Day 6 & 7: Beijing

I am settling into Beijing. Things have been quite busy lately and unforutnately I have caughten a cold, but am slowly recovering...

Day 6: My good friend, Asha, from high school that I am staying with and I decided to go down to Tianamen square to pay a visit to the world's largest public square and to say hello to 'Mao Zedong', the first Communist leader in China. Asha and I then had lunch and caught up on old high school days....

Day 7: Got up at 6:30 to go on a tour of the 'Forbidden City', 'Temple of Heaven', and the 'Summer Palace. The tour was a fun group of people, it consisted of Ellen, who is Norweigan, but I thought she was an American as her Enligsh is excellent and she was so bubbly and friendly, a Malaysian mother and daughter (who kindly invited to take me out when I am in Malaysia), two Americans (from Bay Area), a Tawianese couple (the gentlemen reminded me of Mr. Myoto from Karate Kid as he was demonstrating to Ellen how to cut a watermelon with her hand), the Spanish couple (nice couple that kept to themselves). The day started out at the Forbidden City...

Forbidden City was very interesting. It was off limits to the commoners for 500 years. The Ming and Qing Emperors lived there with their wives, concubines, and eunuchs. The emperors had 3,000 concubines living in the forbidden city, to help them live a comfortable life and many eunuchs., who served as servants to the emperor. It made for a very intersting group dynamic I would say..... The concubines were allowed to have childern and their sons could compete to be the next emperor. For some of you who don't know what a eunuchs it is a castraited man. I had a hard time getting the meaning of a eunuchs since the Chinese Tour guide kept telling me it was half man and half woman. I kept asking the tour guide to clarify this for me, but then soon found out that Chinese are embarrased about these types of topics, Ellen the Norweignan gal kindly informed me it was a castriated man. The eunuchs were very loyal to the emperors and the emperors trusted them. There are 9,999.5 rooms and many entrances. 'The Last Emperor' is filmed here. Chinese believe the dragon is the sign of the man and the phoenix is the sign for the woman, the color red is a lucky color, and the number 9 is a lucky number.

Next stop was the Temple of Heaven. This is where the Ming and Qink emperors would go to pray to the heavens. The Chinese belive that the heaven is circular and the earth is square, go figure I always thought it was the other way around..... There was a beautiful garden leading up to the gates of the 'Temple of Heaven'.

Next stop was lunch. Lunch was really good, we had a lunch that was typical of the Han Dynasty and saw a traditonal Chinese dance. The Chinese believe in sharing everything, using our own chopsticks. We had tea and in China, they do not put sugar and milk in their tea. We got several dishes and shared them with everyone in the group and then someone came around with a red yarn and put it on our wrist for good luck. We finished lunch and went to a herbal tea presentation and got to taste a variety of different Chinese teas.

Next stop was the 'Summer Palace'. The Summer Palace was spectualar. It is where the royalty came to escape the summer heat that roasted the Forbidden City. Cool off they did as there is a big lake that surrounds the palace.

Next stop was the 'Silk Factory'. I learned that silk is made from silk worms. The silk worms basically create a cocoon oustide of their shells (which is the silk), it only takes a couple of months for the silk worm to create the cocoon. Once the cocoon is created, then the silk can be extracted from the worm. Their are two methods one way is using a machine to extract the silk from the silk worm the other way is doing it manually.

More info. on Beijing and attractions above:
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/beijing/attractions.htm