Day 1 Dec 14th U.S./ Dec 15th China
Look out China, here we come!
Our 7 a.m. international departure time gave us the opportunity to start adapting to China’s time zone :)
We started out around 3 a.m. so we would get
to the airport by the 5 a.m. check in
time. The flight was pretty uneventful,
except that DD#1 was absolutely beside herself. She couldn’t wait to test out all the buttons and recline the seats. She was really excited to start reading her new book titled “The 39 Clues-- Book of Secrets.” After that, it was off to the movies.
About 14 hrs later, we finally arrived in China around 3 p.m. local time. We then went for a 2 hour search for our guide. The airport was full of plenty of guides…just not ours. Finally, after waking up Dad at home (at 2:30 a.m.!), we got the phone numbers we needed and finally tracked her down. We arrived at the hotel around 6 p.m., and decided to promptly go to bed.
Day 2
Good Morning Beijing!
On this trip, I really wanted to go behind the scenes and see the China that isn’t seen by most tourists or at least different than we saw last time we were here. So today we went on a tour of the drum tower, a rickshaw ride through old Beijing, and ate lunch in the home of a local family. It was an incredible day.
The Bell Tower and the Drum Tower were old Beijing’s clocks. Workers would ring the bells or beat the drums at pre-determined times. Our guide told us they could be heard well into the countryside. The view today from the Drum Tower is pretty breath taking. You can’t really appreciate from the ground level how big Beijing really is. The Drum Tower and Bell Tower were in line with the Imperial Palace. Interesting, there are no two story buildings in the area of the Imperial Palace even today. The Imperial Palace was built on a hill in Beijing, and is easily the tallest building in the old part of Beijing, however, the Emperor did not want there to be any question who was the mightiest of them all…so he forbid the buildings around it to be any taller than 1 story.
To get to the Bell Tower you have to climb…yes climb 69 steps plus another 7 on the side. [Sidenote…China is not ADA compatable] Our guide said that the old culture believed that if you could climb the steps you would live a long life…Well I can tell you after climbing them, you are sucking for air up there…so it makes aerobic class look easy…no wonder they say you will live a long life! But the really, really hard part was going down. It is straight down! We were thinking about sitting on our rear ends and trying to slide down, but we were afraid we wouldn’t stop at the bottom, and go right into the bushes!
After the Tower, we were off to the Rickshaw tour of “old Beijing.” Today’s Rickshaws are bikes with the carriage on the back. The alleys and streets were narrow with cars coming right up next to us. Our driver did an excellent job of avoiding all the obstacles while still being able to pedal the two of us down the old streets of Beijing. We stopped in front of a “gate” to one of the more affluent homes in the area. You can tell it is an upper class family just from the outside…nice paint job, and the posts at the top. Each post represents your “status” in the community. A “4 post door” is the highest level. This home probably belongs to a high ranking military official. Inside the gate is a courtyard and many rooms off from that. In years past, there would have only been one family living in this type of area, today, other families may share the area with the family. The number of posts also had some influence on who was pursued in arranged marriages. There were some rules that I can't remember…something like, a woman can marry up, but a man cannot. Also, look closely at the bottom of the door…see that ledge? The size of the ledge also showed status in the community. The purpose of the ledge was to keep the evil spirits out of the home. It is said that the higher the ledge, the more peace in the family. The reason the higher ledge kept out the evil spirits is because the Chinese believe the ghosts or spirits don’t have knee joints, so they are not able to jump over the high ledge to enter the house. We heard that when you go over the ledge, the women are supposed to go right leg first and the men left leg first, because in China “the women are always right.” The comments made me smile…but I couldn't help but point out to one of the guides that we haven’t heard that saying coming from a man…yet.Our guide then took us to the home of a local family to enjoy some home cookin’. The husband entertained us while his wife cooked. She had a tiny little kitchen that put out the most wonderful meal. I wish I would have taken a picture of it, but it had to be 3 feet by 4 feet. They had 2 rooms that they invited guests into…the larger room we were in was their living room converted into a dining room for us; then their entry room that sat smaller parties. While we were there must have been 3 or 4 other groups that stopped by. In the entry room, they had several weapons hanging on the wall, and come to find out our host was a Kung Fu Master and those were his competitive tools. Both of his sons also compete in Kung Fu and even studied under Jackie Chan. His oldest son has moved to Houston, Texas and has a Kung Fu school near Rice University…what a small world.
It was time for us to head back to the hotel…but here are a few sights along the way. I thought I was going to catch these guys playing Mahjong, but instead they were playing cards.
Then there are the bike parking lots…
Good night Beijing….
