China Continued

After our adventures on the Great Wall and such, we ended our evening with an awesome Chinese Circus show.  They are amazing! It's no wonder they're so good at the Olympic gymnastic events when this is what they do in their spare time!  They were bending in all sorts of strange ways, balancing on free-standing ladders, playing basketball with their feet, and for the grand finale they had five motorcycles in a tiny cage going up and down and all different directions without crashing into each other.  Really impressive!

The next day we went to the (in)famous Tiananmen Square.  It is the largest square in the world, according to our tour guide, and has recently experienced some very violent events.   After exploring the square a bit, we headed into the famed Forbidden City where all the government action used to take place.  The crowds were huge, despite the fact that we were there at 8:00AM.  Thousands of tourists come everyday to the giant palace city, Chinese and international alike.  That weekend especially was crowded with national tourists, as we were there on the weekend leading up to May 1, a national holiday.  For some of those people from small Chinese villages, this was their first time to Beijing and thus their first time to see foreigners.  We made this discovery as we were standing around admiring the buildings, and one mother shoved her daughter towards Jon and I to take our picture with her daughter.  Neither the daughter nor Jon and I, nor our guide knew quite what to do, and we all stood there awkwardly, unsure what we were supposed to do, while the mother just kept smiling and staring at us and motioning to us with her camera.  Strange...

 As I said earlier, China is like Korea, but more.  The Forbidden City proved this again.  We would pass through one gateway and come to an open square surrounded by massive government buildings and say "Wow! It's so big!" And then we'd keep walking, through another gate further back and come to a bigger square, with bigger buildings and say "WOW! It's even bigger!" and ANOTHER gate with BIGGER buildings, and after we did that 4 or 5 times we stopped saying Wow, because we had no words left to say to describe how massive this one.  We just stared.

 It was a bit strange to be in a country that still had such a communist feel to it.  Giant portraits of various leaders in the squares, patriotic flags surrounding the roofs of buildings and in many hands, facebook and other sites blocked, our guide complaining about what the country has come to when people won't even accept a good bribe anymore, haha, it was a weird feeling.  When we asked our guide about voting, he said he didn't like to vote, and then followed that by saying that people in China love their country, seeming to imply that by voting you are showing disloyalty to your country. 

Patriotic Chinese Children

We kept walking through all the buildings, which are now not really in use anymore.  They used to be used for the military, for the emperor to live in, preside over government and military matters, many buildings for his wives and numerous concubines, etc.  Now the military still uses it a little, and has some basketball courts for their amusement, but most of them are out of use.  When the Forbidden City was first opened to tourists in the 70s, the public used to be able to go inside the buildings like you would at Versailles or something.  But a few years later that was discontinued because people were being so destructive, and that has continued still today unfortunately. 

After exploring the Forbidden City, we headed out and went to a commission shop we were actually really excited about.  We were going to a tea shop!  Upon arrival we were escorted into our own private little tea booth with someone who worked there.  She told us that there are 3,000 different kinds of Chinese tea, goodness, and we were going to try 5 today.  Most Chinese teas are at least somewhat medicinal, since for many years they didn't have access to Western medicine.  So we tried an oolang black tea (which strangely enough was decaf.  She said unlike English black tea, Chinese black tea is different and doesn't have any caffeine at all), a 'pure' tea which is supposed to be good for your heart (since Chinese people eat so much meat) and weight loss.  We also had a Jasmine tea, which smelled incredible, and my two favorites, a lychee tea mixed with rose, which was naturally extremely sweet and a 5 fruit tea.  The fruit tea was awesome because it was basically made from five different dried fruits and looked like trail mix, and after you made the tea you could just eat the fruit!  She showed us how to properly hold your cup (different for girls and boys), and how to tell if the water is hot enough, and then tried to sell us some :)  Considering how much we drink tea and how long Chinese tea lasts (you can use the same tea leaves 6 or 7 times and get the same potency each time), it was actually really tempting.  Unfortunately we spent all our souvenir money the first day at the silk shop, and this tea was really expensive- about $30 for a small tin.  But oh, I could sure go for some of that lychee tea right about now...

 After the tea shop we went to the Temple of Heaven.  It was beautiful!  This was one of our favorite places of the trip because it was so unique.  It had beautiful gardens and parks surrounding it for one thing, and the other part that was special was the shape of the building.  The main part of the Temple was cylindrical instead of rectangular like most Asian temples we'd seen.  The colors and designs were vivid and detailed and beautiful.  We went back to the same vegetarian restaurant for lunch, which we were happy about, and to a shop of pearls, and after that there was a few hours to kill before we saw our Kung Foo show.  So we got a blizzard :)





The Kung Foo show wasn't really what I expected, but it was really good.  It was more like a Kung Foo drama, showing the story of a little boy seeking the path of Enlightenment through Buddhism and Kung Foo.  Impressively skills those guys had!

The rumors of excessive oil are true

 

 After the show, dinner was to be the famous Peking Duck for Jon and vegetables for me.  We weren't sure what to expect with this whole duck thing, and were making jokes about it in the car on the way there, whether we would be served an entire duck, beak and feet and all.  Luckily we were not, we only ordered half a duck so it came pre-sliced, unlike some tables near us...














It was served with a sauce (which was strange, kind of meaty but sweet), cucumber, onions, and what looked like dumpling dough.  No one told Jon how to eat it at first, so he figured, hey, I'll just make a burrito :)  Then our guide came over and we were afraid he was going to laugh at Jon's duck burrito, but turns out that is how you eat it!  I, on the other hand, had some oil with some vegetables, no joke.  My vegetables were legitimately drown in several inches of oil.  It was sad.  I went through many napkins trying to pat them down, finally asked for some plain rice and had some rice, patted down broccoli, and dumpling dough for my own little burrito. 

 The last day, we had a couple of hours to kill in the morning before our flight left, so we went and checked out one of the few Christian churches, a Catholic cathedral near our hotel.  We couldn't go inside actually, because there was a wedding going on inside and three other brides outside it!  I'm not sure if they all got married in the cathedral or not, our guide said a lot of Chinese people just like old pretty buildings to hang around near and take pictures of.  It's like, they know it's important but they don't really know what to do with it.  So we took some pictures of the outside, made the hour drive back to the airport, the 2 hour flight back to Incheon (with some amazing vegetarian food for lunch on the plane!), and an hour train ride to Seoul where we had to wait an hour for the next bus home.  So we had pizza and smoothies while we waited, and finally caught the 3 1/2 hr bus home to Suncheon, arriving around midnight, ready to start another term .  What a trip!