This day we woke up and headed out to try and find something to eat for breakfast. Unbeknownst to us breakfast isn’t a large meal in Beijing, and therefore not many restaurants were open. Some only had hard boiled eggs, but we wanted something more. We eventually asked some locals for directions, which was difficult because they spoke no English. We then found a place and ordered breakfast by pointing to things that other guests had. We ended up getting some steamed meat dumplings which tasted very good. We were very surprised when the total bill came to 31 RMB, enough that we would have paid 31 each if they hadn’t corrected us. For anyone keeping track 1 USD is equal to about 6.6 RMB, so breakfast was cheap. After breakfast we walked to the Forbidden City.
The entrance to the complex was guarded by many soldiers including some not in uniform, as almost if to say “we are hiding among you.” We walked underneath Mao’s portrait, and passed into the inner part of complex. We followed a very long marble pathway, through another gate, and eventually to the main gate of the inner palace area. We purchased tickets (40 RMB) and audio guides (40 RMB) and headed into the inner Forbidden City. The audio guides were nice because they automatically sensed where you were and told you interesting facts about that area. It got a little annoying toward the end of the day though because they weren’t very accurate and would start playing when you weren’t even within sight of the thing it was describing. The basic storyline of most of the stories was “Emperor meets lady, Emperor ‘falls in love’ and sleeps with woman, woman has baby, people fight over whether that emeperor should be Crown Prince and inherit the thrown.”
The complex is very cool. Most of the buildings are very similar, but it is impressive how much detail is put into every building as well as how many total buildings there are in the complex. It must have required a factory for manufacturing each part of the building. Other interesting parts of the City included some ancient fire hydrants, essentially big pots of water that were kept from freezing in the winter, and a system for ranking the importance of buildings. Little animals were placed on the corner of the roof. The main palace had 11 animals, and other buildings and gates had anywhere down to one animal. The emperor also had many throwns and expensive stuff available to him. These items were displayed throughout the complex. It is hard to describe the complex in any detail beyond which I have, without being boring, it is mostly impressive because of the immense size and detail. See my facebook album for specific things in the temple. These are links to all of my pictures I have taken.
HKUST
Olympic Park
Random Beijing
Forbidden City
Great Wall and Ming Tombs
Summer Palace, Beijing Zoo, Temple of Heaven
One odd thing was on two occasions we had some Chinese people come up and ask to take their picture with us. They would make a peace sign and smile. It was weird.
After about 5 hours exploring the palace we left and headed to the Olympic Park on the subway, where we hoped to find something to eat. For some reason though, as soon as we exited the subway there was nothing insight except the Bird’s nest and the Water Cube. We were very hungry and since the subway is very cheap (2 RMB for anywhere) we headed back in and after asking the subway information desk where we could find something to eat we eventually found a stop with convenient food. We got off the train at this stop and luckily found someone who both spoke English and knew where food was. He led us to a place with duck, and we followed his directions. The three of us shared a whole duck and some other dishes. We had to be shown how to properly eat the duck. You have to take a piece of meat, a piece of skin, a piece of onion like stuff, and a piece of celery, dip them all in a soy dipping sauce and place it in a tortilla like wrap, all with chopsticks.
After dinner we took the subway back to Olympic Park. The buildings looked very cool at night. It was very impressive to know that less than two years ago the Olympics had been held there. The architecture of bird’s nest, the water cube, and the tower was very cool. It was especially cool for me to stand next to the water cube and know that many of the world tickets are held by that pool and will stay that way for a long time. I would have gone into the cube but they had a concert going on inside, so I couldn’t.
Eventually we took the subway back near our hostel and walked the rest of the way, where we quickly went to bed after a long day.
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