The last four days have been a blur of new and exciting things. I'm still processing all that happened. This was the first time I had been on a guided tour and the first time I had been to China, so I have a lot of new experiences to mull over. It was fascinating and amazing in so many ways. The tour consisted of 39 people (myself and my friend Ann included) and two Chinese tour guides. The guides spoke fluent Japanese, but very little English. Because of this there were plenty of times when we had no clue what was going on, but this just made things all the more interesting!
*WARNING: this blog entry is really long >.< sorry! Read or skim at your own risk!*
My trip started off on Wednesday morning at about 10am, hopping the trains to get up to Kansai International Airport where we would catch our flight to CHINA! It took us about three hours to get to the airport and we had minimal transport troubles. We got our itineraries and boarding passes, checked in, and were all set to go! The plane was pretty small, but it was a short flight so it wasn't too big of a problem. Half way to Beijing the plane stopped to refuel (or something). We didn't have another flight number or any indication of what we were supposed to do until we arrived in Beijing, but everyone got off the plane so we followed them in complete confusion. It turns out that we had to de-board our International Flight, go through customs, go through security again (this time for our domestic flight), and then board the same plane again. We even had the same seats!! It speaks to how confused and tired we were that all that we could do was laugh in confusion. Soon we were off again, this time REALLY bound for Beijing.
When we arrived at the airport in Beijing we met up with our tour group and guides and were soon bused back to our hotel. It had been a long day so we soon went to sleep.
Our wake up call the next morning came at 6am and we were on the bus by 7:15am and off to see China! The first stop of the day was the Summer Palace. It was a cloudy and dreary day, but the lake was beautiful and the pavilions were completely different from what I've come to expect in Japan. There was a lot of red, blue, and gold, as opposed to the Japanese orange and black.
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| A gate between sections of the garden. You can see the tour-guide with the microphone and the flag! |
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| Kunming Lake - this 2.2 square km lake was man-made and the soil was used to build Longevity Hall, a building within the Summer Palace!! |
Next, we got back on the bus and drove to the Great Wall. THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA!! I was super psyched, and I still am when I think about it. I wish the weather had been clearer (it was raining the whole time we were on the wall), but it was amazing, regardless! They let us go for about 45 minutes and we walked a small portion of the wall. I got tons of pictures and I bought some postcards.
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| I have a super cool pancho! |
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| This kid's expression is so priceless! |
After the Great Wall, we hit up lunch, which was Cantonese Cuisine. It was pretty tasty stuff, including fried gyoza and some tasty noodle dishes. Every meal I had in Beijing also included a large amount of delicious fried rice! After lunch we went to the Ming Tombs. The Ming Tombs were created by the third Ming Dynasty emperor, Yongle, who moved the capital of China from Nanjing to Beijing. It was built with incredible attention to feng shui. Thirteen Ming Dynasty emperors were buried in the area around the mausoleum, although only one of the tombs has been excavated. The tomb, called the Dingling Tomb, is open to the public and that is the one that we were able to visit. The burial site itself was entirely underground, and not at all as ornate as I would have expected from an emperors burial site.
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| Reconstructions of the coffins of the Emperor and Empress in the mausoleum. |
We started the next day by waking up at 6am for our 7:30am bus ride to our first destination: the Temple of Heaven! Unlike most of the buildings we had seen so far, the Temple of Heaven is a group of Taoist buildings. I'm not sure exactly what makes a building Taoist, but these were the only circular buildings that I saw on my trip. The complex was also built in the time of the Ming Dynasty Yongle emperor (he also built the Forbidden City, which we went to later). The gardens around the buildings were beautiful!
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| The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest |
I wish we had had more time to explore the entire complex, but soon we moved on to our next destination. THE LATEX FACTORY! This was probably the most ridiculous part of the entire tour. We were taken to a factory where they make latex and shown a presentation (in Japanese) about how the company makes fantastic latex pillows and mattresses. I'm sure they're great mattresses, but... um... we're in China? Can we go back to the Temple of Heaven, please? Haha... We spent about an hour and a half at the latex factory, far more than we did at the Temple of Heaven. Only a few people ended up buying mattresses or pillows, but they tried really hard. Basically we sat around and politely drank their expensive tea. (It was actually really tasty!)
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| Tiny cups! |
Next we went to lunch, Szechuan cuisine. This was probably my favorite meal of the entire trip! The food was really spicy and there were lots of veggies mixed in with the meat. They even gave us watermelon to clear our palates at the end of the meal! Mmmm, tasty... Next we took a short bus ride to our afternoon destination: Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City! At one end of the square is the Monument to the People's Heroes and at the other end is the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. The square is pretty large and very heavily patrolled by both policemen and the military. On the end of the square that is closest to the mausoleum there was a large flag and a station of military guards. There appeared to be some sort of changing of the guards happening, but when I asked I couldn't get a clear answer about why they were guarding the flag or what it signified.
The Forbidden City itself was ridiculously huge and incredibly amazing. It's the worlds largest surviving Palace complex, covering 178 acres. It was hard to take in all that history and realize how long it must have taken to plan and construct. Any emperor who lived in the complex would have never had to leave; it seems like a self contained town in itself. The architecture is apparently "traditional Chinese", although I couldn't tell you exactly what makes it so. We kept going through gate after gate... when I thought there couldn't be any more, we'd enter a garden or a so-and-so's living quarters... this was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. We spent a few hours being shown around various parts of the "city".
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| Me and Mao Zedong |
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| Policeman to the right and Military to the left |
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| Imperial Gardens |
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| Last Supper in China |
As you can see in the picture, the dishes are placed on a giant rotating glass plate thinger in the middle of the table. Everyone has their own individual plate and serves themselves from the dishes on the table. (The dish front left was a tofu dish that was super tasty! Spicy tofu = yummy. The dish next to it was chicken with apples. Completely different from what I had previously thought Chinese food was.) This is how all of the meals in China were conducted. Each time I'd sit with different people from my tour. It was interesting to talk to them and see all the different kinds of people that made up our little group. Here's a picture of the people I sat with the last meal:
Japanese people (and two Americans) in China! What an interesting experience.
After dinner we finished off our night by going to see a Kung Fu show. I don't really know anything about Kung Fu, but it was so amazing to watch. Everyone in the show was in amazing shape and they moved almost more like dancers than warriors. Every action they took was full of so much grace. They even balanced on swords and broke stone with a single punch, kick, and head-butt! (That last one was hard to watch! Even though they didn't look hurt, I couldn't help but wince.) Afterwards, we headed back to the hotel. The next morning was going to be earlier (5am instead of 6am) so they wanted to give us time to pack and rest. I explored a bit of the area around the hotel before crashing for the night.
That brings and end to my Beijing adventures. I woke up the next morning, had a leisurely breakfast, and trekked back towards Minakuchi. It was only really two days, but so much happened! Although I was in China, a lot of the time I still felt like I was in Japan. Since I spent most of my time with the tour group I still spoke mostly Japanese. That being said, there were definitely cultural differences that stood out as very different from anything that I have experienced in Japan or any other country. Things were much more straightforward and blunt in China. Whereas in Japan being polite is about being as vague as possible, China reminded me of the USA in it's straightforward communication (both verbally and using body language). The architecture was also different than I'd imagined. It's completely unique although the Chinatowns in the US seem slightly similar, they don't capture the same feel of long history and cultural importance.
Anywho, I'm sorry this is so long and so picture filled... writing it down helps me remember, so I don't mind if you skimmed through :) I hope everyone on the east coast is keeping safe from the storm and weather. I'm thinking of you all! (And all you west coasters too <3)
