Day four we did some more site seeing. We had four major stops today. The first stop we made was to Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is one of the largest squares in the world. Everyone was preparing us for very large crowds in this area.  Surprisingly the crowds were not as bad today. Our tour guide, Joe, was very surprised himself. One popular place to visit in Tiananmen Square is Chairman Mao’s tomb. The line for this site was miles long and it just kept growing. We did not stand in this line, but it was interesting to see how dedicated people were to stand in line and wait. The next stop we made was to the Forbidden City. 

The Forbidden City was a crossed the street from Tiananmen Square.  The first building we could see had a huge picture of Chairman Mao on the front. This picture was a portrait and not an actual picture due to trying to make him look the best he could. The Forbidden City was very large. We just kept walking and walking, and more buildings kept appearing. We finally got to the most important building where the Emperor would stay. On the doors to the entrances there were 81 dots on them. The 81 dots were broken down into 9 a crossed and 9 down. The number 9 in China means lucky which is why it is all throughout the city. When we got to the end there was a garden which was very pretty and is what I imagined the whole thing would be. 

Next, we moved to the Hutong area. This area was almost like a small village. It was a bunch of small one-story houses all packed very close together. The streets were very tight and not much room for cars. We all rode through the streets on tricycles. At the end of the tour we visited a local family’s house. The family we visited have been in that house for over 150 years. The furniture was the family’s most prized possession in the house. This week the family had on average 75 groups of people visit their house daily. After the visit with the local family, we made our way to lunch. Traffic was exceptionally bad today, so it took much longer than expected to get to the restaurant. Lunch was very tasty once again today. My favorite dish during the meal was this soup with long noodles. 

After lunch, we made our way to our final stop for the day which was the Temple of Heaven. The first thing we did when we got to the destination was participated in a Tai Chi Class. The movements were very relaxing. We learned five basic moves which was really neat. After the class we went to another part of the designated area to look at another special building. The building is significant in so many different ways. The colors and the shape were all taken into account when it was built. We made our way back to the hotel after visiting for a while. Now it is time to pack up and get ready to move to the next city, Xi’an. Today was extremely hot and a sunny day. Overall, we had fantastic weather while in Beijing the past four days.