Today we did a lot of things. First we went to a school for disabled and otherwise outcast children near the outskirts of Beijing. They lived on the second floor of the school and they let us see some of their rooms. For the most part, they were devoid of decoration and looked like issued rooms. There were about 4-6 children in each room and some closet space, but it really was much too small for that many people. The girls’ rooms had pink curtains to distinguish them as feminine, but other than that they were also cold and uninviting. There was a performance for the community that we sat in on for a while before we had to leave. While they were setting up, we played with them by trying to keep the balloons from hitting the floor. Then, there were a few songs and we had to leave. Unfortunately, they didn’t know any English so we couldn’t’ really talk to any of them.
After the school, we went to a restaurant for lunch. It was very good food and the waitresses wore traditional outfits. Many of the places that we ate at had cool lazy Susan tables in the middle to rotate the food for everyone as each dish was communal and you chose what you wanted to eat. After we ate there, we headed for Tiananmen square. In the bus, our tour guide asked us how we knew Tiananmen and of course we replied, “protest” to which she replied, ‘history’ and proceeded to tell us how Mao announced communist China in Tiananmen. I have to say, I was interested to see Tiananmen, knowing that it is a place where something important happened, yet that event doesn’t exist in China. Lucia (our guide) told us that the square could be cleared in 5 minutes (which is impressive because it can hold about 1 million people or something like that – it’s quite massive) and that there were four different kinds of security (military in green, police in blue, security guards in grey and unmarked acting like tourists). Even across the street, I saw a lamppost with 8 security cameras on it, not even trying to be inconspicuous. There were military guards marching through the square also while we were inside.
After we walked around it a bit, we entered the Forbidden City. It ended up being much, much larger than I thought it would be. Everyone has a vague notion of it as a series of temple-like structures framing large courtyards, but it seemed to just keep going – perhaps 5 or 6 of these squares. It was quite massive. The architecture was cool, but you could only go into certain rooms. We realized we were taking too long and were going to miss our meeting time so we had to hurry up and didn’t get to explore much of the gardens at the end. It is amazing how balanced everything is. That entire area, Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, are all on the same N-S line dividing them down the middle. It’s quite amazing how advanced people were back then to be able to build such things. After we had made it through the entire complex, we met our guide and headed for our scheduled trishaw ride. These are the cute carts that hold two people and are attached to the end of a bicycle. My hotel roommate and I sat in one cart and we had an awesome driver. He didn’t speak English but would play around to make our ride enjoyable (i.e. wiggle the cart back and forth, speed up and slow down, etc). He was pretty cool. We all went to the house of a family who had cooked for the Olympics to eat dinner and learn to make dumplings. It is actually harder than it looks to stuff them and fold them over properly. Needless to say ours were no where near as awesome as the ones they made but it was pretty fun to try to make them. The daughter in the family has a traditional skill of painting small glass bottles from the inside and showed us her trade. What an amazing ability! They have brushes attached to a stick at a 90 degree angle and paint very detailed images on the inside of the bottle – it was really quite awesome! Finally, we rode back to the hotel. Oh, we all had bought super cheap panda hats in the Forbidden City so we were sporting them as we walked around – quite obvious we were tourists but it was pretty funny to see a bunch of kids walking around with panda hats on.
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