Beijing Trip

Vacation leave #2 from work this summer: BEIJING

July 18 saw the grand return to Qingdao of our 5 kids (1 sister + 3 family friends + 1 other camper) from their 2-week traveling summer camp. My sister stayed here for 5 days and then we took off Friday-Thursday to Beijing to see the sights before she headed back to the US ...

Day 1
6pm - arrive at Qingdao airport for 7:50pm flight. check-in.
6:30pm - find out our plane hasn't even left Shanghai for Qingdao yet, so boarding will not be happening. we are slightly annoyed.
7:30pm - discover our flight will be late. find empty seats in the waiting area. wallow in frustration.
8pm - eat at KFC.
8:30pm - go back to KFC for ice cream.
9pm - still sitting in KFC, memorizing their menu. still wallowing in frustration.
9:30pm - finally are told the plane's arriving soon. go through security.
10pm - board the airplane. hallelujah.
11pm - continue sitting at the gate wondering wtf is wrong with our flight. apparently there is some weather apocalypse in Beijing.
11:30am - still there.
12:00am - haven't moved. oh betcha didn't see that one coming.
12:30am - we leave ... HAH april fool's.
1:00am - people are rioting in the airplane. one guy complains loudly to the stewardess(es) that his back can't stand this and asks for vodka, everybody else agrees.
1:30am - the passengers are outta control. the pilot must make a move. lights go off, engines start, captain announces our imminent takeoff. people slightly calm down. (even though we all bet we were just gonna go take a spin 'round the parking lot.)
2:30am - arrive at Beijing. extremely irritated, grouchy, and sore from sitting in a Boeing 737 seat for so many stale hours. spend forever and a year trying to be at the same location in the airport as our driver. it takes over 15 phone calls to meet near the bus lanes, what inefficiency.
2:50am - arrive at the hotel (actually a golf resort) our host arranged for us (due to their gated community not allowing visitors after midnight). spend over 20 minutes knocking on doors of almost completely unlit buildings with no lobby/parking lot lights. wonder if we're even at the right place.
3:10am - finally find the right building on the golf grounds. get our gigantic hotel room that looks like a bedroom straight out of an antique American mansion.
4:00am - GO TO SLEEP. FINALLY.

[Fig. 1a] The hotel room our mind-blowingly rich hosts rented us for the night. I didn't even photograph the bathroom or the entrance hallway.



Day 2
After the incredibly tiring wasted night, it took a while to get ready to go out the next day. Got picked up from the hotel, brought to our hosts' house, ate lunch, began our adventuring.
Friday was Bird's Nest and Water Cube. Beijing 2008 Olympic venues ftw.

[Fig. 2a] Bird's Nest visitors


[Fig. 2b] 80,000 seats for spectators




[Fig. 2c] Everybody and their mom wants a picture with the Olympic mascots.


[Fig. 2d] Bird's Nest under gloomy rainy afternoon skies.


[Fig. 2e] Inside of Water Cube, Olympics swim/dive venue





Kinda icky weather and on/off rain, but later in the evening it stopped ... we got into Water Cube with only 30 minutes left of it being open, but that was enough to see all that we were allowed to see ..

[Fig. 2f] Olympic locker rooms like whoa.


[Fig. 2g] I returned to Bird's Nest/Water Cube for nighttime pictures.






-----------------BTW
Beijing's geography consists of 5 "rings" (major highways), dividing the city into 5 concentric rings of land + everything outside the 5th ring. We lived right outside the 4th ring.
-------------------


Day 3
Took the subway into the city by myself to Tiananmen Square.

Beijing's subway system is the clearest, most easily navigated system on the face of the planet. Every train car has little maps, with lights showing past stops red, approaching stop flashing, later stops green, so you don't confuse direction. There's also a light on the doors that tells you which door will open at the next stop. The signs within the stations are marked in very visible locations with clarity about where to transfer, exit (to what street, to which landmarks/sights), get to here/there, and the signs never contradict/repeat themselves, unlike many other subway systems I've seen ..).

[Fig. 3a] Beijing subway map


Itinerary
Tiananmen Square/Gate (Tiananmen guang chang) = Guarded Forbidden City, site of 10/01/1949 declaration of People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong, largest open urban square in the world, size: 100 acres = ~405,000 sq. meters
Forbidden City (Gu Gong) = The imperial palace of the Ming to Qing dynasties, almost 500 years, size: 720,000 sq. meters
Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan) = Ming and Qing dynasties' garden and location of prayer, size of temple grounds: 2,703,000 sq. meters

[Fig. 3b] Tiananmen. "Men" = "door/gate." Notice the 78,000 people on the streets. Mao's portrait is commemoration of his establishment of the current People's Republic of China.


[Fig. 3c] about 1/20th of the line to tour Mao's mausoleum


[Fig. 3d] One of numerous buildings inside Forbidden City, plus token crowd of tourists




[Fig. 3f] Chinese architecture


[Fig. 3g] One of the emperors' countless rooms inside Forbidden City ... probably where he rested before he moved to his napping room before he moved to his changing room before he moved to his eating room before he moved to his meeting room.


[Fig. 3h] The actual temple in Temple of Heaven grounds


[Fig. 3i] Concentric circles with repetition of the number 9 (each layer 9 steps, multiples of 9 cement blocks on each ring, etc.); topmost center location was emperor's praying spot


[Fig. 3j] Backstory: I was supposed to see everything that day with Alice Yu (another MIT '11) but about half hour after we met up at Tiananmen, just as we reach the ticket counter for Forbidden City, her body decides to freak out, she goes blind, hearing wanes, etc. etc. (read: heat stroke, read: Beijing had been cloudy/rainy skies the whole summer til that day) and we sat down somewhere before sending her off on a taxi back home. [[It took me 3 hours from the time I arrived at Tiananmen, to actually enter Forbidden City.]]
Second backstory: the last time we hung out, I broke my arm (snowboarding). Next time is my turn for the random health fail. This somewhat more than slightly discourages me from visiting her in Hong Kong during my last week in China ... I'll probably slip on like a candy wrapper and chip my front teeth or something.
Actual story of this picture: she got better after resting/drinking water at home for a few hours, and met up again later that afternoon. We saw Temple of Heaven and had KFC before parting ways, KFC was glorious.







Day 4
Great Wall of China.

Got up at 5am to be picked up by tour bus at 6am. Rode about an hour to the Great Wall, saw that, plus Ming Dynasty tombs/burial grounds, and a wax museum showing History of the Ming Dynasty ...

[Fig. 4a] riding a roller coaster type thing up the mountain ..


[Fig. 4b] too many Chinese to fit within the walls


[Fig. 4c] On top of the world


[Fig. 4d] GREAT WALL OF CHINA


[Fig. 4e] really steep ground ...


[Fig. 4f] Chinese architectural feat


[Fig. 4g] riding lazy cars/roller coasters back down ...


[Fig. 4h] depiction of travels/war during the Ming Dynasty




Day 5
Went out with my sister our last full day in Beijing, rode into the city by bus, saw a few sights, did some shopping ...

Itinerary
Tsinghua (Qinghua) University = the MIT of China. Seriously, it is everything to parents/students to go to Tsinghua or Peking (Beijing) University (the Harvard of China).
National Operahouse = self-explanatory. dome-shaped structure surrounded by water; entrance to the operahouse is tunnel underneath the surrounding water/moat.
Tiananmen Square again = my sister was about to leave Beijing without having visited BEIJING. so we went again.
Qianmen = gateway into Tiananmen square from the south; entrance to the square
Silk Street Markets = big knockoff market with the highest white people density I've seen all summer

[Fig. 5a] Qinghua University gate


[Fig. 5b] Tsinghua campus grounds. I felt more like I was walking through a giant park, not a college campus.


[Fig. 5c] National Operahouse


[Fig. 5d] Tiananmen on a cloudier day


[Fig. 5e] grilled lamb kebob from street vendors. surprisingly tasty considering my dislike of lamb.


[Fig. 5f] selling watermelon on the streets ... check out that knife (the watermelon is cut into lengthwise slices).


[Fig. 5g] Our hosts! Friend of my mom from elementary/middle school days ... in a foyer about 1/20th the size of 1 of 4 floors in their house.




the "kids"




Day 6
Goodbye, Beijing

My sister left at 6am for her flight back to the US, I slept in, our host took me out to lunch, and off I went to the train station with a pit stop at Silk Street Markets again :P

Two interesting notes about the afternoon
1. When I got in the cab, the driver's first question was "you're an athlete, aren't you?" ... and to my "why?" he answered, "you slammed the trunk door shut so hard" ... and then proceeded to tell me I should take up a job coaching such and such sport in China in the future.
2. After the train finally started to move, I took out my iPod ready to soak in 6 glorious hours of music. You know how you are when you go on long trips - sit down, kick back, put on the earphones ... I go to Music --> Playlists ...
THERE IS NO MUSIC ON MY IPOD
WHAT
WHAT

apparently when I charged it on our friend's computer, it synched my iPod with their iTunes library (which contained nothing because this iMac on the 4th floor was bought for the sole purpose of being a big, clear screen with good resolution to display photos for the dad while painting).

Yeah, so I stared out the window for 6 hours ... it was lovely.

[Fig. 6a] Lunch with our host


[Fig. 6b] Train from Beijing --> Qingdao



Sweet trip, so long Beijing.