4th Day in Beijing

Me on top of the Great Wall of China.
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St. Patty's Day in China, woo hoo! Like usual I got up early to catch the tour bus. The tour guide's name was Jackie and no he was not Jackie Chan, but he did pick his English name because he likes Jackie Chan though. There were six other people on the tour, five were Americans from John Hopkins graduate school in China doing research on the financial and business relationships between China and the European Union and the other was a businessman from Brazil. Jackie told us about the 2008 Olympic Chinese mascots, which are called the Friendlies. When there names are put together they mean Beijing Welcomes You. There are five of them, one is a fish (Bei-Bei), one is a panda bear (Jing-Jing), one is fire, one if a Tibetian Antlope, and the last is a swallow. I am sure as the Olympics get closer you will start to see more of them in the US. The first stop on the tour was the Ming Tombs where all, but three of the Ming Emperors were buried. The tomb we went to was called the Changling Tomb, which is were the third Ming Emperor, the most powerful and famous in the Ming Empire, is buried with his wife. He is also the one that moved the capital of China to Beijing, Peking at the time, he built selected the site for the Ming Tombs, and built the Forbidden City. We went to the Long Di Superior Jade Gallery, which is a government store that makes and sell jade art. There were some truly amazing jade sculptures some small and that were enormous. After learning about Jade from one of the store employees, I walked around the store and looked at all the stuff that was for sale. We had lunch in a resturant attached to the jade store, which serviced traditional Chinese food. I bought a beer to have with lunch, because it was St. Patrick's Day in all. I know I didn't have my first beer until noon, but I am in Beijing surrounded by about 15 million people that aren't celebrating this special day with me. We then headed for the Badaling Great Wall, which is the section of the Great Wall that everyone sees in all the pictures. At the bottom of the Great Wall there was also a black bear exhibit with lots of bears in these large pits. You could buy some food and feed them by throwing the food to them. They would climb up metal towers, hang off them, and caught the food in the air as you throw it up to them. They were very entertaining and funny to watch. We then walked up some stairs to the top of the Great Wall of China. Getting on top of the wall wasn't that difficult, because walking along the top of it to the highest point and then back down was a serious undertaking. It took most of the three hours that we had at the wall just to make the journey up the super steep stairs and flat inclines. I couldn't believe that some of these old Chinese women that were able to make this climb. I guess it just show how good of shape that most of the Chinese are in from walking and riding bikes everywhere. The highest point on the wall there were all these venders and tables, so it created a huge bottleneck and everyone was smashed together in a massive traffic jam of people. When we made it to the other end of the wall, we had to take this railway thing down. Your thinking railcars, right. Nope, they were these individual sleds that were joined together and the guy in front just had a brake to slow the entire train of sleds down and gravity is the only thing that pushed us along. It was very sketchy, but I made it down all in one piece. I did buy a beer from one of the vendors, so I can say I had a beer on the Great Wall of China. I also used the bathroom at the Great Wall, which cost 50 guan or 1/2 yuan (7 cents US) and was rated a one star. It was by far the flithiest bathroom I had ever seen and it reaked of urine. To put it in perspective, a public bathroom on the beach would be a three or four star bathroom. The last stop was a the Silk Factory, when we got back to downtown Beijing. We got to see how they harvested the silk and the two different types of silk. Silk used to make thread for weaving comes from a single worm in a cocoon and the silk string is unwound and put with nine others to make a single thread. The other type is a cocoon with multiple worms inside, so the strings are all intertwined, so they can't be unwound. This type is strectched to make filling for the inside of blankets, quilts, and pillows. Silk is very soft, water resistant and won't collect dust, so it heavily used for bedding and clothes. We learned about the different qualities or generations of silk products that they produced. The highest quality is what was used for the Emperor's bedding. One of the people from John Hopkins knew about a really good authentic Chinese resturant in Beijing, so we all decided to meet up for dinner there after the tour. The name of the resturant was Xiao Wang's Home Resturant and they had lots of authentic Chinese food including Peking or Beijing Roasted Duck. The menu was interesting because it was basically one page but folded back and forth like an ecordian. One of the guys from John Hopkins spoke Chinese, so we all told him what we wanted and he ordered for us all. We ordered tons of food and quite a few beers and it was only about 80 yuan, $13 USD, each. The roasted duck was my favorite and the skin was like candy. We decided to go have a couple more beer to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and I want to try to find a Guiness. We ended up at this Swedish bar after about a half hour of this lost taxi driver driving us around. They had Guiness on their menu, but they were all out of it, boo! I had a couple of beer and called it a night. I grabbed a taxi back to my hotel and crashed, since I had to get up ass o'clock in the morning.

I know I didn't have my first beer until noon, but I am in Beijing surrounded by about 15 million people that aren't celebrating this special day with me.