Beijing

It’s hard to believe that I left for China less than a week ago, because it seems like it has already been so long since I was back at home in North Carolina.  Currently I’m on the night train to Xian, so I’ve finally got some downtime to type up a post about Beijing.  After the long process of flying into Beijing, which took over 24 hours, (over 36 with the time change) we finally made it to our hotel in Beijing.  When we got to the hotel we all had to give the front desk our passports, as people who are not Chinese citizens have to register where they are staying.  After registering and receiving our room keys, it was after 11 PM here in China, so we all tried to get some sleep after the long travel day.

Our hotel was located right in the center of Beijing, so after breakfast we walked from our hotel to The Forbidden City, which was only about 10 minutes away.  There are bicycles and mopeds everywhere here in the city, in addition to crazy drivers.  There is a near constant sound of car horns on the streets, and the bicycles just zip fearlessly out in front of these cars at intersections.  On the larger roads there are large bike lanes because there are so many bicycles.

The entrance to The Forbidden City is located right on Tiananmen Square, so we took a quick stop there first.  The street that is in between Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City is so big (7 lanes each way, plus two large bike lanes) that you have to go through a tunnel under the street to get to the square.

Tiananmen Square and the entrance to The Forbidden City (I hadn’t figured out the exposure settings on my camera at this point yet) 

Inside the Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is the palace that the emperors lived in after the capital was moved from Nanjing (which means South Capital) to Beijing (which means North Capital).  All of the signs were in both Chinese and English, so we were actually able to read the signs at the exhibits and learn about what we were seeing.   The Chinese architecture was amazing, and the gardens in The Forbidden City were beautiful. One interesting fact about The Forbidden City is that there are huge metal pots all over.  These pots were once filled with water, in the case of a fire because the whole structure is wood and Fires were quite common.  Our last stop was to the Buddhist temple across the street from The Forbidden City, which was elevated so you could see a bird’s eye view of the entire Forbidden City from the top.

The main focus of Day 2 in China was seeing The Great Wall of China.  Our tour guide came to pick us up in the morning, and we drove out of Beijing to the wall.  On the car ride out of Beijing, The scope of how huge this city truly is finally hit me.  Beijing is about three times bigger than New York City.  As we drove out of the city, we passed through the city gates and the City just kept on going.  There were so many high rise apartment buildings, and even more being constructed.  In some places it looked like an entire new city was being constructed at once with all of the apartment buildings that are now needed to accommodate the population in Beijing.

Actually being at The Great Wall of China was an amazing experience.  There were a lot of people there as it was a Saturday, and some locals come to The Great Wall as a way to escape the city during the weekend.

Another thing about China is that I am somewhat of a spectacle to the people of China.  Dr. Franzen told me that many of the Chinese tourists at the wall may have come from farther away and could have never seen a white person before in their life.  People wanted to take pictures with us, and they would openly stare at you and take pictures of you.  This also happened on our first day at Tianmen. Dr. Franzen  got someone to take a group photo of us and locals started jumping in wanting to take pictures with us.  It was a really interesting experience, because here I was at the Great Wall of China – which is such an amazing, beautiful place, and people wanted to take pictures with me.  It was surreal.

One of the people who wanted to take a picture of us at The Great Wall

After the wall we headed to lunch, and then got on our way to The Ming Tombs.  The Ming Tombs are where the 13 emperors of the Ming Dynasty were buried.  Each emperor had a huge tomb built for him, and construction for these tombs were started when the Emperor was as young as 20.  One of my favorite parts of the Ming Tombs was the gate that was the entrance to all of the tombs, which was called the Yin Yang Gate.  This gate was the gateway between the world of the living and the dead, as when most people passed that gate they never came back alive.  The people who buried the emperor were sealed in the tomb with him, as they knew the exact location and the valuables that the emperor was buried with. As we walked back out of the gate when we were leaving, we had to shake the dust off of ourselves and say ‘I am coming home,’ in Chinese so that we would re-enter the world of the living.

The Whole Group at the Ming Tombs

Our third day in Beijing started with taking cabs over to The Temple of Heaven.   The Temple of Heaven was one of the Emperors temples, and it was also where sacrifices were performed.  What was really cool about this place for me was that the locals used it as a park.  It was a big hang out spot for the locals, who were all playing their own versions of badminton, hacky sack, and other outdoor activities. At one part of the park area of the temple there were at least 50 people all doing sort of line dances to music together.  Trying to join in the dances was a fun experience for me.

Temple of Heaven

The afternoon was a free afternoon for us, so Hadi, Judy, Sarah, and I decided to go to Wangfujing, which is a very westernized part of the city.  We all did a bit of shopping for souvenirs and gifts for everyone there, and then went to the mall that is on the street.  The mall was absolutely huge, and it was interesting to see which American brands were there and it was also interesting to see the Chinese brands as well.

Day four was our last day in Beijing, so we all packed up our bags before heading down to breakfast.  After breakfast we walked over to Tiananmen Square again, to see the People’s museum.  Upon arriving we figured out that all of the museums were closed because it was a Monday.  After walking around the part of the square we didn’t see the first day, we took the subway back to our hotel.  The subway is really modern, and it was easy to navigate as everything was in both Chinese and English.  The one thing that was surprising to me on the subway was the sheer amount of people that were squished into each one of these trains.  There is no such thing as your own personal bubble on the Chinese subway.

In the afternoon we went to a Buddhist temple, Jietai Temple.  This temple was the second largest Buddhist temple in China, and it was absolutely beautiful.  Unlike many of the other stops in Beijing, this wasn’t much of a tourist location, so it was very quiet and peaceful.  There was a garden and there were trees that were about 1000 years old.  Our tour guide also taught me a lot about Buddhism while we were there.  For example, I didn’t know that there were 3 different Buddhas: past, present, and future Buddha.  The temple didn’t take as long as planned, so since we had a while before we needed to head back to Beijing to catch our night train, we sat in the gardens and Dr. Franzen talked a little about what we will be learning and some options for our research projects.  It was so peaceful sitting there in the gardens.  Also, who in the world can say they’ve had a Chemistry lesson at a Buddhist temple?

Jeitai Temple

From there we went to the train station in Beijing, where we got on our night train to Xian.

More updates about Xian coming soon!

-          Kirsty