Saturday, May 9, 2009

Day 7 - Beijing

Another 5-star breakfast and we headed out for a jam-packed day of site-seeing. First up was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Our tour guide, a history major in college none-the-less, only knew of the 1989 Tiananmen student protests because her uncle had been a student in Beijing at the time. This was really my first encounter with Chinese state censorship, and it was very startling. Perhaps more amazing were the throngs of people. The square is said to be able to hold a million people if need-be, and I now believe it. There were definately tens of thousands of tourists there, perhaps even 100 thousand all told. I'm VERY glad we didn't want to see the perserved corpse of Chairman Mao - that line was at least 2 hours long, and I'm told you're forced past it and may not even see him at all!

The Forbidden Palace was amazing. It's hard to imagine over 100 acres of palace rooms and courtyards. But even stranger was the architecture and history behind it - from the five entrances and five bridges (even the emperor would only use the central one when he was coming to be crowned), to the lack of trees (less chance of assassination), to the very small (compared to Western monarchy) bed chambers. I find it incredible that for over 500 years only the ruling family, dignitaries, members of the court, and servants were able to enter the palace.

After the Palace, we traveled to the Houhai area. This small district was once a quiet strip along an ancient lake, but was transformed in the past decade to one of the hippest bar streets in Beijing. We took a rickshaw through the area and parked to go visit local families. Just 100 feet from the throngs of hipsters are the homes of families that have been passed down parent to child for six generations or more. A small courtyard filled with potted plants, herbs, and a couple of pomegrate trees is surrounded by three or four small single-story homes that once housed three generations. In the second home, we were fed a literally home-cooked meal. The seven or eight courses were delicous - comperable to the meals I've had in most restaurants around here.

Next we were off to the Summer Palace - just a short bus ride away. This palace was sacked at least twice and most famously rebuilt by the Dragon Lady - Empress CiXi. While history may have a colored view of her reign, the grounds are certainly beautiful. Traditional architecture pavilions painted in intricate designs are everywhere. An ambitious subset of us hiked up to the Budda temple at the top of the hill and were rewarded with aching legs and a beautiful vista.

We were so exhausted from the day that only a handful of our group went to the last activity - "discount" shopping the Pearl Market.

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