Day 2

These are some photos taken from the plane just before we landed in Beijing. We actually flew north into Canada first and then went west over the southern part of Alaska, Siberia (Russia), Mongolia, and came in from the north into Beijing (about 13 hours total).
The journey getting to Beijing was a little rough in that we had a 6 hour layover in Chicago, were cramped on the plane (United gives you very little leg room and the seats only slightly recline), and really couldn't see the movie screen as we were in the last row. It made us rethink the decision not to buy a seat for Callan on the way back. Before we landed, the crew - as directed by China law - sprayed the entire cabin for bugs. Strange experience.



The following pictures are from our first day of sightseeing. The first set of photos are all from Tiananmen Square.

The first photo is a sculpture of the 'Peoples's Struggle'.

This next picture is Chris and Ken in front of a memorial to the people of China that died during WWII (20 million).

We just happened upon a news crew here.

This was a little girl posing for her Dad. She went on for a couple of minutes and drew a small crowd.

There's a big Africa-China Summit occuring while we are in town. The whole city is centering around this. Tianamen Square will be closed tomorrow for the African diplomants and on Friday, when we leave, the expressway will be closed and we'll have to take the long way to the airport.

Here we are in front of Tian an Men (Gate of Heavenly Peace). This gate is the largest the Imperial City. The inscription left of Mao reads, "Long Live the People's Republic of China." The inscription right of Mao reads, "Long Live the Great Unity of the Peoples of the World." Mao declared the founding of the People's Republic from atop this gate on Oct. 1, 1949.

We took the fast train down to Tibet to see the Potola Palace. Just kidding. This is a model built in Tianamen Square. I don't know why except maybe to reinforce the fact that Tibet is part of China.

These are pictures taken in the Forbidden City. This is the largest imperial palace in China. It is huge! (861,120 sq yards)

While at Tianamen Square we also visited Chairman Mao's mausoleum. Here Chairman Mao's body is "preserved" and on display. (But you can only see him from the neck up.) It looked kind of fake. Tom, our guide and interpreter, couldn't believe that we wanted to see it. He said we were the first of his tourists that wanted to see it. He kinda scoffed at the idea, but said he would wait for us while we did it. It was interesting to see the older people buy flowers and bow and worship before his statue in the mausoleum. The younger people, rightly so, don't; they don't think of him as a "hero" at all.

After Tianamen Square and the awesome Forbidden City, we took a rickshaw ride around the oldest part of Beijing. We'll post pictures later.

Then we ate lunch at a Chinese family's home. As you will be able to see when we get the pictures posted, we were literally eating in our host's bedroom. (The typical Chinese family home is very, very small.) The food was quite tasty and the wife made a vegetarian meal just for us.

After lunch we visted a Silk Factory. Here we were shown step-by-step the process of making silk from the silk worm eggs to finished product. It was quite an interesting and informative experience, but all designed to get us to buy, which we did. We bought a duvet and a Chinese traditional outfit for Callan (so cute! She can wear it for Chinese New Year!). We also bought her some other stuff there.

After the Silk Factory we visted the Temple of Heaven. It was here that I had my first experience with a public Chinese toilet. It looks like a porcelein trough or ditch (I'll post a picture later). What you do is straddle it and then squat. And you have to supply your own toilet paper. It was quite the new experience.

Anyway, back to the Temple of Heaven. The temple was built at the same time as the Forbidden City in the 1400s. It is a combination park and altar to heaven. Each winter solstice, the Ming and Qing emperors would lead a procession here to perform rites and make sacrifices designed to promote the next year's crops and curry favor from heaven for the general health of the empire. Here you will see the Circular Altar, the Imperial Vault of Heaven, and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. The Circular Altar is the three-tiered marbled terrace with its stones and balustrades organized in mulitples of nine (lucky number by northern Chinese).
The Hall Prayer for Good Harvests is circular with a triple-eaved tiled roof. It was constructed without a single nail.
The Imperial Vault of Heaven was built to store ceremonial stone tablets.

We had quite the long day and were still not recovered from jet lag, so by the time we got back to our hotel at 5:30 we were beat. We were too tired to go eat supper so we went to bed.