The hotel was very impressive; it had originally been a Buddhist temple, but it was entirely rebuilt and had been open for less than a year. The next morning we met the rest of our tour group at breakfast, and then Mike herded us onto a tour bus for a visit to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.
The Forbidden City is the largest and best-preserved group of ancient buildings in China. It was the home of the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties between 1420 and 1912 when the last emperor, Pu Yi, abdicated. After the abdication, he was permitted to live inside until 1924. It is so called, Forbidden City, because it was off-limits to all common citizens for the almost 500 year period. Its 178 acres are completely surrounded by walls and moats.
It opened as the Palace Museum in 1925 and it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. We spent several hours exploring many of the 77 buildings and courtyards before leaving through the “Gate of Heavenly Peace” which leads directly into Tiananmen Square.
Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world, can easily, and has held over a million people at one time. On the west side of the square is the Great Hall of the People, home to the Chinese Parliament. Across the square is the National Museum of China, which was undergoing a renovation at the time of our visit,
and at the south end of the square is the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall which contains his mummified corpse displayed in a crystal coffin. No pictures are allowed inside the building.Following our visit to the square, we journeyed to a local restaurant for lunch, then, since the majority of our tour group had just arrived after long flights from the U.S.,
the remainder of the afternoon was free until dinner, which featured, appropriately enough, Peking Duck. 
That day was also Betsy’s 60th birthday, and so, with the help of our guide, Mike, the restaurant served a birthday cake which was shared by all of us.The next morning, Thursday, May 21st, we visited the BinBin Cloisonné Factory in Beijing. Cloisonné is enamel artwork that predates the Ming Dynasty (1420 AD). In the process, copper vases, dishes, etc. are cast, and then covered with patterns formed by copper wire welded to the castings.
The designs are then inlaid with enamel and glaze, and then placed in an oven to cure. Once cured, the pieces are polished several times before they are finished. We were able to watch all phases of the process, and then try our own hand at applying color to a pattern. Ro, our Hawaiian artist, won first prize, of course. Finally we were given the opportunity to shop in their large factory store before heading out on a drive to the Great Wall.Our bus took us out of Beijing to Badaling, about 50 miles out of the city, to an unrestored section of the Great Wall.
The total length of the wall is over 4,000 miles, or about the distance from Washington DC to Denver. The latest construction occurred around 1368 during the Ming Dynasty, although sections of the wall were built over 2,000 years ago. The wall in the Badaling area has not been restored, nor have any tourist facilities been built in the area, so we were the only tourists there. We transferred to small vans to get over the dirt roads that led to the wall, then walked about ½ mile before we reached the wall, itself. 
To celebrate our visit, Mike had brought a bottle of “Great Wall Red Wine” for us to try. It didn’t reach the standards of Sonoma County wine, but the thought and effort were great. We then climbed onto the wall and headed up the steep stairs that make up the walking surface. Since the wall hasn’t been restored, workmen have built wooden steps on top of the stone rubble to facilitate the climb. 
We climbed to a hilltop lookout to see the wall stretching along the ridge lines as far as we could see. Then we went back down the steps, which was more hair-raising than climbing them in the first place, and returned to our bus for a short ride into a village where we were welcomed into a private home for lunch. That was a special treat, and one of several that Overseas Adventure Tours arranged, which added significantly to our understanding of Chinese life and culture.
On our way back to our hotel, we were able to see a number of the Olympic venues from last summer’s games, including the “Birds Nest” Stadium where the opening and closing ceremonies were held. That evening we took an optional evening tour to a dinner and acrobatic show. We’ve all seen Chinese Acrobats on TV or in person, and this show was excellent as was the dinner.On Friday morning, we hopped on our bus and visited the “Beijing No. 1 Silk Carpet Factory”. It seems like lots of things are “No. 1” in China.
In a factory demo, we watched weavers tying individual silk threads onto the warp (vertical threads) and cutting them to length. The work is incredibly detailed and the production of a medium-sized carpet can take up to three months to complete, depending on the design. After watching the weavers several of our group got to try tying and cutting. I’m sure that the weavers took all of our work out as soon as we left the room.From the carpet factory we journeyed to the Beijing Municipal Opera School, where for an hour or more, we observed classes and individual instruction in various aspects of opera and theater skills. The school is primarily a high school for performing arts, but it includes core classes as well.
We watched several dance classes, theatrical sword work, proper fan work (you know, the folding kind in widespread use throughout Asia), and other theatrical skill building activities. The instructors seemed to be searching for perfection, because they stopped student routines for the tiniest correction. Glad we didn’t have instructors that picky in school.After lunch, we chose to participate in another optional tour, this one to the Summer Palace of the Emperors, followed by dinner and a Chinese opera performance. The Summer Palace is about 8 miles from the center of Beijing, and is the largest and best preserved royal garden in China.
During the Jin Dynasty (AD 265 – 420) an imperial palace was built at this site. Most of the grounds and buildings were destroyed by warfare, then redesigned and rebuilt. The Palace and grounds today are about the same as in 1903. Kunming Lake, which encompasses about ¾ of the park, was hand-dug under the orders of Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century. He reportedly marshaled 100,000 laborers to complete the work. A number of Buddhist temples and other buildings dot the shore, many connected by the “Long Corridor”. 
Paddle boats can be rented for excursions on the lake, but our group rode on a dragon boat to explore the sights around the lake.Those of us on this optional tour agreed that the Summer Palace should be included in the tour itself, rather than as an add-on. It is an exceptional site to visit and one that no one should miss. We expressed that thought in our trip evaluation questionnaire, and we’ll see if changes are made on future trips.
Once back in Beijing, we traveled to a theater for dinner and a Chinese opera performance.
Before the performance began, we were able to go backstage and see the costumes, props, and the actors applying their stage makeup, which when seen up close, looks rather garish. The performance itself was very entertaining, and it was all in Chinese (and actually in some historic dialect). 
It was great that our guide, Mike, had given us a brief synopsis of the different plays. Once the performance was over, we scurried back to our hotel after what everyone agreed was, “another very big day”.Saturday was a “getaway day” but it was full of activities before departure, so we had to have our large luggage packed and out of our rooms, and we checked out of the hotel before proceeding with the day’s tour. Our first stop was the “Temple of Heaven”. This temple was built between 1406 and 1420 by the same emperor who built the Forbidden City. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The temple underwent extensive restoration prior to the 2008 Olympics, and the surrounding park is very popular with local citizens who practice tai chi, dance, sing, and otherwise gather for leisure activities. There is another “long corridor”, similar to the one at the Summer Palace, but this one was chuck full with people entertaining themselves and others.
From the Temple of Heaven, we traveled a short distance away from tourist must-see sights and shopping malls to visit a Hutong. These old residential neighborhoods consist of many low, flat-roofed buildings crisscrossed by narrow lanes or alleys and are home to perhaps a quarter of Beijing’s population. While many hutongs have disappeared to be replaced by high-rise condo and apartment buildings, about 2,000 still remain. A common feature to these dwelling and shopping areas is that there are no private bathrooms for visitors and residents alike. Instead many public restrooms are found in the hutong.After walking through a hutong shopping street, we were welcomed into the home of Madame Wong and her niece for lunch.
She demonstrated how to make filled dumplings, and then invited us to try our hand at dumpling-making, which we achieved with varying degrees of success. Her dumplings, on the other hand, were well made, and a delicious part of an excellent home-cooked lunch. After finishing lunch, her niece demonstrated her skill as an artist. 
She paints pictures on the inside of small glass (“snuff”) bottles which are sold for very high prices at stores around Beijing.We walked back through the hutong, and then toward the Drum Tower, which was the center of the old capital. The drums were beaten to mark the hours of the day. Most of our group continued to the Drum Tower, while we were distracted by a kitchen store. We purchased a Chinese cleaver that Debbie’s sister had asked us to buy for her. We also stopped to purchase wrist watches for ourselves, since we hadn’t brought them, and we realized that we needed to know the time so we didn’t miss the bus! We then scurried to catch up with the rest of the group for dinner.
After dinner we took our bus to the Beijing Railroad Station to catch the night train to Xi’An, our next travel stop. It was about a 12-hour trip, but we had sleeping accommodations aboard the train. Each compartment had 4 berths, but each couple had a compartment to themselves, so the upper berths were a good place to store clothing and our carry-on luggage for the night. Our big suitcases had been transported to the train station and loaded in the baggage car, and we wouldn’t see them again until we reached our hotel in Xi’An. It was an enjoyable ride, and we, at least, got a pretty good night’s sleep.Xi'An and the Terra Cotta Warriors will be the next post published, in a couple of days, I hope.
