Beijing+Day+1

**Beijing Day 1: Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Temple of Heaven**

Besides the photos I've posted here, I've added all of yesterday's photos, so you can see our day before you read about it. Check it out: [|China 1 Beijing Forbidden City].

From Katie:

 Collapsing onto our rock-hard beds may have been a painful experience, but that didn't stop any of us from passing out within moments. Vanessa, for example, fell asleep, woke up when Carmelle started removing her glasses, and fell asleep before Carmelle finished taking them off of her. Relearning how to use the higher functions of my brain [which I’d lost yesterday in my sleep-deprived, zombie-like state] was good fun to do first thing in the morning. Breakfast was an interesting mixture of Western and Chinese foods- there were eggs and muffins and French toast next to Korean pickles, fried noodles, and dim sum. Pretty much everything was delicious!  We piled on to our tour bus at 9:00, and drove through the fascinating streets of Beijing. Incessant horn honking adds some nice audio enhancement to the visual display of Audis and sports cars zooming by loaded bicycles and squashed-looking vans and three-wheeled motorbikes with little passenger compartments on the back, all changing lanes apparently at random.

 Our first stop of the day was at Tiananmen Square, and it was there that we got the first hint that WE ARE NOT NORMAL HERE. In a sea of Chinese people, who all tend to have straight black hair and are of normal height, the blonde hair of myself and Kathryn, the curls of Kristen, and the height of Vanessa were attracting a lot of stares. More than just stares, in fact; a group of teenaged guys asked Vanessa [via miming] if they could have a picture with her, and she obliged. They then got a picture with me; a middle aged lady holding a baby got in on this picture as well. They weren’t being creepy really; it was kinda like we were celebrities.

 From the square it was a short walk [or it would have been, if we weren’t part of a huge crowd and perpetually accosted by people trying to sell us stuff] to the Forbidden City. This was absolutely outstanding. The color and intricacy of the architecture, the size and extent of the palaces, the exquisite detail in the paintings and statues that adorn the place--words cannot capture it, and pictures are a poor substitute for the real thing. For me what was really interesting was to imagine it as it was hundreds of years ago, without the throngs of tourists, back when it was a political and defensive structure rather than another mark to check on the “Sights to See” list. I pictured an official or a concubine or even the Emperor himself wandering the very grounds on which I stepped, admiring the majesty of the buildings in silence, back when their blue paint would have mirrored a sky the same hue before smog covered it.

 The smog here is truly remarkable--the visibility is terrible, even buildings only a few hundred meters away look blurred. Sadly, however, it does nothing to block the heat of the sun. It was in the 90’s today at least, and the humidity makes it ten times worse. Our clothes and bags stuck to our skin, and having water on you at all times became a necessity. Don’t worry mom, I wore plenty of sunscreen!

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While we were leaving the Forbidden City, we walked down a street filled with vendors and beggars. The beggars here are very different from the ones at home; in Boston, usually the people we see seem at least physically healthy. A bit dirty and bedraggled, perhaps, but not disabled. Here, though- we passed people who were blind, missing arms, horribly burned, weirdly contorted, hunchbacked and missing parts of his limbs. It was horrifying. I just felt so terrible for them- I don’t know what China’s policies on disability are, but I think that they need some improvement. I know that ours are far from perfect, but we have to be helping people somehow, right? ======

We ate lunch at a restaurant where a wedding was being held. We had our own semi-private room, but we walked by the wedding party to get to it. Our arrival was greeted by waves and “Hello!”s, and when we waved back and said “Ni Hao,” they burst out laughing and waved even more enthusiastically. A lot of them were smoking--it was weird to be in a restaurant where that was still allowed. They appeared to be quite fond of us--our exits to use the bathroom were accompanied by waves, greetings, and the occasional wolf whistle. Speaking of bathrooms… it’s not that they’re dirtier or grosser than our public restrooms, it’s just that the toilets are quite literally holes in the ground. They are toilets that have no seat, that are inside the floor. And you need to bring your own toilet paper. It’s a bit freaky.

After lunch we headed out to a silk factory, which was cool. It wasn’t a massive factory, just a small little place, but we got to see the different developmental stages of the silk worm, from tiny to massive to cocoon to moth. The cocoon stage is where the silk is harvested; they basically hook up an end of the thread from the cocoon and spin it around a wheel to unravel the whole thing. And thus they get silk thread! We then got to shop, the silk pillows and comforters were absolutely amazing to feel, and the different clothes and scarves were beautiful. Some of you readers can probably await some souvenirs from there.

We next went to the Temple of Heaven, another beautiful historical site. This is where the emperor would go to pray to the God of Heaven for a good harvest. We walked through the outer park first, which was a beautiful community place. There was a court nearby in which there were a lot of older couples dancing together, and there were families and friends scattered around beneath the trees. It looked like a really nice place to go. We then passed through another gate, and were confronted by the first splendid building in the sprawling temple. Again, my words can do no justice to the majesty we encountered; just enjoy the beauty in the pictures. The Wall of Echoes and the clapping stones were also really cool; these no longer work, since the wall has been scratched and cannot any longer carry a smooth echo. This didn’t stop some random girl from hopping the fence with her umbrella and whispering right against the wall. Speaking of umbrellas, an awful lot of people carry them here--the sun is blazing, and the desired skin color is as pale as possible [woohoo!]. They are often very beautiful.

After this we went back to the hotel to clean up. We were all very eager to swim, but unfortunately both the pool and the gym were closed, so we just lazed around in our rooms. We went out to dinner at 5:30, another good Lazy Susan affair, and then we walked over to the “Walking Street,” a street designed solely for pedestrian usage. It was a long, shop-lined street/mall, and we went off in groups to explore it. This was actually one of the most interesting parts of the whole day, in a darker sort of way. A lot of the shops were pretty close to what we’d have in America; the styles were sort of a mixture of Western and Chinese. The people who were shopping there, however, were very different, in a pretty creepy way. As we were discussing meeting times in our big group, this middle-aged guy comes up to within two feet of me, slowly looks me up and down, then just grins and walks away. Carmelle began a tally of the amount of creepy looks that I got in that one hour of shopping. She hit 54 before we got back to the hotel. Oddly, they just glared at her… other girls reported similar stares as well as wolf-whistles, and Greg and Vanessa were accosted by a guy who wanted to bring them to his “Calligraphy Shop.” Even Mr. Dunne had a creepy experience--he was standing alone waiting for us, and just as we approached a girl, probably about 20, came up to him and said seductively “Hey, how are you?” Mr. Dunne looked absolutely horrified; at that very moment we reached him, and the girl saw us and ran off. So, pretty different from what we’d have gotten walking around Faneuil Hall. It was funny, but it was still nice to get back the hotel, where I could research where to buy a burka in peace. We played BS and Chinese poker, and finally fell asleep, exhausted by our very full first day.