We went to Beijing for 5 days, and it was pretty great! We got to the train station, and realized that the person who bought our tickets goofed, and so I got to sit by myself a few cars down from my family. It actually was pretty nice! I was able to read without little children bothering me every two minutes. Then we got out of the subway station to find that BEIJING HAS BLUE SKIES!!! It was amazing! I have not seen a completely blue sky since we have moved to China, both Nanjing and Shanghai have very smoggy/sometimes cloudy skies, and the most blue you ever see is just little splotches. But the skies were completely blue, and when there were clouds you could tell it was real clouds, not smog :) I could have cried with joy, I really miss the blue skies of day, and the starry skies of night. The night skies aren't that great, but the blue was amazing :)
Walking to the hotel was interesting... It is about twenty minutes to walk there from the subway station. You do a lot of walking in China, like you would any city, but you usually don't have 8 suitcases. My dad had asked my mom if she wanted a car before hand, but 20 minutes did not seem that long until we had to actually walk it. We decided right there and then that we were getting a car to drive us to the train station when we went home.
Crowd at the lowering of the flag
We then went to Tiananmen Square to see them lowering the flag, but the crowd of chinese people was so thick, you really couldn't see anything. My dad kept saying things like "Mikayla do you have your freedom speech already? I think you should do the 'I'll lop off my arm' one" referring to a Shakespeare monologue I competed with at the Cedar City Shakespeare Festival a few years ago. And he would randomly shout out "freedom." We were all hoping no one spoke english, we kind of didn't want to get in trouble about it.
Birds Nest
ducks, ducks, and more ducks
Beijing is really famous for its duck. You cannot go to Beijing without getting duck, so we went to Peking Duck. I'm not a huge fan of duck, occasionally I like it, but I have had some not so great duck in the past so I have a hard time eating it. We did get these really yummy bird nest looking things that had some duck meat in them. a really famous dish is duck tacos, I have had some pretty good ones, and some really awful ones, luckily these ones weren't too horrid. I was lucky enough to get good meat in mine. In the past I have gotten some really fatty pieces and it really ruins your taco. It really is different in the way they prepare and present the food here, the kitchen is has a window in it, so you can look in and see them cooking the chicken, and they just have a rack with ducks hanging from it ready to cook, and then they bring you out a duck (yes your very own duck) and cut it for you right infront of your table, you even get an identification card for your duck, so you can always remember him.
Preparing our duck
We then went to a street market by our hotel, and when you first walk in there is this shop selling scorpions, starfish, and seahorses in a stick. . . yum. . . My dad obviously had to try one, and Brannon being a little "mini me" tried one too, and as a big surprise to everyone else Marissa tried one too! She is probably the most paranoid person in the world, she is afraid of everything, and makes sure everyone knows. For years she wouldn't ride on elevators or escalators without completely losing it, and if we were driving past a semi on the freeway Marissa would be having a panic attack in backseat, just to name a few of her fears. Here in china she has been pretty fearless. It has been a real shock to everyone. Everyone else was too afraid to try scorpions then. We did all get candied fruit on a stick though, that is one of my favorite street foods, my favorite is strawberry, but I don't think it is in season right now, so you can't find that. They had a bunch of other stuff there too, so my dad bartered so we could get the best prices for everything. It is great having a dad that speaks chinese and knows how to barter because they often rip off foreigners. Then as we were walking home, we saw these guys doing some street dancing, and it was pretty entertaining!
Great Wall
The Next day we were off the great wall! We rode there in my dream car, a 14-seater van (no joke, I love big ghetto vans for some reason). As you walk up to the tram you walk through this street market, and it is kind of intimidating because it is quite steep, and you are thinking "if this is how steep the pre-trail is, I can only imagine how steep the actual thing is. Then you go in the tram, and it is crazy to see how high you are climbing, I am just glad we go to ride the tram instead of walking. My dad kept telling us "Mulan had to walk this whole way." He never realized, no matter how much we told him, that Mulan never travels to the great wall in the movie.
When you get up there, you can see the wall climbing the mountain, on both sides, off into the distance. It was an amazing sight. I can see why it is one of the 7 wonders of the world. I am sure my dad loved it, how many people get to say they have climbed the great wall for their birthday? We tried to sing my dad "happy birthday" in chinese, but instead we wished him a hot birth. . . not quite the same thing, I think we might need to practice our pronunciation and tones just a bit more!
Alpine Slide
My dad wanted to hike up the left side, and then back down and then go on the right side, which is where we had to go to get back down, but we ended up not doing that, and we are all glad of that, even before we got to the alpine slide to go down we were all way past the point of just glistening. Beijing is not nearly has hot and humid as Nanjing, but it is still way more humid than us Utahns are used to. I was glad to be able to get back to the hotel that night and take a shower. I am glad though that it wasn't as bad as Nanjing is, we would have been dead before we even started. To get down we got to go on an alpine slide, which was tons of fun! except Tiana was wearing the big backpack thing we had to carry Declan in, and she had her arms awkwardly underneath her legs, so she couldn't go very fast, and we were all bright enough to put Tiana in the very front, obviously. So we were all going as slow as snails, and yelling at Tiana to go faster so we wouldn't run into the person infront of us. Then when we got down
Chinese picture people
there are these guys in costumes so you can get your picture with them, but then you have to pay for the pictures. They don't tell you about the fee before hand, and they ambush you as soon as you get down the hill, but hey at least we got some good pictures! Then we obviously had to do some more shopping! I love going to all the street markets with my dad bartering because we can get great deals, even if I could speak the language I don't thing I would be very good at it.
We had lunch at Subway, which was amazing!! the sandwiches aren't nearly as good here as they are back home, but this was the first time I have seen a Subway since I have moved here, and it was amazing!
Afterwards we went to the Temple of Heaven, but we got there pretty late, so everything was closed, but it was still cool to be able to walk around the trails, it was really pretty. There were a lot of people there just socializing, some people were selling stuff, and others were exercising. It was kind of funny, as you were walking on the paths, we would see people running by, but they would be wearing normal everyday clothes, not any sort of exercising clothing. There was one girl wearing a nice shirt and jean shorts. It made you wonder if they were exercising, or just needed to get somewhere really fast.
We went to a hot pot for dinner that night. A hot pot is basically this pot of boiling broth in the center of your table, and you stick your meat and other stuff in there to cook it. You also have to make your own sauce. . . That was pretty interesting. We had no idea what we were doing, so we just mixed a whole bunch of random stuff together. Luckily, mine didn't turn out too bad. Hot pot wasn't the most amazing thing I have ever had, but it turned out a lot better than I thought it would, and it was a pretty cool experience! There is this guy that does a "noodle dance", that was probably the best part of the meal! It was really amazing.
The next day we went The Forbidden City which was the emperors main palace. As we were walking in there are tons of guides that just walk up to you, and ask if you want a tour of The Forbidden City. We ended up getting a guide, and his name was Jimmy. It actually was good that we had a guide because everything basically looks exactly the same, and even though it is all very beautiful, we would have had no idea what we were looking at without the guide, and he kept us going at a good pace, we would have gone much slower without him, and would not have been able to see everything we wanted to. He told us what all the different buildings were used for, and explained the feng shui of the palace. Jimmy took us to this hidden art gallery that only the tour guides know about, and we were lucky enough to be there the day that the last emperor's nephew was there. He rarely comes, so you are lucky to see him. He doesn't have any sort of title anymore, the government took that away, but he is really famous for calligraphy, so we had him draw the calligraphy for our last name. Pretty sure calligraphy will never be something that I master. My dad can't even read very well, and he has been speaking the language for about 20 years.
Emperor's Boat
7 lion statue
After The Forbidden City we had Jimmy take us to the Summer Palace, which was the palace for the emperor in the summer. We saw the boat for the emperor, and it was this big stone boat, I don't even know how it would float, but it was! Then we took the boat out to an island, and then walked around part of that, and walked over a really cool bridge that had lion statues on it. Each statue was actually comprised of 7 lions, and each one was different. We then took the dragon boat back to the mainland. We didn't see much else in the Summer Palace because by the time we had gotten there it was about dinner time, and we were all exhausted. We aren't used to the amount of walking you have to do in the city, that and hiking the great wall.
Us with Jimmy our guide
After that we went to a Hutong, which is basically a really old chinese neighborhood. Some of the buildings were over 700 years old. It was probably my favorite part of the day. It was amazing, there was just so much history there. Everything had so much character, and a story just waiting to be known. I would have loved to go there and just take pictures, it was all so beautiful in its own way. It was a neat experience to see the way everyone lived there too. They really didn't have much, they didn't even have their own bathrooms they just had a lot of public bathrooms (with squatters), but everyone was so happy and friendly.
chinese pancake shop
Our tour guide Jimmy lives in a nearby Hutong so he showed it to us, and showed us this really great dumpling place. That is one thing that I like about China, going to little dumpling shops like that and eating dumplings. On the way to the dumpling place we found this chinese pancake shop, and they tasted so good! It didn't taste anything like a pancake, it was more like a tortilla, but still it was amazing.
Drinking yogurt
After we ate the dumplings we went to this little shop where they sold soda, yogurt, ice cream, and such. The yogurt they had there are in these little glass jars, and like all the yogurt in China, you drink it instead of eat it. Since this certain kind of yogurt is EVERYWHERE we had to get it. This place even refrigerated it, which was good. A lot of the places didn't look like they refrigerated it, and it looked slightly sketch. There was this exercise park in the middle of the Hutong that we went to. They have them everywhere in China. They have exercise equipment for adults to work off their dinner, but it is really fun to play on too. While we were there my dad bought us some hand-cut noodles that were amazing! Not many people get an experience like that, even if they have been to China. It was all just so great.
The Bus
Jimmy told us that the bus home would be faster than the subway, so we took his advice and took the bus. Yes it was faster, but also about 10X as crowded. The bus we needed to take just happened to be the one that everyone else needed to take, we didn't know if we would make it on, but then we followed the example of everyone else in China, and shoved our way in. at one stop the bus was almost completely full, but quite a few people still needed to get on, and there was one girl that grabbed a hold to the yellow bars on the door almost like if she had a hold of those bars then she could make it onto the bus. They had to push the button to close the doors multiple times before it finally shut on her and all the other people that had crammed in. They didn't even pick anyone else up at the next stop because it was so full.
That day everyone that had not had a scorpion the day before decided that we had to have one, how many people can say they have eaten a scorpion? So of course we went back to the street market, and all ate a scorpion, it really didn't taste too bad, but the legs and stuff kind of get stuck in your throat and mouth. It took a while to get it completely down because of that. My dad kept quoting a saying "You are not a man until you have climbed The Great Wall of China." We also added, and have eaten a scorpion, so we are all men know. Trust me, it works. Trevon told me right after eating scorpions, "I want to eat another scorpion! It makes me feel like a real man, like Fa Mulan!" so if Mulan is a real man to my 6 year-old brother, then I can be a real man too.
The Beijing Branch was a very interesting experience, we left kind of late for church, plus we didn't take into account the time it would take to run from subway to subway (we only had 6 subway stops, but we had two subway changes, so we had to ride a total of 3 Subways to church) so we got there about 30 minutes late, and sat in the Foyer. But it was the weirdest thing! the building (well floor of the building) was completely permanent! There was a bulletin board with all the happenings in the ward, and placards for the different class rooms just like in a normal building!!! and there were 200 something members!! It was amazing!! our branch in Nanjing only has about 20 members, and nothing is permanent at all, we have 3 rooms total to meet in, and one storage closet to put everything in. Our rooms are used for different things all week long, so every Sunday we have take everything out of the closet and then put it back it. Our branch also only meets for 2 hours right now because there isn't enough members in the summer to have the full 3 hours. And the branch in Beijing has YOUNG MEN!!! our branch has one young man, but he only speaks chinese, and rarely comes. the young women's here only has 5 girls, and my two sisters and I make up 3 of the 5. It was sooo weird to go to church there because it was so normal! other than the fact that there wasn't a young women's leader there that week, so one of the girls kind of did like a 15 minute lesson, and then we talked the whole time. I also got to meet my seminary teacher! because there are so few members, and we all live so far away, seminary is done over phone (or you can do independent study) every morning before school. The class only has about 10 kids, and other than the one girl in my ward who is old enough for seminary, I might never meet any of the kids in my class. It definitely will be different! I am so thankful that I will have a seminary class though! I know we would try with independent study, but without someone pushing me, I know I could easily fall behind.
Trevon eating a 1 RMB popsicle
They sell these popsicles all over Beijing that are just 1 RMB, so of course we bought them all the time. However, it was illegal for them to be selling them, so if a cop came they scattered. They tasted really good, and for 1 RMB why wouldn't you buy it! my dad asked one of them what would happen if they got caught and they said they could be fined 50-100 RMB which is really all they would make in a day.
Beijing really was a great trip! We saw some amazing stuff, and I really had a great time. The only thing that could make it better would be if this was actually just a short trip, and I would be back for school in the fall. Oh well a girl can dream!
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