We are so lucky to be with them for this tour: because we seem to be getting along really well with them. The youngest person in this tour is Kyle, son of Rosie and Mike. Kyle is an online advertising Manager. Rosie is a retired pediatrician and Mike is an anesthesiologist who retired just last year. Other members of the family are: Lwin (Opthamologist) & Alice (they are the ones who live in England), Eng Eng (works for SFO City and just retired in December 2011) & George (chemical engineer), Terry & Harry, Lain Lain Lee (works for SFO City, husband an orthopedic surgeon who is not on tour but will be joining her later), and Marie (Alice’s sister, Burmese doctor but working for SFO City). Hope we’re not cramping their style. Our tour leader is James and our guide for Beijng is Cherry. She is very knowledgeable about history, but spews lots of propaganda.
First stop is the Temple of Heaven Park. It’s an expansive area with beautiful trees and people everywhere having fun. There some playing a game like hacky-sack using their feet and hands to hit a feather bird back and fourth. We also watched 2 people play with rackets but using tai chi movements to move the ball back and forth. It was so smooth and beautiful and looked like terrific exercise too. I'll be looking for playing partners when I get back...
There were lots of men and women writing water calligraphy on the cement…it was really fun to watch everyone having such a good time.
Of course there were hawkers all over the place selling their wares and some of them got really aggressive. As we walked further into the park, we saw no one doing tai chi as we expected, but there was a huge group of men and women doing line dancing to Chinese music. We were so surprised…but they looked so serious, no one was smiling, but they really knew the steps. We really enjoyed this stop!
Note: my first opportunity to use a squat toilet was here. Gag, cough, cough! Well, it wasn’t a horrible experience, and I would have liked to have skipped this experience altogether, but it would have happened sooner or later. Why couldn’t it have been later?
11:30 am – time for lunch! See, things haven’t changed just because we’re in China. Lunch was at a beautiful restaurant right by this picturesque lake…right out of a painting! One thing about food here…you sit down and voila food is immediately placed before you. Rice first then all other dishes are placed on these huge lazy susans and you eat to your hearts content. There’s always been plenty of food. We were the first ones in the restaurant and as we saw the other clientele coming in we already knew the food was going to be catered to westerners. The food was pretty bad, and here we were sitting with all these folks from San Francisco. Meals are usually over in an hour, so we sit and talk until our guide calls us.
1:00 pm – Tiananmen Square (TS)
Learned that TS is actually the entrance to the Forbidden City. When we entered the square, there were both uniformed security police and plainclothes police everywhere. There were also tall light poles covered with cameras evenly situated throughout the area. It was very clean. Most of the hawkers are very polite but one of them selling "Rolex" watches, grabbed Ray’s arm, Ray removed his arm and told him to “GO AWAY!” It must have upset him because he copied Ray and said “GO AWAY!”
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| Light pole with cameras |
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| Ray is still saying "I can't believe I'm here!" Gentleman in the background is our guide, James (Xing Jijun) |
The rest of the day was spent at the Forbidden City. What a beautiful area, but it was so crowded, so huge and so ostentatious. Our guide did a great job telling us about the 14 emperors that ruled there from the Ming and Qing dynasties and their lives, about eunuchs, and concubines and the lives of empresses and emperors. It was a lonely existence at the top. We walked and walked today, this place is huge and there’s so much to see. The Chinese have no sense of personal space…they just elbow their way in…pushing you away. A little boy cut right in front of me as I was descending the stairs, good thing Ray saw him and grabbed me. It was really an interesting day…
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| Entering the Forbidden City from Tianamen Square |
We had a peking duck dinner. the restaurant we went to specialized in this type of duck preparation. Duck in the pancake with green onions and plum sauce. It was better than lunch. Most of the dishes had duck in it…but one of the dishes didn’t taste like duck at all…hmmm, wonder what kind of meat it was?
What a fun day! If we’re going to get sick, now’s the time…we have our own doctors on tour!
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