| Wednesday, May 9, 2007: We got up early, 7am dressed and headed down for breakfast. The hotel breakfast was fantastic. Both Chinese and American choices. It was a buffet that had everything... including someone to make fresh omelets of your choosing. We both tried the Congee... Jane loved it and had a real Chinese breakfast: dumplings, congee, lo mein, and coffee. Hal had tried the Congee and while it was good, he preferred a more traditional American breakfast of eggs, bacon, potato, orange juice, grapefruit juice, coffee, croissants (ok maybe International is more like it), Danish, and buns with sweet bean paste, and dumplings just to round things out. |
|
 |
At 8:30 we boarded the bus and headed for Tian'anmen Square. The square is huge broken up only by the tomb of Mao in the middle of the Square. The square is about 1/2 mile long and can hold 1 million people. |
One of the only soldiers we saw during our entire stay in China. |
 |
The Great Hall of the People (i.e. their Parliament or Congress) above, flanks the west side of Tian'anmen square while the National Museum flanks the east side (below).. |
 |
Looking toward the Forbidden City. |
Mao's tomb in the middle of Tian'anman Square. |
Mao's tomb. You can not go into it. |
Some students were being honored in Tian'anman Square. |
|
|
 |
| We posed for a group foto before crossing the street via an underground passageway to the Forbidden city. |
Looking across the street to the Forbidden City. |
From the left standing: Sara Han, Barbara and Tom Dalton, Stewart and Jane Cohen, Sal and Sue Marino, Penny and Ewe Sijatz, Sue Foley, Hal Lamster, Maureen and Frank Zygmatt, Rita Axelrad, and Jim Foley.
From the left kneeling or sitting: Edgar Lipton, Judy Lipton, Jane Lamster, Herb Axelrad. |
| The Forbidden City is surrounded by a moat that is 53 meters across - more than 1/2 a football field. Then there is the outer courtyard. An inner courtyard, a still more inner courtyard, the Emperors palace, more courtyards.... It is huge - a mile long!!! And we trudged through every inch of it. There is a museum that we stopped in that showed some of the artifacts from the various dynasties: The oldest is the Western Han (206bc-9ad). Then Eastern Han (25ad - 220), then there was a period of disunity followed by the Sui (581 - 618) then the Tang (618 - 907). Then there were five short lived dynasties (907-960) followed by the Northern Song (960 - 1126), the Southern Song (1127 - 1279). Then the more modern Dynasties of Yuan (1279 - 1368), the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644) and the finally the Qing Dynasty ( 1644 - 1911). |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Forbidden City is HUGE! It is a full mile long and contains courtyard within courtyard. |
 |
| |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
There is a small museum with the Forbidden City. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Forbidden City is just huge - although the actual Palace was not that big, the surrounding levels of protection and court yards stretches it out to a full mile. Our guide was quite knowledgeable and told us about the various members of the court - including 3000 concubines. It is good to be the Emperor.... It was a great honor to be chosen to be a Concubine of the Emperor. Only attractive daughters of the upper classes were ever selected. While there were 3000 concubines, there was only one Empress. The Dragon Lady. The symbol of the Emperor is the Dragon, while that of the Empress is the Phoenix. |
| We left the Forbidden City through the rear gate and headed to a local Restaurant for lunch. We had egg drop soup, chicken with bean sprouts, cabbage, egg and tomato, and beer. It was just ok. Not bad - but very commercial. |
|
 |
We then boarded the bus again for a trip to the Summer Palace. We passed the new Olympic village and could see the new stadium that is being built for the opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympics. As you can see the nickname "the Bird's Nest" is appropriate. |
 |
 |
 |
We stopped at a Pearl factory along the way. It was like having to sit through a time-share sales pitch. We learned how to tell real from fake pearls and were given the opportunity to buy pearls at a discount.....
Once again we boarded the buses and headed for the Summer Palace. We boarded Dragon Boats for a delightful trip across this most beautiful man made lake. The "mountain" that the Summer Palace sits on was created from the material dug from the lake.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Aboard the Dragon boat crossing the man made lake. The hill that the Palace sits on is also man made - from the dirt dug up for the lake! |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
More traffic on our way to the restaurant for our special dinner.
|
|
 Carefour is big in China. As is Wal*Mart.
|
 On our way to the Peking Duck dinner. This is supposed to be the main Peking Duck restaurant in China. I think it seats at least 3000 (we were at table 375 and that was not the highest number table).
|
 |
The Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant while supposedly the mecca of Peking Duck ... the Peking Duck we were served was the WORST Peking Duck we ever had. A major disappointment.
|
|
After dinner we went to see a Peking Opera. There does not seem to be one Peking Opera but many small companies performing it all over the city.
The best thing about it was that it was mercifully short. Most of us had a reasonably short snooze.
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
Carefour is big in China. As is Wal*Mart. 
On our way to the Peking Duck dinner. This is supposed to be the main Peking Duck restaurant in China. I think it seats at least 3000 (we were at table 375 and that was not the highest number table).
