Woke up at like 6:30. Hasn’t gotten better yet but maybe tonight will be my night.
http://picasaweb.google.com/angela71/Day3BeijingForbiddenCityWangfujingNightMarket?feat=directlink
Sat and wrote for a long time. Then Jen and Jon got up. I headed to the clubhouse to get on the web for a few. Couldn’t find a proxy site to use for uploading a post to my blog… so I gave up. Plus, my last picasa album did something weird, so I need to eventually fix that.
Today’s plan: drop jen and jon at the airport. Tiananmen Square. Forbidden City. Jingshan Park. Temple of Heaven. With wu a yi as my tour guide. Then wu uncle arrives sometime in the afternoon.
Tiananmen and Forbidden City are right next to each other. We got dropped off on the west side of the Square, near the Mao monument (where Mao’s body is). Walked through the square (to get in, you have to go through a certain opening, and pass through a security metal detector checkpoint). There’s a tall monument for the red army in the center of the square. I remember seeing pics and videos from the incident in the 80s but only vaguely. Tank. Person. People got killed by the government.
The first official gate of Forbidden city (Gu Gong) is actually like the 3rd gate – the first two are on the other side of the Mao monument building. But the big one everyone walks through w/ Mao’s picture on the front is directly across the street from Tiananmen, and you have to go down through a tunnel to cross.
Then you walk through a couple more gates w/ thousands of your closest friends before you buy tickets to get in (60RMB). This place is huge. Tons of gates (men) and halls (dian) all in a row. It’s where the Ming and Qing dynasty emperors (24 of them) lived, worked, played, from 1404 – 1911 or so. You can really imagine how everything was beyond extravagant there during that time. Doors are all decorated w/ intricately patterned copper. Huge stone carvings made of one big piece of marble. Big bronze decorative lion statues. Giant practical vats for water (in case the burning incense that was everywhere happened to catch any of the wooden gates/halls on fire). Ornate sitting areas with fine furnishings. Housing for 3000 concubines. Places for the emperor’s ministers to have offices. Places for celebrations. A garden next door. Etc.
Everything is organized basically in a line (at least the gates and halls, w/ other buildings for ministers and others off to the sides that now hold artifacts and historical stuff), so you start from the beginning and walk all the way through. At the end, the palace leads into Jingshan Park, which has a big observatory, prayer place w/ giant buddha on the top of the hill in the back. We walked up there, but then Wu a yi stayed at the base of the pagoda to wait for me to go up and take a look. Beautiful views of the forbidden city, white pagoda, and the city. So hazy though, as is typical of Beijing. So not so bright and easy to see things. But still an amazing view.
As I walked down, I suddenly was struck by a sadness that I was here seeing this stuff by myself. I mean wu a yi was there, but she wasn’t at the top of the hill with me at that moment. It was the first time I’d been standing by myself since I started the trip, so I guess it made some sense. But then I was a little angry at myself for feeling that way b/c I really do like traveling on my own and visiting new places and having time to think and such. And it wasn’t like I was alone at all, Wu a yi was kind enough to bring me to a ton of places that she’d already been to several times. And I was with 500 million of my closest friends touring the sights of Beijing. =)
Lunch we went to this mall and had beef noodle soup (niu rou mian) plus other snacks. A Taiwanese restaurant that is doing great in china. But they didn’t have the special duck eggs Wu a yi wanted (supposed to be soft and squishy inside but hard on the outside).
No Tiantan (temple of heaven) b/c xiao wang needed to go pick wu uncle up, then go back to his office so he could take the other drivers home.
When we waited for wu uncle to get there, I did a short workout outside the apt. I’ll call them the limited space limited time tennis court plyo agility working hard in the heat drills. trying to focus on strength, change of direction in unideal conditions (a smooth tennis court), and some things to work out my hamstrings.
When Wu uncle got there, we had dinner. Wu a yi made it, and it was awesome. Fried fish. Some different kind of bamboo (jiao bai shun) kind of like eggplant but crunchy like bamboo. Chinese sausage. Squid. Soup broth made with many things including this Chinese herb that’s like a worm that digs into the ground and then sprouts a plant… can’t remember name (maybe starts w/ cy… ends w/ …leps).
After, we went to Wangfujing, which has a big shopping center as well as a night food market. We walked down the street and first Wu uncle wanted to get this stick of grape tomatoes coated w/ sugar. I tried one despite how full I was. Yummy. Then we continued down the stretch of storefronts to the lantern-lit area w/ the crazy food. Pics are best for this. Check out my Day 3 picasa album here. We tried some goat gizzard, but that was possibly the tamest thing they have. Most notably, beef stomach, goat kidneys, silk worm cocoons, bee cocoons, big beetles, scorpions, locusts, cicadas, starfish, snakes, sheep penis (vendor was yelling, “Do you like penis?” … Nice). Most people who know me know that I will eat just about anything. The first 3 on the list were prob the likeliest candidates for me to try, but I really wasn’t feeling it. Got a lot of pics though.
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