dropping our bags off at the hotel we went to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Drum Tower, back streets of Beijing, Peking duck dinner and Chinese Acrobats.

Tiananmen Square was not how I expected it to be. I had seen pictures of the large building with the picture of Mao, but did not realize how large the square actually was. It is a huge slab of cement surrounded by four large buildings. Many of the local people were flying kites and we were already able to see many tourists. There are always guards in green suits patrolling the land and standing at the famous buildings and sites. Our hotel was about a 20 minute walk from Tiananmen Square, so we decided to visit the site again the day before we left. As Vera had told us there were more tourists and crowds than we had seen the first day. At each of our visits to the Square, we had a Chinese person come up to us and ask us to take a picture with them. Vera told us that there are a lot of people from Western China that visit the sites during May Holiday, and they don't see foreigners that often.

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Photos

Tiananmen Square
Just outside the square.

Tiananmen Square
Guards

Comments

[shirley]

how exciting!
Thanks for sending pictures. How did we ever live without the web.xxoo

[Aunt Jean G.]

Great Pictures
I loved reading your latest journal entry and seeing the pictures from Tiananmen Square, and I'm looking forward to your next journal entry. Aunt Jean G.