The Great Wall was quite the site. To read more about it
click me. It goes on forever. Also, as it goes over mountains, it can be very steep. Climbing up it was very breath-taking.
Ben taking baby-steps.
One segment in the misty morn...
The two yids in Beijing at the Wall.
This is at a park in the center on Beijing. These men are drawing Chinese characters in water with fun looking paint brushes. Apparently, the type of writing they are exhibiting/practicing takes about 10 years to learn.
Here is a beautiful entrance to a Temple. Since we were are Temple'd out, we did not go inside.
Here people are playing/exercising to the new craze in China: Tia Chi Ball. I really need to invent a new craze in which people obsess. The sales from these specialized little rackets and balls must be gold. I just need it to be a short lived phase where I can make a million. Perhaps I can bring Tia Chi Ball to the States. Who's with me?
Here is the big square inside the Forbidden City. It's a little Hazy, but this gives you a sense of the landscape. The Last Emperor was filmed inside here. More importantly, this is where the Emperor's lived and it is "forbidden" because no one else besides the servants were allowed in here. Not even the wives or mothers of the emperors were allowed in the forbidden city. This is because they are "dirty". Silly ancient Chinese.
After a hard morning of walking around, we had a nice little hot pot of Mutton (lamb), beef, tofu, and vegetables. Yep, it looks as good as it what it produced.
Now for the funny/annoying story of the day:
Ben and I went out to dinner with one of his friends. After we were done, we took a cab from her hotel to ours. The usual drill is for us to show our hotel card to the cab driver. This card says in Chinese (Mandarin), "Please take me to (name of hotel)". Well we showed this, and and cabbie signaled that he knew where to take us. After about 2 minutes in the cab, we entered the expressway. This was not the way we came! As we were driving, we had to yell at the driver to stop playing with his cell phone as we almost hit another car. Then, the further we got, we started to express that this was the wrong way. Being that we do not speak Chinese and the driver did not speak English, it was useless. About 10 minutes later and clearly being no where near our hotel, we ended up at the Sheraton. This was not the right place (our hotel is a little more budget).
In short, we got out of the cab, told the driver it was the wrong hotel, had a Sharaton doorman tell him that we were not paying, and we got a new cab.
The whole experience was a bit more dramatic, and a good travel story to pass on.
A note: All pictures will be uploaded when the internet connection is better.
It's funny, most times Beijing looked very clean and like a developed country... and then they have food courts that look dirty like the below.
Ben and I then took an 11 hour train ride to Xian. It was not too bad as we slept most of the time. The few other hours were spent playing Rummy 500 and drinking Chinese whiskey.
I forget what this is, but it looked cool at night.
Our last day in Xian Ben and I went to the Terracotta Warriors. They were by far the highlight of the trip. To read more about them, please click me.
After that excursion, we took a 20 hour train ride to Shanghai. Quite the experience. Lot's of eating, sleeping, and reading took place.
Now I am in Shanghai with most of my Temple IMBA'ers. More on Shanghai later, but in short, there is an air about this city that is filled with social and economic excitement.
