Hello again! Get ready, cause this is a long one because Beijing was incredible!!!
On Tuesday we headed out at 7am and started the tour at the Summer Palace. The palace was built for the Empress Dowager Cixi (pronounced seesee) of the Qing (pronounced Ching) dynasty. The emperor died when his son was only 8 yrs old and he was too young to rule the entire empire so instead, his mother did even after he was old enough to do so. She effectively ruled China for over 40 years. The Ming and the Qing dynasties were the last two Chinese dynasties. The Qings defeated the Mings after reigning over China for 276 years.
When the Qings came into power they moved the capital from Nanjing (south capital) to Beijing (north capital). However, Beijing gets very hot during the summer (my two days there were both just below 100!) so the Summer Palace was built for Empress Cixi to stay during the hot summer months. A massive manmade lake called Kunming Lake was built to act as a natural air conditioner and worked beautifully - it was actually comfortable walking around! I thought the coolest part was the turtle. Turtles symbolize longevity in Chinese culture and they are very common in artwork, stories, etc. Here, there was an octagonal pagoda connected to a small island by a long bridge and it is supposed to symbolize a turtle - the pagoda is the head, the bridge is the neck, and the island is the body. Every building, walkway, pagoda, and boat was elaborately painted with traditional art from the south of China because Cixi missed home.
After the Summer Palace, we went to a silk factory. We saw the difference between how silk thread is made and how silk for blankets and pillows are made. When a cocoon is made with only 1 larva, the silk is used for thread because you can find the end and unravel the whole cocoon. When a cocoon has 2 larvae it is impossible to untangle the two threads and this silk is much softer and used for blankets and pillows.
The next stop was the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was built 700 years ago as a place for emperors of both the Ming and Qing dynasties to pray to the heavens for good harvest. It is a massive compound with 3 major halls. The main hall, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is at the center and is a triple tiered building. All of the buildings have traditional architecture and do not use any nails. All the buildings have red walls, blue paintings, and yellow roofs. The red is a traditional Chinese color that symbolizes happiness and good fortune. Blue was the national color during the Qing dynasty (fun fact: qing used to be the Chinese word used to describe the family of colors ranging from green to blue but now they use a different term). Yellow is the royal color and anyone who was not part of the imperial family was forbidden from using it in any way.
After the Temple of Heaven we had a quick but delicious lunch and headed over to Tiananmen Square. Unfortunately the museum is only open for a few hours a day, so we weren't able to go in but we walked through the square toward the first gate to the Forbidden City. The square was the first line of defense to the Chinese equivalent of the White House. The Forbidden City is where the emperor and his family lived as well as where the emperor conducted his business. In total, there are 980 buildings and it covers 180 acres! It is absolutely massive!!! Tiananmen square is followed by a series of large gates that were used for protection. The wide open square is the largest in the world and was intended to prevent there being a surprise attack on the imperial palace. It is called the forbidden city because no one could enter or leave the city without the emperor's permission. In fact, after marrying the emperor, his wives were never allowed to step outside the walls of the palace again.
We ended our very long day with a traditional Chinese foot massage in Jingshen Park. Here, we soaked our feet in tea for about 5 min then the students in training came in to give us our massage. While they did that, we each had our palm read by a traditional Chinese doctor who only read our palm, took our pulse, asked our age, and looked at our tongues and told us about our health. He said something about my liver but the translation wasn't great so I'm not exactly sure what he was trying to say! After that, we went back to the hotel. We spent about 11 hours our in Beijing and walked more than 10 miles so I went to bed early and slept like a rock.
The next morning we got up bright an early and headed out to the Great Wall of China. There are 8 sections of the wall in Beijing and 2 are major tourist attractions. Badaling is the most popular (read crowded) section among Chinese tourists. Interestingly, Beijing has a TON of tourists but the majority of them are Chinese tourists. Mutiyanu is the longest restored section of the wall but is further from the Beijing city center. We went to the Badaling section. You no longer have to walk up to wall because they have built an incredibly large and fast cable car that cuts the trek up to the wall from ~3 hrs down to less than 5 minutes. When we got to the top of the wall our guide told us we had about 2 hours to explore then told us the meeting place down at the bottom of the mountain.
The wall was awesome in the truest sense of the word. I don't know if I have been more in awe of anything in my life. You can read about how you can see it from space and hear about how people say it goes on and on and on but you can't really fathom how great it really is unless you see it. I still can't wrap my head around how long it is. The wall was built to protect China from the nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe and various walls were being constructed as early as the 7th century BC. However, the majority of the remaining wall is from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).
I climbed to the highest part of the Badaling section and in both the East and West directions, the wall extended well past what I could see. When you're climbing up the wall you were either climbing up very large and unevenly spaced steps or up ramp-like incline that was at least a 45 degree angle. I had to lean so far forward that my knees hit my torso every time I took a step to avoid falling over backwards. It was certainly a workout! Every time I stopped to enjoy the view and take a breather it was as if I stopped for a photo shoot. Like I said, most of the tourists are Chinese tourists and many of them are amazed by seeing a blonde, curly haired, blue-eyed, white person and ask to take pictures of me and with me. It was a little weird at first but I got used to it and had fun with it and made a lot of little kids very happy.
After I made it to the top, it was just about time to start making my way back to meet up with my tour guide and group. I made some friends the day before on my tour who had gone to the great wall the previous day and they told me I have to take the toboggan down - it was the same price as the cable car and the view was well worth the wait. So I decided to try to find this toboggan. I kept seeing signs for a "sliding car" and figured that must be it. When I got there, the sign said the price was 80 yuan - not the same price as the cable car but pretty cheap so I got in line. It was basically a roller coaster that goes down the side of the mountain. It was a bit rickety but the view was pretty awesome. What I didn't realize was that the cable car went up and down the south side of the mountain and the sliding car went down the north side of the mountain. When I got to the bottom I knew something wasn't right because nothing looked familiar. Luckily, I still had my ticket for the cable car which had a picture of the cable car on it so I could go up to people and point and they pointed me in the right direction. When I got down as far as I could go, I still wasn't where I needed to be and only had 10 min until the meet up time and at this point I started to get a little nervous. I found a map that of course was in Chinese so I had a hard time figuring out where I was when a man who spoke enough English came over to help me. I asked him how to get back to the cable car and he just kept saying "too far, too far!" and finally I asked him how I was supposed to get back and he said "taxi".
At this point, I only had about 5 min until the meeting time and knew this was really my only option so I got in his car. We started driving but I still didn't realize we were on the wrong side of the mountain so the way he was driving didn't make sense to me and and we had been driving for almost 10 min so I started getting even more nervous. I have never been so glad to have a cell phone. This is when I decided to call my tour company to get the cell phone number of my tour guide. I called her and told her I went the wrong way and was taking a taxi back to the entrance then she asked to talk with my driver. The talked for a while and came up a plan. Turns out, the cab driver couldn't go in the same entrance our tour bus went in so he basically dropped me on the side of the road and a few minutes later my bus pulled up, picked me up, and we were on our way.
Our next stop was the jade factory where we got to see how they cut, engrave, and polish all different types of jade. I didn't know this but just like emeralds, sapphires, and rubies are all the same rock with different impurities that give them different colors, jade comes in different colors too - the traditional green, blues, reds, oranges, blacks, whites and so many more! Jade is important in Chinese culture and symbolizes longevity because it is a very hard stone that lasts for generations. Because of this, traditionally girls are often given a jade bangle for their wedding to give luck to their marriage. Now it is more common to see all girls, whether they are married or not, wearing jade bangles.
After lunch, we went to the Ming Tombs. There were 16 Ming emperors and 13 of them are buried in the same area. The area was chosen because it is the best place for feng shui - 3 sides of the area are surrounded by mountains. The first Ming emperor is buried near the original capital of China, Nanjing, the second emperor was believed to be murdered by the third emperor and he disappeared, and the third emperor was denied an imperial burial but the last 13 Ming emperors are buried at the site. Each one has his own mausoleum but only 3 are open to the public and we went to the first and largest one built in the area called Changling for Emperor Zhu Di, or Emperor Yongle. It is a massive area covered almost 30 acres of land.
Our last stop in Beijing was a traditional Chinese tea house. There we tasted 5 different kinds of tea and learned about the various health benefits of the different types of tea - green tea, oolong tea, black tea, pu'er tea, fruit tea, white tea and so many more! It was very delicious but very overpriced so I didn't buy any. They were selling a box of tea for 200 yuan - that's more than $30 USD!!
After the tea house, I went back to the hotel and finally got to sleep in! I had dim sum for breakfast then headed to the train station to go back to Shanghai. I got back just in time because a typhoon is coming through and many trains today and tomorrow are cancelled. Last night it was raining, but not too hard that Jeanette and I couldn't go out. We walked down to the market to get dessert after dinner. We tasted a bunch of different dried fruits. They're prepared a little differently and taste almost like they're cured. They are sweet but make your mouth pucker at the same time! We ended up buying some dried mango and some plums or apricots, we're not quite sure. Then we got dessert! We had thai sweet rice with mango and vanilla cream - it was so good!!! We headed back to the apartment and stayed up really late looking through old photo albums with Ronnie.
This morning we slept in late and are going to be staying in because of the typhoon.
Hope all is well!!
M
PS
Congratulations on making it to the end of this email! I guess this is what happens when I wait 4 days to send an update!
