Beijing

Location: Beijing, China

What a different world. After spending about 9 hours on planes, with a stopover in Dubai, U.A.E., we arrived in Beijing at around 3pm. We grabbed a taxi to our hotel-it was an hour's ride, for about 83 yuan, or 14 dollars. The first thing that struck me about Beijing was how big the city was-it is about 6,500 square miles in size (by comparison, Los Angeles is about 500 square miles). The streets are also very wide; the main streets are all around 10 lanes in length.

After getting to the hotel, we crashed-the flight took a lot out of us. The next morning, we made our way over to the Temple of Heaven. This temple was used by the Qing and Ming dynasties, for prayer for a good Harvest (in fact, one of the buildings is named "The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests." Today, it is located in a public park (though there is an entrance fee). We got there around 10am, in time to see many locals finishing up their morning Tai Chi.


After spending some time at the Temple, we made our way by cab to Tiananmen Square. The square was also very large-it would take about 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other at a normal pace. We were stopped by two "art students" along the way, who told us that they had some "paintings on exhibition nearby". Of course, this was a way of getting us to a painting store. Still, the paintings were beautiful, and Ben bought a nice one on rice paper, bordered by silk, for 150 Yuan, or about 20 dollars. The square itself was quite a sight, and had several buildings and museums in it and surrounding it:

The third pictures shows the National Museum of China. There's a counter on there for the 2008 Olympics. The energy for the Olympic games is very clear here; the city (and country) is very excited about hosting them: signs for the games are everywhere, Chinese companies are sponsoring the games left and right, tourist venues are being renovated, and signs for streets and other notable areas are being translated into English.

After buying a painting, we had some lunch in the square. We found a very good Chinese restaurant there; the food was delicious, and very similar to Chinese food in the U.S., though definitely not as heavy. Then, we went into the Forbidden City. This place was huge-the whole area is about 1 million square meters. It would be easy to spend two days here seeing everything, and that's with half of the place under restricted access! Some of the main spots were under scaffolding, unfortunately, but we still got to see the Imperial Gardens, the Golden River Bridges, and the Hall of the Supreme Principal. Some pictures:

After finishing up at the Forbidden City, we made our way back to the hotel to rest up. Later, we went out for dinner-we actually found a restaurant that did a very good job of approximating an American style diner! Since I had not eaten food that I am used to for a while, this was a welcome place to eat.

Tomorrow, we'll be journeying out of the city to see the Great Wall.