Trip to Beijing

The winter break in China lasts most of the month of February, during which time the Chinese people celebrate Chinese New Year and Spring Festival by traveling to their home cities to visit family, celebrate and set off fireworks... LOTS of fireworks


During the extended break from school, Julie made arrangements to meet up with a group of incoming English Teachers from China Horizons for their tour of Beijing (Bei = North... i.e. North Capital).

The following is a description of some of the things we did each day (along with many, many pictures).

So we started with a 6 hour train ride (that was the fast train) the kids were actually excited about it, they said they missed the long car trips we used to take. We were met by people from our tour group who got us through the subway ride and walk to our hotel where we got a short night of sleep and had to be up for a very busy next day!

All is well on the High Speed Train

View from the High Speed Train

Rese earning her keep on the Subway

Day 1: Tiananmen Square; Forbidden City; Jingshan Park

Tiananmen Square: The 4th largest city square in the world at 440,000 square meters.

So the first day we walked to Tiananmen Square!  It was pretty crowded, everything was that day.  But still neat to be in places that we had read about and seen in books.

Sculptures located on either side of the Mao Zedong Mausoleum (Pictured between)

Family shot in front of Tiananmen gate to the north of Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen gate  (North entrance to the Forbidden City)

 Forbidden City:

The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty  - the years 1420 to 1912. It is located in the center of what is now known as Beijing, (formerly Peking) China.

...Then we went to the Forbidden City, the Emperor's palace--we imagined that it was the palace from the last scenes of Mulan and tried to picture where Mulan and the other soldiers climbed the walls and dressed as women--Ok that was just the Disney version.  There is a Netflix show on the forbidden city that we watched later in the week very interesting.  Anyway it was huge, we walked through in awe.

Members of our tour group seen behind us

Very busy day at the Forbidden City

Approaching the Gate of Supreme Harmony

Gate of Supreme Harmony

 The Hall of Supreme Harmony

Throne inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony

Dragon statue located in the Imperial Garden 

Jingshan Park

Jingshan (literally "Prospect Hill") Park is immediately north of the Forbidden City. This 150 ft artificial hill is constructed entirely from the soil excavated in forming the moats of the Imperial Palace and nearby canals.

...Then we walked to a hill across from the Forbidden City that overlooks the palace and has a big golden Buddha in the temple at the top.  There was also a place there where we dressed up in traditional court costumes and had our picture taken.  I love the pictures!  Our tour leader said he had fun taking pictures of the huge crowd of  Chinese tourists that gathered in to take pictures of us getting our pictures taken.

Entrance to Jingshan Park

View of the Forbidden City from the top of Jingshan Park

Day 2: Pearl Market (Lots of knock-off/counterfeit brand items for sale); Acrobatic Show

The second day we went to the Pearl Market full of jewelry and souvenirs that you really have to barter for.  According to Chinese New Year tradition we had given the kids all red envelopes with "lucky money" so they got to look around and find something and try bartering.  They were all pretty happy with their little finds.

Pearl Market from the pedestrian overpass

Family Shot at the entrance to the market

Showing off some of the "treasures" purchased at the market

We took full advantage of the non-counterfeit Subway in the food court!

Klarese - Making friends wherever she goes.

Acrobatic Show - No pictures could be taken, but the show was breathtaking, including spinning plates, hoop jumping, hat juggling, tight rope walking, a high wire rotating wheel act and up to 8 motorcycle riders driving simultaneously in the same (small) cage. Follow the link in the title for pictures and descriptions of the show.

Day 3: Long training day (Free time for us to explore)

Day 3 was a rainy day so the teachers in our group did training at the hotel (they are all new teachers just starting out in China).

Our hotel was not fancy at all but was right near the center of BJ in old neighborhoods with single level dwellings and so many little alleyways and neat old China architecture, you will notice in pictures, tiny streets, lots of bikes, cute shops.

Explore? Yay!

Flower flavored ice cream...? Everybody loves it.

Fish at a local restaurant

Old shop that has been in existence there for a long long time. 

Hot Pot = Seasoned boiling water that you use to cook your own food as you sit at the table.
Interesting and fun to do. 

Olympic torch towers (now offices) from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. 

Myna Birds outside a shop near our Hostel.

TeleTubby right down the ally from our Hostel. Passed it every day. 

The ally outside our Hostel.

Hostel ahoy - Race you to the door!

Entrance to old style Hutongs, which are four sided communal apartment dwellings with a courtyard in the middle.
They are still all over the old part of Beijing where we were staying.

Another Hutong

and another one

Cute local bundled three layers deep.

Kids keeping each other busy and watching TV on the subway.

Beijing Streets and Shops

Newer shops two blocks down from our Hostel

Beijing Streets and shops

Day 4: Sunday - Church in Beijing

Since many people are traveling during the Chinese New Year and spring Festival, the Beijing 1st and 4th Branch were combined for church services. Our tour group added at least 30% to the congregation that was there.

 After church our family made our way back to the Hostel on our own via the subway and ate some things we had bought the night before and stashed in the refrigerator.

Day 5: Great Wall; Ming Tombs; Jade Factory

Great Wall - This was probably the coldest day on the tour, but that seemed to work to our advantage, in that there were very few tourists up on the Great Wall. It was a lot of stairs walking up and kind of windy and pretty cold.  Klarese was crying and kids were whining and I kept saying this is so exciting you guys!  We got to the top and Klarese was still crying, we took a few pictures and Matt said I am just going to take her down, we tried everything and Klarese would not stop crying and everyone was a little tense from it.   We walked a little and it was so cool but Klarese was still crying so Matt decided to take her down and the rest of us walked and explored.  Matt joined us a few minutes later with a sleeping Klarese.  It was so cool to explore the towers and just look ahead at the hugeness of the Wall.  As the kids were all running ahead or behind I looked at Matt and said "how did we end up on the Great Wall with 6 kids" like when we got married that was not even running through our minds anywhere.  Crazy!

Great hike, neat day!

On this day, the Great Wall belonged to us! Yay, we did it!

Ming Tombs

 After the wall we went to the Ming tombs, a hill where they buried the emperors from the Ming Dynasty but the tombs are not marked because the people who buried them had to have their tongues cut out so they couldn't tell where they were buried so nobody would disrespect the graves.  But it is still a pretty place with a museum. 

Spirit Gate

Changling Tomb of Ming Dynasty

Ling'en Palace of Changling Tomb

Artifact

QA was tight - Every brick had the name and date of the person who made it. If it cracked, that person was punished. If it broke, they were killed... Um.

Copper Statue of Emperor Zhu Di

Jade Factory

After that we got to go to a jade factory and see a bunch of really cool and expensive jade carvings and jewelry. 

Master artisan at work on a "Jade Ball of Family Unity"

Several Unity Balls in the works

Jade Apple Tree. Listed at $160,000 USD

Finished Jade Ball of Family Unity.
Three balls carved within each other representing family generations

Day 6: Summer Palace; Night Market/Exotic Street Food

Summer Palace: Beijing gets really hot in the summer so the Emperors had a palace outside of the city with pools and shade and rocky hills and beautiful courts and we thought it would be a great place for a family reunion!  Just kidding, we like the 4-H center just great. 

Night Market/Exotic Street Food

That evening we (Matt ,Julie and Kendra) went with some of the tour kids to an exotic food/night market.  The three of us ate scorpion and sea urchin.  I do recommend the scorpion (stinger, claws and all), tastes like chicken!  But the sea urchin, I've had better (in Samoa).  After Kendra bragged about eating the scorpion Kaleb and Klora had to go back the next night to try it.

Fried Squid and Octopus tentacles 

Scorpions (Left), Grasshoppers (Middle); Locusts (Right)

Fried Seahorses (Top)

Some of everything here, but notice fried starfish, Top Right

Crispy Mango

Sea Urchin

Corkscrew potato chip

Trinkets

Emperor Scorpions

Grasshoppers

Cocoons of some sort - Darin, Ideas?

Doves

  

  

That is pretty much it for the trip.  The group we were with was great, college students coming to teach English, some married couples, they seemed to like having the kids along and had fun with them.  There was even a bus karaoke competition.

We did get tired out and were glad to get back home--which might have been the first time some of us have referred to our place here in Deqing as HOME, usually when we say home it is referring to Boise.