Our adventure during our last day in Beijing included visits to Tian’anmen Square, The Forbidden City, a Hutong Tour, and a visit to The Temple of Heaven that included a Taichi Class. I woke up exhausted to meet everyone in the lobby at 8:00 AM. We have been doing so much which has left me tired my legs sore, but I was extremely excited to tour these places. We started our day at the Tian’anmen Square. It is comparable to our Washington D.C., as all of China’s government buildings can be found here. They had memorials for both groups of people and individual people just like we have in Washington. After walking around the Square for a bit it was finally time to head into The Forbidden City. We had our tour guide, “Uncle Joe”, back and he let us know that if we wanted to spend a night in every room in The Forbidden City that it would take us 28 years to do so. We also learned that this was home to the emperor from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Ching Dynasty. The Forbidden City was an architectural wonder, like every other historical site we have visited. Following our 2 hours spent inside, we boarded the bus and headed to lunch to have another family style meal. Once again, I enjoyed the meal and have also been noticing my chopstick skills improve greatly.
After lunch, we headed a local village for a Hutong Tour. Hutong is a word that means alley. From the outside, it looked like a place where poor people lived as the living conditions did not look ideal. We entered the village and split up into groups of 2 to be cycled around through the Hutong by men who worked for the Hutong Tour Group. At the start of the tour, I still continued to think that poor people lived here as it was very dirty, small, and had public bathrooms throughout the village (which I thought was strange since we have our bathrooms in our houses). I then started to notice that some of the small homes had very nice cars parked outside of them, making me rethink my assumption. I came to my own conclusion that the families must be able to spend their money on nice things since their houses were very small and didn’t look nice on the outside. At the end of our cycling tour, we were able to go into a woman’s home. As I walked in and looked around it only took me seconds to realize this woman wasn’t poor. While everything was small and in very close quarters she had a small courtyard where three tables of people were being served meals and the furniture, paintings, and accessories of the room that we got to see were very nice. I then learned that in this village 1 square foot of a house is worth $44,000 USD. She then told us her home was 200 square feet, which puts its value at just under $9 million USD. I honestly couldn’t believe it. Another interesting fact was that her husband liked to collect antique furniture and some of the chairs we were sitting in were from the Ming Dynasty. To put that into perspective, the Ming Dynasty lasted from 1368 to 1644. These chairs existed before our country. Besides all of the amazing historical sites, if that doesn’t show first-hand the long, rich history of China I don’t know what else could.
Following our Hutong Tour we hopped on the bus again to head to our next destination: The Temple of Heaven. We arrived and headed into the Temple of Heaven Park where our instructor for the Taichi Class awaited us. I found the Taichi Class to be extremely interesting as every movement is equally as important as the rest. The locals loved it. I’m, sure they aren’t used to seeing a group of 24 Americans doing Taichi. By the time our class had ended, there were about 15 people watching and many people were taking pictures and recording us during the class. To go off of that, since we’ve been here many people try to secretly take pictures and videos of us or even take a photo of us when we’re trying to take group photos. It is very strange considering that doesn’t happen in the United States. We then headed through the gate with our tickets to see The Temple of Heaven. An interesting fact that Uncle Joe told us was that the entire structure was made out of wood and not a single nail was used to keep it together, which is incredible.
When we arrived back at the hotel Nate, Colin, Ben and I decided to take a taxi to 798 Art Zone which is in Beijing’s 4th ring. After struggling to find a taxi we finally found one, but when we got there all of the indoor exhibits were closed. We still had a great time walking around looking at murals and other forms art. We even found some abandoned railroad tracks and a building that was lit up with blue lights where a private art show was being held. When it was time to leave we ran into Rashel and Erin so Ben took a taxi back with them while Colin, Nate, and I struggled to find a taxi for over an hour and a half. I couldn’t believe that we couldn’t get a taxi to pick us up. It was unbelievable. I just couldn’t believe that in the largest and most populated city in the world we struggled for that long, whereas if we were in New York City we could’ve raised our hand and at least 3 cabs would’ve pulled over to pick us up. We finally made it back to the hotel, but unfortunately, we had heard the bad news that some people had been taken the hospital because they got sick. Hopefully they’ll be able to rejoin us soon as we are headed to Xi’an tomorrow morning by bullet train!
