Beijing- Thursday, July 28, 2016

     Well, we all seemed to get enough sleep last night, and seemed to be pretty well rested and ready to go.   Julie got to talk to "John," our Beijing guide, last night on the phone when we checked in.  He said to meet him in the lobby at 8:45.  We were up long before then and had already had the hotel's breakfast and time to relax in our rooms.  When the time came to meet him, we were ready to go... or so we thought.

     Even though our first stops weren't supposed to be too far away, we got in a van with John and his driver.  As we were going, John said a driver in Beijing need the "three Gs"- a good horn, good brakes, and good luck!  That's funny because it's true.

     John said told us that because of rain that was expected, we would not be visiting the Great Wall today.  Instead, we would try to visit several places in Beijing.  Our first stop was Tian'anmen Square, which is known to Americans from the massacre that happened there in 1989, but it is known to the Chinese as one of their great public spaces.  In many ways, it's like the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or Red Square in Moscow.  John emphasized that it could hold a million people.  Important buildings surround the square, include the tomb of Mao Tse-Tung, the Great Hall of the People (the building where the People's Republic of China's parliament meets), the Museum of Chinese History and the Chinese Revolution, and the Tian'anmen Gate, which is the south side of the Forbidden City.

     It was at Tian'anmen Square that John began his offers to use one of our cameras to take pictures of the four of us standing with the various buildings in the background.  That was actually quite nice of him, but it didn't take long to make it seem like the photos will look a little redundant.

     At Mao's tomb, you can still view his body lying in state, but the lines of Chinese waiting to see him are always gigantic.  John compared him to George Washington.  We didn't see him in 2004, and although no one asked us, we didn't really want to see him this time either.  The square itself was divided up with barricades and security that John said have come only relatively recently.  It did seem more open the last time we were here.  One addition was some greenery that celebrated the Olympics.  The day was very hot and hazy, but the rain that was forecast didn't come.  John said that probably kept many people away, but it was still quite a busy place filled with people and a sea of bright multicolored umbrellas that the Chinese use to keep the sun off.

     John took us through the square and we followed the mass of people and umbrellas into the Palace Museum, i.e., the Forbidden City.  This complex of buildings is older than Columbus and was the palace for emperors from two dynasties- the Ming and the Qing, right up to the Revolution (and the "Last Emperor" resided there even after that for a time).

     John negotiated through the crowd of people here the way that Chinese drive on their roads.  We had a hard time keeping up.  We went through the several "gates" to the palace area.  Oddly, we then kept to the perimeter instead of peeking in and seeing the Emperor's "Dragon Throne" the way that we had before.  Julie said later that John said those buildings were closed.  Maybe.  But the speed he was moving at and the heat didn't take long to take their toll on us.  By the time we were looking at relics of jade and cloisonné in the quarters of the Dowager Empress Cixi (i.e, the so-called "Dragon Lady"), we were finding it very difficult to pay attention.  Yes, John had made frequent stops, but we'd be huffing and puffing, sweating, and keeping a close eye on Emma, who can overheat so fast.  Emma later said that she hated the Forbidden City, and that's a shame.

     We pushed through the Forbidden City from the south to the north, as all the rest of the tourists did too, and the van met us on the north side of the complex.  That gave us our first real chance to sit and take a cool-down break while the driver too us to the Summer Palace, some distance away.  We got some snacks into us, but it was after 11:30, and we needed lunch.

     John  rushed us into the Summer Palace, the elaborate complex with an artificial lake and hill, built as sort of the vacation home of the emperor.  Soon after we entered, one Chinese visitor patted Scott on the belly and chuckled like Scott was a statue of Buddha.  Scott couldn't do much by chuckle back.  Still, the crowds were smaller, and it did seem a little cooler.

     Again, we seemed to take to the perimeter, and seemed to miss some of the gardens and statues we remembered from before.  John did take us on the "Long Corridor," and several times he said that it was the longest corridor or walkway in the world.  We're not sure how that's determined, but we saw some of the many (15,000?) paintings that decorate it.  Ironically perhaps, the only one he drew our specific attention to was an illustration for a legend about a fisherman who had found a mysterious place of perfect peace called "Peach Blossom Land."  The idyllic pastoral scene represented the Chinese version of a paradise on Earth, though neither the fisherman nor anyone else could ever find the place again.  We then pushed on through the heat and crowds, while oddly not using much of the Long Corridor.

     John went to get tickets for the Dragon Boat and left us while we got some hot "chicken burgers" for lunch.  We looked for a place to sit and ended up back on some of the rails of the Long Corridor.  The chicken sandwiches had spicy sauce on them and had pieces of corn in them for some reason, and didn't appeal to any of us.  Meanwhile, John couldn't find us.  He had expected we'd get the sandwiches and then eat on the boat.  We hadn't done it intentionally, but we had ended up ditching him to sit for a moment and take a break.

     The Dragon Boat was a highlight for us and we got to both watch people and be watched by people here.  One creepy older guy took several pictures of Anna as she sat across from him.  The girls were shocked by a little boy who was wearing the split pants and no diaper that is common for toddlers here.  He was displaying everything.  But the boat itself was a one-way ride back to the entry to the Summer Palace, and the view from the lake along the way was impressive, as we remembered it.  Still, Julie, had listed the Summer Palace as the place she most wanted to return to from our previous trip, and we didn't really get the chance to savor it like she had hoped.

     By the time we got to the Temple of Heaven, we were beat.  That's really unfortunate, because of all the things in Beijing, Scott wanted to revisit this the most.  Scott remembered it as a place where "Chinese go to be Chinese."  When we were here before, there were people singing and playing traditional instruments, doing tai chi, writing Chinese characters on the sidewalk, and playing mah jong, and cool stuff like that.  If they were doing that this time, we didn't see them.

      The Temple of Heaven itself dates back to 1420, and unlike many of the ancient buildings we've seen today, it has actually survived since then and hasn't been rebuilt.  Its three round levels, blue roofs and interior columns were replicated at Epcot as the architectural symbol of all of China.  The emperor would come here to pray for good harvests.

      The building was still nice, but we kinda breezed through the exhibits about it nearby.  John had given us a little time to browse through them on our own, but we were a little too spent to study them closely.

     After that, John brought us back to the hotel, and it was about 3:00.  We hit the air conditioning of our rooms and we all collapsed.  In fact, the girls were so sound asleep that when we came to get them for dinner, we couldn't wake them up.  It felt like we were in Paris again.  We had to go get another key at the front desk.

    Once we roused the girls (which wasn't easy), we went to find dinner nearby.  We found a "Pizza Hut," which used the familiar logo, but the menu didn't have much pizza on it and it didn't look like what we wanted.  We waited for a while, but no one waited on us, so we eventually dragged ourselves out of there and shuffled down the road further to a McDonalds.  Picture menus helped us order close to what we wanted, and the drinks with ice helped perk us up.  Scott and Anna tried to get more drinks by using one of the automated screens, but didn't realize that you needed to pay electronically and needed help.  First a teenage boy (noticing Anna) and then a manager eventually helped us get more to drink.  Then, as we were heading back to the hotel, that teenaged boy asked Anna her age and asked to take a picture with her.  Anna felt like a celebrity and seemed to like the attention.  We bought Emma some Crocs to help her feet because the walking sandals she brought with her seemed to be too small.  Then we went back to the hotel to collapse for the night.

     On the whole, today was too hot and too rushed to enjoy, which was a huge disappointment.  John seemed to be compressing two of our scheduled days into one, which also meant that he won't be with us two days from now.  He said he'd give us directions on how to get to the zoo to see the pandas, which we might do, but he seems to be getting out of a day of work.  On the one hand, we paid for the price of the tour for three guided days in Beijing and are only getting two,  but on the other hand, maybe we really could do better without him pushing us so.  When we first met him, John said his Chinese name meant "tall and handsome."  Anna later quietly pointed out to us that in our language, "John" means "bathroom."   That's a bit harsh, but we laughed at it.