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...