The Winter/Old Summer Palace

As you can see my colleague, roomie, and brother from another mother Steve will now be presenting his own observations and incites to the Scublog from this point onwards; I will now pick up where he left off...

After playing basketball with some Beijing Sport University students (Sidenote: just as in the US, you don't wear a jersey to the court unless you bring some serious game. Of the eight of us there, our new Chinese friend sporting a Vince Carter throwback jersey was one of the two best players on the court, cutting to the basket or making threes at will.) and ate lunch, we headed over to the Ruins of Yuanmingyuan also known as the Winter Palace or the Old Summer Palace. Originally over 864 acres, most of the property was burned and pillaged by the Anglo-French Allied Forces (didn't they hate each other) during the Opium War of 1860. What remains is a variety of beautiful bridges and a hodgepodge of salvaged objects. While wandering Mario, Billy, Steve, and I broke off from the main group to explore an exhibit aside from the beaten path. There we got our picture taken by a Chinese kid who spoke a little English but was fluent in Russian. I encourage you to look at the pictures I have on my Picasa site, (and I'll try to get some of Steve's too, his are good) what remained on the palace grounds was unique, intricate, and exquisite; one can only imagine how glorious this area would've been had Westerners not brought the place to ruins. After meeting up with the main group again, we tried to go back to the university. However, the maps were a tad confusing and, while Mario could communicate with the workers through writing, (she's Japanese and the two written languages are very similar while their spoken are not) we got lost for about an hour or two, thoroughly wearing out our legs and minds.

Once we got back, I learned that we'll all be taking turns blogging for the Ithaca website - the link for which I will post on the side. Afterwards, we headed to the cafeteria to meet up with students from Delaware State who've lived in Beijing for five months and are leaving in a couple weeks. After soaking up tips about this foriegn city, language, and culture, they offered to take us out to Wudouko for some nightlife. It was a nice change of pace from all China, all the time but I'm ready dive back in tomorrow.