Tienanmen Square and Wandering Beijing

After a couple of gorgeous blue sky days, Monday goes back to the regularly scheduled clouds and rain. Maybe its always gray during the week and blue on the ends, I don't know if thats great or horrible.

We take a small bus to the Pearl Market in downtown Beijing. At Pearl Market, hundreds of vendors clamor for our attention so that we can barter over the price of their goods. On a rainy Monday such as this, there are few customers visiting, so our group expected to get a few good deals. I got a spare battery for my camera, which has run out a few times with all the pictures I've taken, cutting the price from 270 qai to 100 (about $14). I also got a Transformers belt buckle - which has been on my Amazon.com wishlist for a while - for 40 qai with a belt. Thats less than seven dollars for something that costs $15 plus shipping and handling over here, not shabby.

Everyone meets up and the bus takes us over to a plaza across the street from Tienanmen Square. We form groups and head in different directions; Steve, Katherine, Mario, Dave, and I head in the most logical direction: towards the square. Several monuments and large pictures of Mao adorn Tienanmen and the surrounding area, had it not been so rainy and miserable it may have seemed more impressive. What is impressive is that the rain hasn't driven away much of the crowds, which cluster around each tourist attraction. We wander aimlessly before wondering if the National Museum across the street is open. Turns out its closed, however a Chinese family approaches Mario (they assume she's Chinese (she's Japanese), turns out this happens a lot) to ask if they can take a picture with Steve, Dave, and I. We politely oblige, giving Mario our cameras to document our growing fan club. As the first photo finishes, another family asks for a photo, then a third; we hurry to finish before the paparazzi arrive. The onslaught of photo shoots probably happened because we are damn sexy, but another option would be that we are Americans standing in front of the National Museum (with clock ticking down the seconds until the Olympics) - and it didn't hurt that I was wearing the Chinese national soccer team's jersey.

The girls decide to take a cab to some shopping outlets as we head towards the Forbidden City. As soon as we get through the main entrance, the rain picks up even more and we decide it would be a poor choice to pay to trudge through the rain to take pictures of a damp Forbidden City, we'll go another day. Instead, we decide to head to Oriental Plaza where the Official Olympic Store is located. The city blocks are much larger here, so it takes us at least 20 minutes to span the two blocks over to the plaza. After checking out some Olympic gear, Dave decides to take a cab back to Beijing Sport University while Yo Tai and I venture forth into the unknown.

Through the pouring rain, Steve and I pace westward down Jianguo Jie, which turns out to be a major road in Beijing. In addition to running between Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City, Jianguo Jie runs past the Oriental Plaza, Beijing Railway Station, the Beijing Friendship Store, and a Wal-Mart Supercenter; not to mention dozens of huge buildings devoted to apartments or corporations. We meet up with the girls at Wal-Mart and buy air mattresses (greatest investment ever) and Transformers on DVD.

Afterwards, we tiredly walk around searching for a Japanese restaurant for Mario's Birthday. The one we stumble into is perfect, no shoes necessary for service! We split a bottle of sake while eating traditional Japanese soups and sushi. Afterwards, we walk down the hall and see a store called "Ho's Fashion," where we took some obligatory pictures.


Now that we've written about the biggest days of touring, hopefully we'll be able to spit out all of our training days to get caught up before the Olympics start. Sorry for the inconsistency of the posting schedule, but with so much to do we don't always have time to blog every night (or week).

Official Tour of Winter/Summer Palaces

Woke up today (July 13th) to another blue sky morning with the sun out and no humidity. Its weird how the first week went by without any sun, only clouds and smog; merely seeing the sky makes China feel more like home, the sun also shines on the other side of the world.

We started off by heading to the Winter Palace again, except this time as an entire group. Fortunately, the only section we spent time in was the statuary, which I didn't get to see last time round. Vast rock pillars stand without walls burned down long ago. A stone maze leading to a small gazebo in the middle is the highlight as it is more intact than any of the other stone carvings. Based on how intricately the stone was carved, and what I know about the rest being burned and looted, one can only imagine how awesome the wooden carvings and golden treasures were within this palace.

Over at the Summer Palace, we ate lunch within a pavilion on the outskirts before venturing within. This palace served as a second home to the Emperor, and was abused by one Dragonlady - a babysitter to young Emperors and key advisor to the throne - who put the Emperor on house arrest here. Not that it was incredibly restrictive, hundreds of acres at the very least and a lake to swim in to boot. There is almost a monotonous amount of detail in the designs in the hallways that run around the courtyards, which brought out the more unique murals and paintings at the top of the windows and doorways (there are no windows or doors, but thats the easiest way to describe them). Amongst our group of Ithaca College students are a few Beijing Sport University students; Ivan and Robin (their English names) are two that Steve and I befriended pretty quickly. I inquired about one particular painting with a monkey, a pig, a horse, and two people riding on a turtle across a stream. Robin explained to me that there's a famous fairy tale about a monkey king who journeys west across China with a monk and the King of the Pigs to find Buddha... sounds like the best story ever! Another story we came across was that of the Bankruptcy stone: once a man came across a beautiful stone and decided to haul it across China to the Summer Palace as a gift for the Emperor. Due to its immense weight, he only took it halfway before he ran out of money, starved, and died. 200 years later, a merchant found the stone and completed its journey to the palace. At the time of its arrival, Emperor Qianlong had lead China to its greatest prosperity to date; after receiving the stone, massive rebellion and embezzlement caused the kingdom to go broke! I was going to take a picture in front of it to tempt fate, but the last thing I want to do is mock the gods; if a rock could bring down an entire kingdom it could probably bring down Stephen Lauer.

We head out for another delicious dinner, during which Robin and Ivan give Steve and I our Chinese names! My Chinese name is Shur Tien Shway (rough pronunciation) meaning Steve Scuba. Steve's is Shur Yo Tai meaning Steve Jew. While they were telling us our names they were conversing in Chinese on how to pronounce each name. We were confused and they told us that initially they mispronounced Shur as Shura, which means "something you do in the toilet." After a moment, we realized the hilarity of Shura Tien Shway (Scuba Crap) or Shura Yo Tai (Jew Crap). Great day for learning Chinese, we learned our names and our first curse word.

Finally, we closed our night at the Peking Opera with the performance The Phoenix and the Dragon. Very interesting with a few funny segments and fighting and plot twists, however one thing stood out: the screeching falsetto of the leading lady. While the men spoke so quickly that the subtitles had difficulty keeping up, she elongated every syllable to the extreme at a pitch so high and loud glass should have shattered. Thankfully we were pretty far back, some of my classmates had premier seats; sitting up front next to the speakers, I can understand why some needed to walk out. Even our tour guide, whose English name is Silver (pretty sweet), admitted that she didn't need to be mic'd up for the performance. So thats how operas are done on the other side of the world. Tomorrow will be the last day of our official tours of China, then we're on our own.