Day 7 of our Trip

So today is Tuesday in Beijing. We are still at our hotel at Beijing Normal University. Staying here on the campus of this university has been a great experience. It is also a bit of an oasis from the city as most people travel the camput on foot or by bicycle.

The hotel is great, charging $30 per night for a room with double beds, a TV, A/C and a bathroom with a shower and lots of hot water! They have an internet area, two restaurants, and a shop. Thanks to some university students that we were introduced to we have learned how to get to the center of the city by bus and subway. We have also managed to take taxis with the aid of a map. So we are doing OK. Ordering meals at restaurants is still a bit of a challenge but some how we manage to get some food on the table.

So what have we seen in Beijing? I wrote about the Summer Palace which was great. After Jesse left (last Friday) we went to the Temple of Heaven on Saturday. We took the Subway and then were walking towards the south gate. It was quite hot so we decided to take a bus the rest of the way. Thinking we had read our map correctly, we hopped on a 36....except it was going in the wrong direction. We road it to the end and then crossed the street and came back. We finally made it after a bit of a detour. The temple area and grounds were great - the architecture and colors are amazing. Most of the buildings were originally built in the Ming dinasty but were rebuilt in the Qing dinasty...they are very well preserved. There is one area that is surrounded by a wall called the Echo Wall. Tom and I go to opposite sides of the compound and shout towards the wall....we can actually hear each other pretty clearly despite being so far away from each other. After we leave the temple we start heading home as we have a dinner date with Wei, a business friend of Steve Temme's. He picks us up at 5pm with his wife and daughter. He very kindly takes us to a Beijing Duck house. It is really great food. We get back to the hotel around 8:30pm and spend some time reading before hitting the sack.

The next day (Sunday) we get up very early as we had booked a tour to part of the Great Wall. We go to the hotel where the tour starts in down town Beijing, arriving there at 7am! We are told that they cannot find our reservation....we are very disappointed but book for the next day. So we have breakfast and decide to go to the Forbidden City instead. We get there just after opening time and spend 4 hours or more walking around as many of the open buildings as we can. Many of the buildings on the west side of the city are closed for rennovation but there are still many things to see. What an incredible place. It is hard to imagine what it was like when this city was being used. It really is huge. All the ceremony of living there must have been quite something. We especially enjoy some of the quieter places on the east side of the compound. The gardens are pretty amazing as well. After visiting the city we walk up the Jingshan hill in a park across the street from the Forbidden City. It is a man made hills - made with the ruins of the Mongol city that once stood there as well as diggings from the moat around the Forbidden City. At the top of the hill is a buddist temple with an amazing view of the Forbidden City. We walk down the back side of this hill to have a picnic lunch. The park is pretty crowded. Sunny sundays seem to be times when many people from Beijing come to the parks. Many people were singing and playing chinese instruments. It was amazing to hear all the different sounds. After lunch we visted Behai Park across the street where many people had rented boats on the lake there. We took a ferry across the lake and then left the park, falling into a near by bar for a beer - unfortunately it was just at the beginning of the Back Lakes tourist area and we paid 35 yuan for a small beer (the large ones cost 4 or 5 yuan at restaurants near our hotel!)...oh well it tasted good. With our new cell phone, we text messaged one of the university students for a suggestion for dinner. She wrote us back with the Chinese characters and we set off to try and find it. We walked quite a ways, asking people and using the map....amuzingly we ended up almost where we started but on the other side of the lake! At least we worked up an appetite! :-)

Yesterday we finally got our tour of the Great Wall. We went to a rather remote part of the wall about 110k outside the city. It took us about 3 hours by bus to get there. We met a great couple on the bus from San Fran - they had just gotten married and were traveling for 6 months as a honeymoon! Pretty great. The drive to the hike was interesting - we passed a lot of farms where they were growing corn, applies, and pears. About 2 hours out we came to a rather strange site...a brand new city...it seemed like the city (Mi Yuan) was just created. All the buildings were new, some not even occupied...no sign of an old city was in evidence...but it was bustling away so people were living there....it just seemed strange that everything was so new. We were dropped off by the side of the road where some villagers met us. They guided us through there small village up the trail to the area of the wall where we would hike 10k. They day was beautiful and here once again I had the feeling that we had truly arrived in China - we were on the great wall! Parts of the wall were renovated but other parts were a bit broken down - still it was amazing and so great that we had a sunny day. I will try to see if I can get some pictures loaded at a later time. We hiked from about 10:30 - 3pm, stopping along the way to view the sites and have snacks. We met the bus at the Simitai Gate to the wall. What an incredible experience! We arrived back in Beijing around 7pm and then met two of the university students (Fang and Liwel) for dinner once we got back to the campus.

Today we decided to sleep in, eat breakfast in our room with some of the supplies left over from our picnics. Fang then took us to an agency to book our train tickets to Datong. We have decided to leave on Thursday (Sept. 23). Jesse will come back from Tianjin that morning and will meet us to go on for another week. We plan to visit Datong, then Pingyao, and Xian. Jesse has a friend in Xian who we will meet up with and then Jesse will go home from there. When we leave Xian we plan to go to Chengdu - the day we leave will mark the start of the national holiday.

So far the experience has been great! Everyone is very friendly. We have gotten a lot of help. We are looking foward to the next experience outside of Beijing. We still hope to visit the Qing tombs before we leave here though - maybe tomorrow.

Cheers for now.