So this part of my stay is where it turned from mostly work and a little play to mostly play and a little work.  I was nearing the end of my rotation and there were still a few things to wrap up, so I couldn’t completely unplug from work…  Visas provide an additional level of consideration when going to China.  Different considerations are required when you pass 90 and 180 days in China during any 12-month period, including taxation and/or additional visa fees.  To maximize my presence, I was asked to focus primarily on work because the clock was ticking – my leadership team wanted me out of China in 80 days so if I needed to go back, I would have some days to spare on my existing visa.  With that in mind, the time to tour around the country was limited and we made the most of the opportunity we had.

The family had already been in China for just over a week by the time we started out on our three-legged journey across China.  First stop was to be Beijing – hard ‘j’.  I’ve had a bit of a time re-training myself to say the name in an American way.  When I used the soft ‘g’, my Chinese hosts weren’t immediately sure what city I was talking about.  Same thing even with Shanghai – they say it with a short ‘a’ and nestle the ‘ng’ in the back of the throat and emphasize the second syllable.  After several months of saying it for their benefit, I can’t stop.

Returning to the topic at hand…  Our three-legged journey was going to take us to Beijing, Xi’an, and then back to Shanghai.  We were very excited to take in more of the treasures of China.  Shanghai is an impressive city for a variety of reasons and while it does have a broad range of tourist-y sites, it is a mostly a modern city.  Beijing and Xi’an are ancient cities with much more in terms of cultural experiences: Great Wall, Forbidden City, Terracotta Warriors…

Upon arriving, we were happy to see that visibility in Beijing was about the same that we had experienced in Shanghai.  Not great, but not the stuff of legend that we had seen recently in the news.  We were just lucky, that’s all.  The previous week, visibility had been around a quarter mile.  A sandstorm had seen to it that most of the air pollution was blown away for the duration of our visit.  At least the visible stuff, anyway – the Beijing air quality numbers as reported by the US Embassy during our stay were still not in a happy place, but at least we could see.

Being in China for 2+ months by the time we made this trip was also making me ache (literally) for a soft bed.  We opted to stay at the Marriott, near the embassies, for this stop.  The beds were hard by American standards, but compared to the beds I had been sleeping on, they may as well have been air.  The hotel was very nice – Noah and Ketti were very excited that they had their own room.  Chinese hotel rooms aren’t set up for 4 people, especially when one is my size.  A family of 4 is pretty much required to have two rooms… Their room was adjoining and not completely separate, but to listen to them go on about it, you’d think they won the lottery.  And we would have needed that lottery money for bail when we tried to take a picture of one of the embassies for a friend.  Taking pictures of an embassy is not smiled on.  At all.  This, of course, was after I had already snapped one at the US Embassy without being harassed.  Oops.  Liang mi ling ba (2 meters 8) has its advantages, I guess.

Beijing was also a bit more laid back than Shanghai.  I didn’t immediately notice it – can’t remember who did – but the drivers in Beijing rarely honked their horns.  By comparison, the Shanghainese love to honk their horns.  All the time with the honking.  Driving style was similarly chaotic from an American perspective, but without the additional ‘communication.’

Little room was left for much in Beijing outside the tours we planned.  We arrived in the city at noon on Monday and had a 2pm train out on Thursday.  I had arranged for English-speaking guided tours out to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City for Tuesday and Wednesday and we decided to just wing the two half days.  The first day, we ended up doing very little because Noah wasn’t feeling well and the thought of venturing far from the hotel was less than appealing.  In that initial sojourn, we did find this gem:  http://sdrv.ms/1bvYf0q.  Poor Eyeore – rode hard and put away wet.  Not sure why I didn’t buy that thing…  Anyway, that meant our last half-day was going to be saved for the Temple of Heaven.  I kept the visit in Beijing short and the pace quick because I was worried about the pollution there – I should have paid more attention to Xi’an air quality, but that’s for the next post.  Beijing was (is) an amazing city, amazing history…

Enter the gallery below by clicking the first picture, stories with each…  Zai jain!

Same issues with the train ticket as when I went to West Lake, but this time I was ahead of the game and knew a bit more about where to go. We had purchased our tickets online in advance, however, so that was a slightly different wrinkle, but we were plenty early and had no issues. Train G12, seated in car 14, seat 3a, departing at 8am from gate 1. Oh yeah. Jimmy’s got this covered.
When we got to Beijing, we walked to the front of the train for this obligatory picture. We were accompanied in this little trek by a grey-bearded man who just so happened to be from Seattle. He was a retired teacher and was just wandering around the country by himself. We got pieces of his story, but not all of it before being evicted from the platform by security. I always felt safe in China, but I never felt like messing with security, either, so we hustled off the platform…
There was a long line of visa applicants outside the embassy. We wanted to go in and look around, but weren’t quite sure where to do so. We were told to go to the “South gate”, but it wasn’t immediately apparent where that was. The South side didn’t really have a gate that looked like it was for general use, so we kept walking. Shortly after this is when I found Eyeore.
Without a doubt, the coldest indoor pool I think I have ever experienced. Don’t get me wrong, it still felt awesome after a day of trekking around the city, but I spent most of my time in the hot tub to the left. First night, I got in the pool for a bit with the kids. Not so much the second night…
The Ming Tombs is where almost all the emperors from the Ming Dynasty were buried. Two of them are buried near Nanjing and a third was lost to history, escaping during a losing battle. This is the major walkway at the Ming Tombs in Beijing. The Ming Dynasty, we learned, started with their capitol in Nanjing, but the third emperor moved it to Beijing in the early 1400’s, where it has remained ever since. This walkway is lined with statue pairs facing one another that run for about a half mile or so. It starts with these lions and evolves through other animals to soldiers and priestly figures.
Tracey’s wedding band is a circle of elephants, so of course we had to stop in front of this guy…
This is one of the people statues on the path – Ketti is trying to strike the same pose. I love the angry soldier face she puts on, too…
This is from the top of the tower at the tomb of Emperor Zhu Di (jew-DEE), who died in 1424. There are many other tombs here, but this is the only one that was scheduled for a stop during our tour. On to lunch and the Great Wall!
We went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It’s not as well known to the Chinese, so it isn’t as crowded as some of the other sections. We also went during the week, so while there were other people there, it was pretty sparse and we were able to enjoy it pretty much by ourselves. I added two arrows to the picture showing where we started and where we ended our walk along the wall. We took a gondola up to the top and it took about 90 minutes to walk to the second arrow where we slid down on toboggans.
Simply amazing, this thing. One of the stories we were told about the wall was the legend of Lady Meng Jiang. She was recently married to her husband when he was taken to work on the wall. When she went to visit him, she learned that he had died and was buried within the wall. Her grief was such that her tears collapsed a section of the wall, exposing the bones of many workers. She was able to recover her husbands bones and gave him a proper burial. It was said that no matter how many times that section of wall was rebuilt, it would always collapse… The story is a bit longer than that, but I have limited room here – Bing it if you want to read the whole thing…
One common myth said about the Great Wall is that it is the only man-made object visible from space. It’s actually quite difficult to see from space with the naked eye. The pyramids at Giza can be seen. Cities and their lights can be seen, but not the Great Wall. While its length is insane at over 5,000 miles, the width isn’t enough to make it visible.
This picture was actually an accident. We were going to take the toboggans down (next picture), but we missed the exit. The wall takes a dip and raises back up, making a good backdrop so I made the family line up for photo time before we turned around to find where we needed to go down.
Noah holding his camera up to video his ride down. In front of me was a woman who kept stopping to take pictures which made for a frustrating trip down. At one point I “accidentally” didn’t stop in time and ran into the back of her husband. He just looked at me and smiled. I wasn’t smiling.
Just an average commuting day in the Beijing subway… Although I didn’t hit too many different subway locations in Shanghai during peak hours, they were rarely this crowded.
This is the guy who drew the short straw and had to pedal me around in his pedicab. He wasn’t really all that big, but handled the job well.
Our touring day that took us through the forbidden city started with the pedicab ride to a Hutong style house. This is one of the few pictures that I asked to have taken with one of the Chinese. I had to laugh – she made me sit down for the picture…. She was an original resident of the house which is owned by a state-run company and her rent is subsidized by the company. She pays 83 RMB per month, or about $13.
I had forgotten to look up where Tank Man stood during the demonstrations in 1989 before we went on this tour. I did ask our tour guide and she claimed to know nothing about the demonstrations. Not sure I believed her, but knew better than to press for an answer. This is a 180 degree panorama. Due to pollution, the week before, you would not have been able to see the entrance to the Forbidden City on the left side of the picture from where I was standing.
They had these massive topiaries on both ends of the square… Impressive bit of garden construction, there.
This is just inside the Forbidden City. The earpieces the kids have in was for our tour guide to talk to us. I liked it so much more than the bullhorns that other guides were using. It allowed us to enjoy being there more and not having to struggle to understand words being shouted.
The scale of this place is hard to imagine. I’m standing roughly in the middle for this picture and still had to stitch a panorama to get this in a single picture.
For 10 RMB – less than $2 – you could rent these costumes to take pictures. Of course, Ketti immediately went to posing. It didn’t take long for her to have a small circle of people surrounding her, taking pictures.
And then this kid shows up. I have a pile of pictures, but this one is my favorite – near the end of the impromptu photo shoot when he was getting irritated. Ketti, of course, wanted the cameras to go all day. This boy’s mother had actually thrust him in the scene first without a costume, then went back and got one. I hadn’t realized it was the same kid until I looked through my pictures later…
There are various forms of luck to be had by rubbing the nose, feet, and tail of statues. I’m not sure what kind of luck you are supposed to get, but I wasn’t taking any chances… You could see on all the statues within arm’s reach that the visitors weren’t leaving much to chance, either. All statues, like this one, had visible spots of wear.
Last picture of the day… Kids were beat and so were me and Tracey. Just before we got to this spot was where the guys selling Rickshaw Rides made a joke about me not getting one. 🙁
This reminded me so much of Columbia… When we were kids, my Dad’s parents would take us up to the ice cream shop next to the Cinema Theatre and we’d walk down to the fountain in front of Shelter (then MFA) and run circles until it was time to go… Good times.
At the entrance to the Temple of Heaven, this woman was doing calligraphy with an oversized brush dipped in water. You can see the other characters that have started to evaporate. Very zen.
At one of the smaller temples in the complex…
I just loved these guys on all the rooftops. The more animals you had, the more important you were. Nobody but the emperor could have 9. There was one building in the Forbidden City that did have 10 just to show how important that building was…
There’s a sucker born every minute. Vendors selling stuff everywhere. These guys were playing a game and asked me if I wanted to play as I walked by. It looked fun, so why not? Only after I handed the racquet to Ketti to try and I was approached to buy a set did I realize I had been set up…
Most of the pictures I saw of the Temple are from the other side of a wall that cuts it in two. I had to lay down on the stairs to get this angle, but I love this picture of the Temple of Heaven.
Somewhere along the line, Noah decided he wanted to be goofy and photobomb almost all the pictures, which meant multiples had to be taken so I could get him at just the right moment. Is it still photobombing if it’s staged and rehearsed?
OK, fine. These aren’t roses, but everywhere in the city were roses in bloom. Along the roads, in pots lining the pathways at the sites, everywhere…
Looking back at the Temple of Heaven through the gate. Time to catch a cab back to the hotel and load up for Xi’an. When catching cabs in China, you need to show them the address written in Mandarin so they know where you want to go. The first cab we flagged down for whatever reason didn’t want to take us back to our hotel. That refusal probably saved us a bit of trauma as when we finally did grab one, we drove by an accident of moped versus vehicle and it didn’t turn out so well for the moped driver.
There are multiple railway stations in Beijing – this is not even the same one we arrived in. The layout was slightly different than Shanghai, but Jimmy still had things under control. On to Xi’an! Zai jian!