Beijing: Where the Real Attractions Are the White People, Not the Great Wall of China

      I'm not even sure where to begin with this Beijing trip. So much happened this week, and I can't even keep it all straight. So a good place to start seems to be this tiny police vehicle that we found almost as soon as we got off the airplane.  Pretty cool. And by cool I mean unbelievably cute.
Anyway, this week was the most tourist-y week I've ever had. We did so many things that I'm having a hard time keeping everything straight.  We started off by going to a museum in Xi'an that had so much history packed into 3 floors that I could barely take it all in.

Howeaver,  museums weren't all of it. We also got to see this pagoda here. Pretty crazy stuff. I'm just hanging out with this elephant here.   While the days are filled with tourist sites, the nights are filled with Chinese meals and shows. The meals here are always eaten at round tables with centers that turn.  If we aren't given chop sticks to eat with these days we almost don't know what to do with ourselves. We've had some really delicious food and some definitely not typical American food.  For example, this is a picture of me eating a monkey brain potsticker.  Who knew this was a thing?  

Our second day in Xi'an we biked around the city wall which was pretty much the coolest thing ever. (Although I feel like I may say that about most things we do that include bikes.  What can I say? Biking just makes things that much better.  Sometimes I wonder why I don't own those shoes with wheels on them so I could roll everywhere.) 

 Plus, turns out it gave my roommate and I an opportunity to talk (which apparentlly we've been missing these past few months.) We got to bond over lawyer daughter problems-including how your parents try to convince you that shredding papers is something fun or having to do annual inserts into law manual books because people just have to be constantly changing the law.  Anway, it was pretty random but also I never thought I would find someone to bond over law book inserts and yet the surprises never end in China.

We also went to see the terracotta warriors but before that we had to go see the workshop where terracotta warriors are made today. It was pretty cool and a bit insane how the temperatures in the kiln can get up to 900 degrees.  Remind me to never fall linside one of those.

These pictures seemed necessary.




They say that each terracotta warrior has an individual face  On one hand that seems pretty incredible considering how many warriors made up the army.  On the other hand, a lot of these guys are missing heads so ...there's that.




We also took the time to go to the Muslim quarter and visit a monastery-all cool things. Although I have to say there's a definite excess of markets here.  I can't even walk down the street without seeing stalls and vendors.  And where there are vendors there are goods.  Goods which generally attract your attention as you walk by,
even if it's only a passing glance.  Yet, regardless of how 'passing' that glance may be it could be enough to get the vendor to engage you in a barter battle.  Bahh shopping.
At least the monastery was quite and peaceful.  We even saw a cat-featured in this picture.












We went to the Xi'an Opera House and saw a lot of traditional dances from the time of the Tang Dynasty. Here are some pictures from that.  There was a lot of twirling involved and the idea of long sleeves was taken to a whole new level. 


The next day was actually pretty restful since all we did was ride a train from Xi'an to Beijing. However, that doesn't mean it was without it's China craziness.  Typical China style, there were way too many people on our train and we were bumped out of our seats.  How does that even happen? Isn't the purpose of reserving seats and buying tickets so the seat then becomes unavailable and can't be sold again?  So we actually ended moving from from first class to coach but at that point I think we were all just kind of relieved to have a place to sit at all since it was a 5 hour trip.  It felt a little nostalgic ruiding a bullet train in Chian because it was around this time a year ago that I was riding one in Japan.  Except in Japan I didn't have to fight for my seat. And I could at least have a basic conversation with someone to try and fight for my seat.

Beijing was just another crazy whirlwind of tourist spots.  You would think that people would be more used to seeing white tourists here since we were going places like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, but that didn't stop the gawking and the creeper photos.  I count it as a good day when I have people actually ask to take my photo (or take it with me) instead of just snapping photos of us without saying anything.  We saw the Temple of Heaven (featured on the left and below).  I wish I could tell you more details about these places but it seems like after you go to enough places, regardless of how fantstic they are, the history and stories start to blend together.

The Forbidden City was huge and full of people. It was China at it's finest.  Even I took a creeper picture or two here. For example, there were so many people in this one area that I saw this lady with her back to this pillar holding on for dear life as if she was scared of getting trampled to death.  Understandly so though, China is like a giant mash pit all the time.



I asked a lady at the Forbidden City to take a picture of Hattie and I and then she asked her kids if they wanted a picture with us. (No, she didn't ask us-just her kids.)  The little girl was ecstatic and yelled "I want to!" while the boy originally said he didn't want to. But then he saw his sister in the picture and ran over to join us as well.  I'm not sure if my favorite part of this is that the conversation happened in Chinese (albeit basic Chinese) and I understood or if it's that the lady took the pictures on my camera (since she had it from earlier) so she doesn't even have these pictures of her kids.







There was a really pretty garden that we kind of had to rush through but I easily could have spent an hour or two (or more- if I fell asleep) hanging out here.


Here's a picture of China encouraging my reading addiction.  Although they don't make it easy-especially since it's all in kanji.






We got to go on a rickshaw tour!  I don't know if I've ever even used the word rickshaw before but here I am riding it like I've been rickshaw riding all my life.  We had the cutest old man for our driver/biker and while I felt kind of bad making him work, it was also really cool. We rode through the streets and not-quite slums but really tiny streets of China and were able to really soak in life.  We even stopped by a native's house to heare and ask questions about her daily life.


One of my favorite stops by far was the Great Wall of China.  Can you believe that I've climbed it?  It wasn't nearly as flat and scalable as portrayed in Mulan.  Let's just say that the RB stairs have nothing on the Great Wall.  We spent two hours here. I could have used 5.
We were going strong in the middle of a selfie contest against our professor's husband to see how many selfies with random people you could take and here's one we took with another tour group that was there. It's surprisingly easy to get selfies with people because they all want your picture first, so then you just have to ask for another picture but on your camera.

Here's a picture of Hattie and I playing cards on top of the Great Wall.  I don't know what other people do when they climb up, but this seemed to be the perfect place for a Speed show down.







It's also a typical thing now to get food and a show.  Here's an example.

Oh and this is a picture of us with a random group of people.  We don't know them. They don't know one another, but they all wanted individual pictures with us so sthen we got a group picture with all of them.  I'm telling you-going back to America and making it through a day without anyone taking my picture is either going to be a huge relief or a huge blow to my self-esteem.





I just got a kick out of this picture because the top animal is captioned "a fabulous animal."  It makes me wonder what the Chinese really says.
 
Here's something most of you can really relate to.  This is Lucy and I at the Water Cube where Michael Phelps won so many gold medals in the Beijing Olympics.

I have no idea what this is or any explanation for this photo. It just seemed like a good idea to hug this little blue fella.

This next photo is from the Summer Palace. I just have to point out the beautiful blue sky because it is kind of rare for us to get those.  Although I kind of like rainy days being the usual and clear skys being the exception.




We took a picture with this baby because he would look at us and then just start laughing and it was the most adorable thing ever. How could we resist taking a picture of that face?  Obviously, we couldn't.








The day we went to the summer palace that was our only thing planned so we had the whole afternoon free. What better way to spend a free afternoon in Beijin than by going to the Beijing Zoo?  Just try and tell me that this panda is NOT adorable.  You can't. And this monkey is well on his way to "speaking no evil."







And how could I resist taking a picture with the penguins?  It seemed extremely necessary to take one on the ground.  (The good news is I'll never see any of these people again. And if they think I'm weird it can just be played off as an American thing instead of a Laura thing.)

Hattie and I ordered piggy buns, which were adorable and, surprisingly, not filled with pork. Look how cute food is in Asia.   This was one of our last opportunities to go scavenge for dinner in Beijing but I think we did a pretty good job.
This trip was our first time rooming together but we got along really well.  By that I mean that she didn't try to talk to me when I was reading my book at night. Oh and we both like to eat Asian food so it helped to have someone to explore the options with.  Honestly she was cool for a lot of reasons, but the book thing definitely won her major points.
Our last day in Bejing was a free day where we could actually do whatever we wanted. We ended up going to an art district called 798 which was pretty far away but well worth the effort.  Not only was it full of cool little shops, art galleries, and cafes, but it was an adventure from start to finish.  I even got to use my Japanese kanji skills to help us with directions which made me realize how much I need to study and how cool Japanese is (although there was never any doubt about that.) We went to a random gallery that was doing a drawing in 5 minutes and giving away one of their pieces in the exhibit. Naturally we had to go join the crowd. Despite the weird atmosphere which felt more like a count down to a rocket take off than to a picture drawing we enjoyed the random experience.  Especially when one of the 8 of us won the drawing!  It was pretty unexpected but also super cool and resulted in even more creeper photos being taken of us.

For some reason I feel like I've failed to make this blog exciting despite all of the really cool things I had to write about.  I'm behind another trip already so maybe I'm just kind of distracted. Either way, I hope it was still fun to read and look forward to the next one. It will be coming fast because I had really epic trips back to back.