3rd Day in Beijing

Me in a ricshaw before we took the tour of the Hotong area.
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I got to sleep in a little and got up at 7:15am, so I had time to shower and grab free buffet breakfast at the Hotel before I had to leave at 8:15am. The tour guide showed up about 10 minutes late, but it did really matter. There were two other people on the tour with me a couple from Uraguay, South America.  The wife spoke and understood English, but she had to translate everything into Spanish for him. It was kind of annoying, because the tour guide would have to stop in the middle of explaining things so she could translate to her husband. Since we were such a small group and our tour guide Tony was really tall we didn't have to use one of those stupid tour flags. The first stop was at the Lama Temple, which is the home of the Tibetan Buddism in Beijing. It was a gift to the Tibetan monks from one of the Emporer's from the Ming dynasty and the area was were he lived when he was the prince to the throne. The main entrance was under renovation for the Olympics, but all the temples with the different Buddah in them were all open. Many Buddists were burning incense outside most of the temples. Buring of incense and photos were not allowed inside the temples. The main temple had monks reading scriptures and praying with some Chinese Buddist praying along with them. The tour guide said something special was going on, since he had never heard them play the music they were playing and he had been there many many times before. There were five sacred treasures that were located in different temples and were all made out the sacred sandalwood. The largest and most impressive was this 18 meter tall Budda staute carved from a single sandalwood tree inside one of the temples. I also learned there are three Buddah one for the past to pray for dead relatives, one for the present to pray for oneself, and one for the future to pray for upcoming generations. The next stop was at the Beijing Zoo to see the Giant Panda Bears. We saw a few of them inside one was sleeping and the other was eating bamboo. The rest were outside sleeping and one was sleeping up on a wooden bridge all spread out. It must be a tough life to be a Giant Panda Bear, sleep all day, and get fed bamboo by zoo keepers. We didn't stop to see the rest of the zoo and we headed for the Hutong Tour. We took a ricshaw, a three wheel bike with a seat in back, the drive peddled us around the very narrow streets of the old city near the Forbidden Temple. The houses were all laid out in the old Chinese style homes with two open courtyards and buildings surrounding them. The whole family would live together in the different buildings from grandparents to children even if there were married. We stopped at one of the locals homes and had lunch. We ate traditional Chinese food using chop sticks and we all ate from the plates of food directly. The food was really good, there was lots of it, and a big variety to choose from. I ate until I was completely stuffed. The family had lots of caged birds in there courtyard and they were chirping and singing. After lunch the ricshaws drove us around the city some more and we stopped at the front gate to one of the old house and the tour guided explained how the entrance to the house told about the families statue and the father's position in the government. When we were finished, I tipped the driver $20 yuan. We walked over to Houhai Lake, which use to be surrounded by thirteen temples. Today it is surrounded by bars and resturants and most of the temples were destroyed or turned into bars. We walked down a street called pipe street, because it is in the shape of a tobacco pipe. This is an unusual shape since almost all the streets are straight and perpendicular to each other in this area. Then we headed to the drum tower across the street. We had to climb the 69 really steep stairs to get to the drums and get a view of the city. We walked around the balcony of the tower and you could see the whole city from up there, you could see the differences in the buildings based on the different districts. We then watched the drum ceremony that went every half hour and in ancient time was used to anounce the time to the city during the night and the adjacent bell tower was used during the day. We then stopped by a tea shop called Dr. Tea and it was a government business that sold tea and herbs for tea. We got to taste and learn how to made different types of tea. I am personally not a big fan of tea, but I figured I was on vacation and I should give it a shot. The tea was alright for tea I guess. They tried to get me to buy some and were very persistant, but I not going to buy any and I didn't. They did have this funny little clay boy that would pee cold water when boiling hot water was poured on top of it. I think it was so you could tell if the water was hot enough for making tea or something. The lady sprayed the cold water from the monkey on us and said it was good luck. I guess the Chinese had lots of things that are good luck. The tour was suppose to go to the Chinese Traditional Medical Center again, but me and the other couple had already been there, so we had the tour guide just drop us off back at our hotels. I worked on my blog some more, because I was still pretty far behind.

They did have this funny little clay boy that would pee cold water when boiling hot water was poured on top of it. I think it was so you could tell if the water was hot enough for making tea or something.