CHINA-MRS. GISH HAS LANDED

Hello Beijing, my first stop on a 21 day trip! I flew into Beijing on a 13 hour flight from San Francisco. I watched 2 movies and then slept the rest of the time.

When I landed it was night time there, so all I could see were miles of lights on the tall buildings and streets.

My hotel, the Mariott, was a hi-rise too, so I had a good view of the area in the daylight. I was too excited to sleep much that night.

TOURING BEIJING

It was our first offical day in Beijing and I was anxious to meet the other 16 people in my tour group. If you look carefully at this picture you will see that many of these people are of Indian heritage. The older people immigrated from India over 40 years ago to work in Flint, Michigan. Their children, grandchildren and their friends in the picture all live in Las Vegas. The other couple is from Austin, Texas. When you travel you get to know many interesting people!!
We boarded our bus early in the morning to explore this city and the countryside. Beijing(also called Peking) is the capital of China and one of the 4 Great Ancient Capitals of China. They estimate that 22 million people live in and around it!!! For thousands of years different Emperors have ruled this area and built many amazing palaces, temples and parks. We first rode to Tian'an men Square, which used to be the main entrance to the imperial palace, but in modern days massive monuments and halls have been built to honor New China.

It was raining pretty heavily so we didn't spend much time there but instead hurried through the high walls into the Forbidden City. It is the largest palatial complex in the world with 980 buildings and the emperors lived there from 1368-1911. The wooden buildings are all red with intricate paintings on them in gold, blue, green and black. The roofs are sloping yellow(color of emperors)tiles with different bird and animal statues on them. They all have special meanings because the Chinese are very superstitious. We walked through the large ceremonial courtyard and up the ramp to see the Hall of Supreme Harmony(98 feet tall)

where the emperors held court-there was an enormous pillar with a dragon wound around it. I think this was to scare people! He also had 2 other halls with thrones in them for all his ceremonies.
Then we went into the Inner Court, which is where the emperor and his family lived and into their lovely garden. It certainly was an enormous place for one family to live in!!
The Forbidden City is now a huge museum filled with 50,000 paintings, 340,000 pieces of ceramics and porcelain, 10,000 bronze pieces, 30,000 jade pieces and over 1,000 mechanical timepieces(they invented clocks)--unfortunately I only had time to see a few.

Then we rushed through the rain to get into rickshaw carriages that took us to lunch in the Hutong(ancient) part of the city where we had a homemade Chinese lunch.

After lunch we went to the Beijing Zoo to see the Giant Pandas. Too bad they were having their afternoon naps!

I was ready for a nap too because there is a 13 hour time difference between Chicago and China, which means that at 3 in the afternoon there it was 4 in the morning in Chicago--yawn.....

PS-I'm including a picture of our dinner table because this is the way many Chinese restaurants serve large groups of people. Most of our meals were served like this, on a rotating glass plate, and generally included 10-14 dishes! They served watermelon for desert, so when it came out we knew that the meal was finally over!

THE GREAT WALL AT BADALING

With the time difference not many of us got very much sleep that night, but we were excited to get up to ride to the Great Wall at Badaling. Now the Wall is the longest man-made structure in the world at over 3,500 miles long, so we only got to see a very small portion that had been restored. After all, it was built more than 2,700 years ago to protect their territory, and, although it was built of brick and stone, it is falling apart. It seems remarkable to me that they built it without machinery, but with millions of slaves I guess that you can accomplish a lot(just ask the Egyptians).
Fortunately it was a clear and cool day, otherwise we would not have been able to walk on those steep and slippery stones. At one point I had to sit down and scoot down the steps because it was so steep! The views from the 25foot tall walls were incredible-you could see for miles and miles(which is what the guards wanted to do). It is so big that it can be seen from the space shuttle.
We were pretty exhausted from hiking up and down the Wall, but there was still so much to see.
Our next stop was to see the Olympic site and of course we wanted to see the Bird's Nest Stadium and the Cube Pool. We couldn't get inside but enjoyed the walk around.
We found the energy to tour the grounds of the Emperor's Summer Palace at Kunming Lake.

XI'AN-HOME OF THE TERRA COTTA WARRIORS!

Xi'an is now known for its Terra Cotta Warriors, but historically it is one of the oldest cities in China and one of the 4 Great Ancient Capitals(Beijing was another one). Over 8 million people live in the area. We stayed in the ancient walled city-but almost everything had been rebuilt in the Tang style and there was even an underground mall under the city Bell Tower.
Nearby was the 1,000 year old Wild Goose Pagoda and Buddhist Temple that we visited.
That night we went to the Dumpling Banquet and Tang Dynasty Show. The dumplings came out in the shape of what was inside them-this is a fish dumpling. There were graceful and beautiful dances performed that they said were from the ancient times.
The next day we rode out to modern China's greatest archaeological discovery-the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses, which silently guarded the tomb of China's 1st Emperor for over 2,000 years! In 1974 a local farmer uncovered the first of 3 massive earth and timber vaults, while digging a well. They built special air conditioned buildings over each of these vaults to help preserve them.
So far they have uncovered over 6000 life sized warriors, horses and chariots but still have many unopened areas. Most of the statues are broken because of the weight of the dirt and have to be put back together-like giant puzzles. The Emperor's tomb(covered by a mound) is nearby, but they don't want to open it up because of the "evil spirits".

It was amazing to think how old this area was considering that now it is known for its universities, hi-tech and software industries, telecommunications companies and aerospace industry----you might want to look for a job there someday!

HANGZHOU

We took a short flight to Hangzhou, which is a city built around West Lake and set in the mountains. Sound beautiful? Well, it is famous for its natural beauty and historical and cultural heritages. The gardens surrounding West Lake were spectacular-and very crowded(1.7 million people live there). We took a boat ride around the lake, but it was foggy that day and my pictures didn't turn out very well. Walking around the city was fun and we laughed when we saw this "children's buddha".
That night we went to an unusual show on the Lake. And, it was ON the Lake, meaning that there were stages underwater so that when the performers came out it looked like they were walking on water! There were over 300 performers telling the story of a couple that fell in love....but had a sad -but beautiful, ending.

The next day we visited another thing that this area is renown for-its tea fields. We went into the Dragon Well Tea Factory to learn how they pick, dry and package their green tea and it was so good(and good for you) that I bought a lot!