Beijing Tour, Day One

We have been unable to post for a few days; we think it is mainly due to the effects of the Taiwan earthquake a few days ago. Anyway, here we go! We are having trouble posting pictures right now, so you'll just have to wait for that.

Wow! That is just about all we can say about our first full day in Beijing. We did 3 major things today: the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City and we saw a kung fu show.
It was very cold today. We bundled up, but it still chilled us all to the bone. But it was a dry cold… However, that did not deter the amazing number of retired Beijing citizens, who go to the Temple of Heaven park every day to do tai chi, ballroom dance, play badminton, cards or dominoes, or sing, either with a few people or a very large group. It was quite a sight. We were there before 9:00AM, and most of the people get there quite early in the morning, even in the extreme cold. It was very cool to see the sense of community these people share.

Then we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is the 3-story round structure you see in the picture here:

It is quite gorgeous. Our tour guide, Wendy Wen, explained that there is a reason for everything in Chinese architecture. For example, the three layers of the roof represent heaven (top), the emperor (middle) and the people (bottom). This represents that the emperor is the link between heaven and the people. There are also three tiers carved in marble that surround the temple, and each tier has nine steps. Nine is a powerful number, according to the Chinese, because it is the largest single-digit odd number. So you see this number everywhere: the number of steps, the number of columns on the railings of each tier is a multiple of nine, the number of golden “nails” on a gate that indicates the relative position of the occupant within (the emperor had 9x9 of these on each door), and other places. Wendy (our guide) also told us the significance of the colors used to paint the temple: blue for heaven, green for life, yellow/gold for the emperor, and red is a good fortune color in China.

Here is something cool we saw at one of the gates. Note the lower character in the blue picture above the gate that Wendy is pointing to. It is part of the characters that make up the name “Quan”!

One of the most interesting things we saw in the Temple grounds (they are quite large) was a large group of people standing near a wall, singing their hearts out in unison. It was a patriotic Chinese song, and there must have been 200 men and women all belting it out - there was even a man in the middle directing, as men and women had some different parts.

We also witnessed the water painting of Chinese characters on the path leading to the temple. It was so cold, the characters froze! The men were writing poetry and messages of good luck and prosperity.

A couple of side trips to tell you about:
A silk factory, where they explained how silk is obtained from the silkworm (very fascinating) and then hawked their quilts, pillows, beautiful silk clothing and everything else you can think of that’s made of silk.

Here’s the machine used to create silk thread from 10 silkworm cocoons per slot.

We had a fabulous lunch at the Beijing Noodle King, where we were served pork with tofu wraps, beef & onions, potatoes & green peppers, caramelized yams, tofu & mushrooms in brown bean sauce, broccoli, kung pau chicken, fried pork balls, sweet and sour pork, eggplant, some fruit called haw, and big bowls of noodles with all kinds of veggies. Some of these dishes may sound familiar to you, but we can assure you that they were nothing like what you get in the US! Our other guide Susan told us that the food is Beijing-style. The wait staff consisted of all young men who were very loud and boisterous.

As a side note, we are thoroughly enjoying our first day bonding with our travel group and are becoming fast friends. We finally met Janet and her sister Karen, from Chicago. They had a bit of bad luck as the airlines lost their luggage. We also met Heather Seymour and her friend John, from Thousand Oaks, CA who are adopting from the Xi’an province. Tim and Inge were our travel buddies from Tokyo to Beijing (even though they got bumped up to business class and got to fully recline their chairs as they ate scallops and shrimp as appetizers…but I digress). Paul and Lydia are the expert world travelers and are our go-to couple for help.

Joanna and Ama have had the most tragic event occur as Ama couldn’t find his passport after deplaning in Tokyo. They are pretty sure it was lost at a checkpoint and never returned to him. He was subsequently returned to Portland while Joanna stayed in Tokyo for a day. She then flew on to Beijing alone. He is now attempting to get a new passport in Seattle and then fly to Hong Kong where he can get a visa to China in 24 hours. Please keep them in your thoughts. Joanna’s parents have arrived tonight so she has family support to go along with all of ours. We’re hoping Ama can join Joanna and the rest of us by January 2nd.