China Day 3: Temple of Heaven

After a couple of fast paced tour days, we decided to take it a bit slower. We took a leisurely morning to relax. There happened to be a History Channel special on the building of the Great Wall of China. Since we'd just seen it the other day, it seemed quite interesting and we hung around and watched it. As it got closer to lunch, we packed our bags and checked out of our room since we'd be sleeping on the train to Xi'an that night.

We'd been having mixed luck with the restaurant in the hotel. They had wonderful food, but they didn't have a children's portion to the menu and when we tried to special order things like "Fried Chicken" we got this very nice Wok fried chicken and vegetable dish spiced heavily with Ginger. Not exactly kid stuff and William wasn't impressed. Today, we elected not to eat at the hotel, but venture out toward the Temple of Heaven and find something to eat that William might like. We were living on the edge! As we got out of the cab and looked around, we spotted...

A KFC! It's a restaurant that is William and Dad approved! We've been dabbling in Chinese food for three days to this point. We needed something familiar.

The Temple of Heaven was a much more relaxed site to see than the ones we'd seen so far. It might be that we were finely into the work week and the crowds were less, but it also was the park like setting of the whole place. It was as full of trees and flowers and neatly groomed as any great city park, but with stunning Chinese temples and palaces spread around in the different places.

It was just a very relaxed place. Most everyone we saw there was sitting back and relaxing, talking, or playing games. I almost felt silly pointing the camera around like a madman trying to capture it all.

Honestly, they were playing games.

We rented an audio tour device for William. We've found that he stays far more engaged with the site seeing (and isn't running around and rolling his Thomas train on everything), if he has one of these things and he is pretty good at telling us the highlights from the recording. We do get some odd looks when we get just one and we give it to the six year old, but it works for us.

Once again, William is the center of attention most everywhere he goes and he is still happily posing for pictures with completely foreign strangers.

The glazed tile roofs are intricate and marvelous.

Whenever William would get close to a new site of interest, his audio tour would start talking about the item. He'd pipe up with, "It's talking again!"

The weather was really good on this day. As you could see from the previous day's pictures, it is usually quite hazy in Beijing and even in the Forbidden City, the buildings just across the courtyard were in the haze. On this day, it had totally cleared out and you could see out across the city without any haze. Wow!

Thomas made the rounds in the Temple of Heaven too.

We'd seen what looked like a playground along the entrance to the park. William had wanted to play, but we convinced him to do some site seeing first and then do the playground later. We had such a wonderful time in the park, that we'd forgotten about it until we were exiting. We headed over and were a bit startled with what we found. It wasn't a children's playground, but rather a grown-up's work-out area. William still found some things to play on, but Caroline and I were just amazed with the set-up and even more amazed at how many Chinese were out there really using them.

After the park, we headed back to the hotel for dinner. Oddly enough, they figured out that they did have a children's menu. It just took a little extra prodding and asking. Then, we were picked up and taken to the train station where we boarded our sleeper car on our overnight train and spent the night snoozing as we traveled to Xi'an some 600 miles away. William, who loves trains, proclaimed this as the BEST day of his LIFE!

In the morning, we disembark to go see the Xi'an city wall and the famous Tera Cotta Warriors!

Some sites around the Temple of Heaven including people playing cards and people playing hackie sac with an odd shuttle cock type device. William received one from one an Army guy that was relaxing in the park. Later, we are driving to the train station and passing Tiananmen Square and then finally getting on the train.

China Day-2 Forbidden City

The Forbidden City! The name alone is pretty intriguing. We'd also seen "The Last Emperor" so we were even more intrigued to see this site. We took off on the subway and came close to the entrance to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

Did I mention the streets are WIDE!?

As we worked our way through the sales people, we were propositioned by an english speaking guide. We worked out a deal for a two hour tour (figuring that is as much as William could stand) and we headed out. Chinese tour guides usually choose an English name to use that is much easier for their customers to say. When he introduced himself to us, both Caroline and I heard "John Wayne". We thought that was pretty funny. We found out later on that it was actually his Chinese name "Chang Wang" and we just misheard... Our first stop was the river that goes through the compound.

To keep William occupied, he brought along his Thomas engine. I and Thomas tried to keep William occupied and out of trouble while Caroline took in most of the information and sites.

The expanses in the place are truly impressive. There are many courtyards similar to this just getting to this one. It is layers of bureaucracy in a way. A visiting official would have met higher and higher ranked personnel and would likely have been sent on at those levels. If the visitor was to actually see the Emperor, he would have finally gotten to this area of the compound.

The place looks like it is in original, yet well maintained, condition. Some buildings and stone work have been restored. You can see from this stone carving, that it has been around for a while.

As you get deeper into the Forbidden City, you get into the living areas of the Emperor and it gets a little bit more reasonable in size. The ornate buildings are stacked together to make some truly interesting views.

This is the emperor's throne room. It is where he did most of his work. The entire place is filled with original furniture and artifacts. Most of the architecture used to be open to the courtyards, but have been closed up with windows to protect the artifacts.

We learned that the color yellow was reserved for the Emperor. Nobody else could wear yellow, or use yellow in their architecture under pain of death. William wondered if he should be wearing yellow...

This is another throne room. We'd heard so much about the Dragon Lady by this point and how she used to run the country by instructing the Emperor from behind a yellow curtain that was behind the Emperor. You can see the whole set up here with the yellow curtain raised to show where the Dragon Lady sat behind the Emperor's throne.

These are some tied together shots of the last large courtyard prior to entering the living areas. Click on it to bring up the large photo. It gives you an idea of how intricate and expansive the Forbidden City really is.

Some more interesting architecture... and William occupying himself with some exercise. Not so sure he should be worried about wearing yellow... people can see your underpants!

Dragons represent long life and power and the guide insisted that we take a picture of William with the dragon.

The number 9 is apparently also representative of long life and power (a theme repeated many times in the Forbidden City...) and the brass knobs on the doors were 9 across and 9 high and people touch them for good luck. As you can see, they've been worn down. William gets a double dose of luck... This picture may be useful for blackmail later in life...

One of the salesmen really knew who to sell to. This is a top that lights up, screams an annoying song and even has a laser that spins around and lights up the area. The price was right, so we couldn't resist. You know, it didn't sound so loud out in the open, but inside...

So, those were the highlights of our Forbidden City tour. In the afternoon, we headed to a really terrific Chinese acrobat show.

On the way, we marveled at some of the impressive new architecture. This building just looks wrong.

Not as wrong as this building right next to it, though. It apparently was burned completely up when the builders set off a new-year's fireworks display too close to the unfinished building. One fireman was killed, lots of people lost their jobs, and several people went to jail. To this point, nobody knows what to do with the building. A sad story in any country.

The acrobatic show was truly incredible. I'd seen Chinese acrobats as a child in Portland when they came on tour. They've made their shows a bit more flashy which I assume is due to the influences of Cirque du Soleil. We had fourth row seats for the hour long show and truly enjoyed it. Unfortunately, they don't allow pictures or video, so we only have this picture of a poster to show you. We have the DVD we bought, though, so ask to see it when you visit!

Day 2 complete. Coming up: Temple of Heaven and the train to Xi'an!

China! Day 1: Great Wall & Summer Palace

China! It's been a life long desire and goal of Caroline's to visit China. Since we are living so close, we took the opportunity to see a bit of China on vacation. It's certainly cheaper to fly to China from Japan and you only have to battle one hour of jet lag.



We stayed at the Park Plaza Hotel in Beijing for most of our vacation. It is a four star hotel in a pretty ritzy part of the city. The Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini dealerships were just around the corner. I wasn't expecting to see that in China...

Our room was very nice and they provided William with a bed.

The bathroom was also very nice. They made it clear that the water from the tap was not fit for drinking and provided bottled water for each of us daily.













The word for "4" in both Japanese and Chinese sounds a lot like the word for "death", so they are as superstitious about numbers with a "4" in it as we are about "13". You'll note that the hotel does not have a 4th floor... or a 14th.











Caroline brought some detergent and did some laundry after the first day and hung them up to dry as many travelers are known to do. I couldn't resist. I asked her, "What is this, a Chinese Laundry!?" Hehe :-)

We hired a tour guide to take us around on our first day of site seeing. They picked us up from the hotel. We then picked up two English couples from another hotel and we were off to our first stop, the Great Wall of China! As we approached the area, we started to see portions of the wall running over the hills. Some, like this one, were in disrepair. Most of the wall that looks nice and pristine was restored to that condition.

Another view from the road...

We took the cable car up to a VERY popular portion of the wall. It was quite crowded. I was amazed how the wall runs up to the cliff and stops in the upper right hand corner of this picture and then takes off again at the top. Makes sense that nobody is going to get across by easily scrambling along the cliff face.

William and I made it up the wall to the top of this section. It is quite steep and doesn't necessarily have steps at all places. If it was a hillside we were climbing, there would have been switchbacks.

This is where we noticed that lots of people were just fascinated with William with his blond hair and blue eyes (or his cool sunglasses...) I could see that people were eyeing William while holding their cameras and I asked William if he would mind having his picture taken with some Chinese. He was amenable, and I motioned that it would be OK. The first couple came in to take a picture with him and then the line just appeared! About 20 very polite Chinese families and couples came up next to William to have their picture taken with him. William was a champ about it. It eventually subsided and we continued our climb.

We found out that Chinese tour guides are licensed by the state and are required to bring their tourists to a certain number of state run craft outlets. Our first was the jade factory where they had artisans on display carving sculptures in jade. They also give a small lecture on how to tell if an item you see in a market is really jade or not. Then, you spend a requisite amount of time in the sales area. It was informational and interesting at least.

I was amazed with some of the very large carvings they had around. This one is of a very ornate ship. Complete with, what William noticed, a replica of the Great Wall as the railing for the ship.

We also visited a silk factory where they described and demonstrated the process of raising silk worms and harvesting the silk. William helped stretch out a bundle of silk to add a layer to a silk comforter. The workers were repairing the damage we caused as we were leaving...

We then went on to the state run restaurant for our first Chinese lunch. It was surprisingly good and we assume authentic. This fish certainly looked the part.

As we were driving around the city between all the sites, we saw some pretty interesting things along the road. We saw a lot of these tricycles outfitted for various uses. I think they also have a battery and motor. Some were even outfitted as cut-rate taxis... We were fine with the full fledged ones.

If there is one word to describe Beijing, I think it would be, "Big". Everything about it is big. It's got huge streets. The main street through Beijing that runs between Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City is 100 meters wide! (We figured you could have the biggest 100 meter dash...) The buildings are equally large. Here is a concentration of apartment buildings that caught my eye.

This picture doesn't show much, but we passed a large unfinished amusement park that the tour guide says was a "Disneyland" that ran out of funding. Turns out it isn't Disney at all, but a Chinese copy that became too expensive and they abandoned it. Apparently, abandoned amusement parks aren't too uncommon in Asia, check out this site that shows several including this Chinese "Disneyland" half way down the page.

The second major site for us to visit on the first day was the Summer Palace. It's where the Emperor would stay for the months of summer when the Forbidden city would be too warm. This is a pretty impressive gate that apparently is just the side entrance.? We kept walking to a different entrance farther down.

The Summer Palace is more of a large estate than just a "Palace." It covers 2.9 square kilometers. Needless to say, we didn't see the whole thing, but what we saw was amazing.

Everywhere you turn there seemed to be some gorgeous example of Chinese architecture.

We didn't get up on the hill to see these buildings, but they look mighty impressive.

Of the 2.9 square kilometers, 3/4s of it is covered in water making for some dramatic landscapes.

I recognized this one. It's a ship made out of stone built by the Dragon Lady (who we learned a lot about) as a fancy place to hold a party. It looks like it is floating, but it's obviously set on the bottom of the lake and isn't going anywhere.




It was a beautiful day to see such wonderful sites. Our vacation was off to a good start. Day 1 complete. Day 2 coming up...