We parked near where I think was the north end of the Forbidden City, which is great because the city faces south and most people come in from that way, so in the morning our exploration was almost quiet. The Forbidden City is considered to be the biggest museum in the world, with apparently 9,999.5 rooms and stretches across 170 acres. A wide moat surrounds it. The architecture inside is so incredibly beautiful—I took about a hundred pictures of just different shots of the temple spires. We learned about a few traditions—there are open doorway arches in the courtyards that connect the courtyards, and they're in a square, meaning that there is a short wall on the ground, too. Women have to step over this with their right foot and men with their left. If you step on it, the spirits come and take you away, being quite bothered by this. I would feel grumpy if someone stepped on me too.
Basically as opposed to Versailles or a castle or something like that, exploring the Forbidden City was done almost entirely outside, exploring the courtyards, wandering through hallways and up steps, admiring statues and gardens. The ground was ingrained with rocks, which people would walk across barefoot to get a foot reflexology massage, which I thought was awesome. There was even a stone bat in the ground, that if you jumped on gave you good luck! Occasionally we would go inside to see little museum-type displays about how the concubines lived and things like that, which I'm happy to bring back to my WIHC class. Man, I can't even really describe how it was out there. We were there for three hours and we only saw about 20% of the palace (though granted some of the palace is still off-limits to common people). But the central court area was so incredibly massive. I loved being able to find places to take pictures from—I think in this case pictures really are going to be worth a thousand words.
Exiting through the south, I turned around at one point to see my good friend Chairman Mao looking sternly southward. I hadn't expected that to be part of the temple, so I kind of didn't believe it was "the real deal" at first. But then as I looked around, I realized that across the street there was a MASSIVE open square—the largest public square in the world, Tiananmen Square. We took a group picture, in front of the temple, but I didn't really want to spend 15 bucks on it—I think I'll try to get someone to scan it for me. :P But what I DID get was THE MOST INCREDIBLE THING EVER—a PANDA HAT. EVERYONE was wearing them inside and I was excited to go and haggle with a vendor for them, while of course pretending to not be interested at all. :B I'm going to be so put out being in the United States and having fixed prices on things. =/ So I ran around Tiananmen Square for a while in my panda hat and imagined being Tank Guy for a while.
We didn't get to stay very long, which I was sad about, but at this point we were pretty hungry so we walked a ways off to the buses. We ran across the China Guide independent group, of which there are 200 students in, so that was kind of neat.
Lunch was in the Silk Market building!!! I was so freaking excited. Someone had said in CSI that you can barter things down to about a fifth of their normal price there, so I was STOAKED. Of course we didn't have any time to do any shopping—only an hour for lunch. But I was ready to inhale it, and so I did. Lunch was hilariously enough pizza, except it was pizza in the sense that there was also some spaghetti and the rest of the buffet dishes were chicken and eggrolls and things of that nature. I have gotten kind of pro using chopsticks so I inhaled things within about fifteen minutes and then sprinted out the door!
The Silk Market was a big, tall rectangular building. We ate on the 6th floor but it definitely was at least 8. But first we went down to the jewelry floors, where my magpie tendencies towards shiny things started going in FULL FORM. Imagine—columns of tables and jewelry cases, all with approximately the same things, some differences, with sunglasses and electric appliances on the perimeter. Downstairs are kid's toys, and clothing below that. I didn't even really get through the jewelry and kid's stuff before I had to go! But I was browsing around and found this really great leopard ring that I bargained down to a fourth of what it had been, and I really like it so no regrets :B I was also browsing around in this cool tea store. I really want a tea set, but I know that I shouldn't buy one in Beijing so I decided to not get anything. I also saw thes great 3 in 1 tea cups, that have a lid, strainer (for loose tea) and cup that were beautiful. However, as I was holding one of them up, the lid slipped out of my hand and smashed against the tile floor. Good thing I was holding a cheap one, less than 4 USD—I bought it, of course, and the lady working there had the niceness to not look too happy about it.
After exploring a couple of lower floors I sprinted out the door to the bus, and got inside five minutes before we left to this school we were visiting. It was an hour drive through Beijing and out into the outskirts area, so I kind of curled up and dozed in the bus—not a lot of recharge time for a day of running around. When we got there, it felt like fall in Seattle, kind of—nippy air, beautiful trees with yellowing leaves, everyone bundled up.
The school, which is kind of like an school for homeless children, is called Shi Qinghau. About 100 boys and girls live there and play there. When we arrived, they were clapping and singing and we gave them all high-fives. Then we explored the area. The girl's rooms were tiny—there was more than one big room, but eight girls fit onto four beds in one room—that's rough. Me and four other girls also had to use the bathroom, which created the Worst Squatty Potty Experience Ever. The girl's bathroom was awful—8 toilets in a room with no barriers, all of them overflowing with urine, shit, and sometimes blood. No toilet paper. Also, there were windows to the outside—dirty ones, but you could definitely see inside. After awkwarding around, we finally settled on guarding the door while going inside one by one—it was the only way we could get around it. I was really D: about the conditions, but I guess it's all they have.
Anyway, the buildings were all brick, a little old, with courtyards all around. There was broken glass embedded into the brick fences, which was a little contradictory next to the murals. All the kids wore army camouflage and red jackets. After that nice bit of awkward, we went out and played Tug o' War with the kids. At first many people were saying "oh, we should let them win, durp dur" and I was like NO WAY GUYS LOOK AT THEM THEY ARE TERRIFYING. And they were!!! They beat us twice. During that time a girl from my poetry class told me that on the day I was late to World Poetry, my professor said that my poems marked me as an "established poet" or something like that, was her words. THIS MAKES ME GLOW INSIDE. I love that class and have spent hours on these poems so I'm really glad my work is showing. :)
Then we went to the wall where they had outlined the beginning of a great mural on this wall, that had LOVE and robots and panda bears and a boy and a girl dancing with a cat. It was pretty Asian and pretty great, and we helped paint it! I worked on the bird before noticing how enthusiastic the kids were getting with the paint, so I fled to talk to some other folks. When we were leaving, the kids lined up and chanted, or something that sounded like that, it might have been singing—I was too busy being distracted by the line formation and the army clothes. It was very military status.
Then we were off again. I did enjoy my time there, but mostly I wish I had been told we would be painting so I could have dressed accordingly. :< I kind of looked outside at the Saturday traffic and buildings that went by. After an hour and a half or so, we arrived at the Roast Duck Restaurant—a restaurant on the 4th story of a building. We sat at circular tables, had free beer but no water (which sort of cancel each other out) and ate lots of stuff. There was this weird gelatinous meat bar things that I was like NO DAY BUT TODAY to, which was a mistake. Jellymeat never goes down well, even in China. But other things were good—there was lemon tart chicken (it almost was candylike, it was so strange), an egg and beef mixture, some kung-pao chicken, fried rice, beef meatballs and finally peking duck, which was sliced and we ate it with little rice pancakes with plum sauce and onions. OM NOM NOM. I sat next to Ariel and this one girl whose name I always forget, and had a perfectly lovely time.
We eventually went back to the hotel. Lots of people, including me, were talking about going out later tonight to that fun bar district, but I'm so exhausted now and I have no idea what that district is called, let alone how to get there. Being as that tomorrow is another big day (GREAT WALL!) I think it might be better if I just get some sleep.
Having an amazing adventure. Love you guys!
You can sleep when you get home!
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