After taking about 240 pictures while in Beijing, I picked my favorite 60 for facebook, and then further reduced them to 30 for blogger. So it’s safe to say this is just a recap of the highlights, and if you’re interested I have a bunch more pics that can be viewed at a later date! After a week off school for the Easter holidays, I am in Hong Kong for 4 more weeks and then it’s back to the USA.
So lets see where to begin…I went to Beijing with 5 other students from my home university. Dr. Bennion, a Bowling Green professor (who has been the overseer of our program) met us there and planned two days of tours for the group and a meeting with the American Embassy. Three of us opted to take an approximately 3 hour flight, and the other three chose to take the train for about 25 hours. My group included Melissa, Liana, and myself. To insert an interesting point, the stewardesses came around and collected all foreign newspapers before we landed, because they are not permitted in China. We got in pretty late and needed to change a small amount of Hong Kong money into RMB for the taxi ride to our hotel downtown.
I hope the next two paragraphs are not a bore, but I have to tell the money story, as it was my first experience in China. Here goes…None of us had notified our banks about our travels, opting rather to take sufficient HK$ and just exchange at the hotel for an almost non-existent fee. Well, all the currency exchange places were closed (after midnight) and we were about to just go ahead and get money out of an ATM and then call our banks when we spotted a currency exchange machine—woohoo, right? Well…turns out, after we stepped up to the machine and touched “English”, a guy in a blue suit stepped up and said he would help us, as he worked for Travelex (the company of the machine). At this point we didn’t really need the help, but he seemed determined. I was fishing my wallet out of my bag and he was clicking some things on the screen when he announced that it was temporarily broken. What, it was fine a minute ago??
The man said he would take us to a Travelex booth and exchange the money himself, and we decided to followed him back past customs (showing our visas and passports again) in desperation. Along the way he said there would be a commission fee. Being skeptical, I ensued a series of questions about why the machine quit working? Why we had to pay commission when the machine we wanted to use was out of service? Finally, after he said the machine charges commission too, I had to give up and just be thankful we weren’t going to be stranded at the airport for the night. Poor guy, I was definitely giving him a hard time and a suspicious look.
When we finally made it out of the airport we got a taxi and were on our merry way to the hotel. I have to say I felt extremely comforted driving on the right side of the road! It was an enjoyable 30 minute ride and traffic was really light so late at night. Ok, now for some pictures!
Noodles in the park..delicious.
Intricate designs on the ceiling..at all the temples and parks!
Outside the forbidden city--that mote is 3,800 meter long!
Scorpions and seahorses on a stick…the scorpions were still squirming. The guy would cook them up fresh for those interested. No thanks!
Outside the entrance to the Forbidden City. Most people use the other entrance, and it was nice going against the tourist crowd…smart tour guide.
Intricate carvings in stone between two sets of steps
The Forbidden City
The other entrance (our exit) with Mao Zedong picture…facing Tiananmen square.
Tiananmen Square
Temple of Heaven
Andrew and some ladies that wanted their picture with him. This happened sooo many times! People who probably hadn’t seen many westerners wanted pictures with us. Some even took our pics while we were weren’t looking. It was crazy.
Olympic Park from the window
We took a tour of a Cloisonne Pot factory, which I really enjoyed. Cloisonné, an ancient metalworking technique, is a multi-step enamel process used to produce jewelry, vases, and other decorative items. (from Wikipedia, of course :)
All of us and The Great Wall of China!! We were pretty excited.
Our tour guide Jamie
That was 454 steps, in case you were wondering :D
Our fancy restaurant dinner on Thursday. Peking Duck with Liana’s roommate, Sophie, and her mother. They live in Beijing and very generously took us all out to eat and taught us about all the dishes on the table. Sophie’s dad couldn’t make it due to work, but it was great meeting her mom (who doesn’t speak English) and a few of her friends.
The Summer Place. It is a huge garden/lake place where the emperor would retreat in the summer. Absolutely gorgeous.
Blurry, but for all my Troy readers—HOBART!! This company started in my hometown.
Well that’s it for the pictures. I can’t do the trip justice with a blog entry of course, but it at least shows a bit of the experience. We had great, clear weather for sightseeing, which Jamie said is not usually the case. One place I didn’t get a picture of was the silk factory we toured. It was interesting seeing how silk is made, starting with the silk worm, and moving through a series of phases. Did you know that the little strand of silk on one cocoon can stretch longer than a mile!
It was strange not having a working cell phone and Internet connection. For some reason calls to the US didn’t go through, even on Melissa’s calling card. I definitely realized how much I like being able to contact those I care for, and it was a long time without talking to my mom. :) We managed to get to an internet café to check our emails and let our parents know we had arrived safely, so we all felt a little better after that. It only cost 3 RMB for an hour! That’s about 44 pennies US$. For a little info, the Chinese Yuan is also known as Yuans, and RMB. It was weird getting “change” in bill form. For instance, if you pay with a ten you might get 2 fives back. The fives are smaller in size, and represent half a yuan, but it definitely had me confused at first, especially because coins are used too.
It was neat being able to recognize that the language is different in the Mainland than in HK. Granted, I still have no idea what is being said, but I could recognize that it sounded a bit different. HK has 2 official languages, English being one of them, so it's pretty easy to get around. However, in China, that is not the case. All of us felt a little more challenged than usual in the communication department. While traveling back to HK, we were excited to return to a place where we feel comfortable..or at least familiar.
Hmm, what else to share... I can’t think clearly because I stayed up way too late trying to finish this post. I may write a follow up blog if enough things come to mind that could be added, but I guess I’ll go ahead and call it a night. Thanks for reading!
