We finally made it to Beijing and it was quite an experience. Beijing makes the town of Wuxi (where I'm staying) look like a small town by comparison. There are so many people all over the place at all times, even at night! We arrived in the middle of the day and quickly located our hotel. After settling in we quickly went out for food and to do a little exploration. We hung out with a friend of Leo's while getting some hotpot. The hotpot we got was at a pretty fancy restaurant and we explored a lot of different food types. This is also when Tyler and I realized we may have gone slightly overboard with our desire to eat spicy food...
Our first stop on the second day was the Forbidden City. There are palaces and castles you can visit in an hour and feel you've seen everything in it. Europe has some castles and forts that look like single family homes. The Forbidden City is not this sort of palace complex. Firstly, it truly deserves the word "complex". We were there for 4 hours and saw maybe 5 - 10% of the whole place. The architecture was incredible and its incredible to imagine being the ruler of China and spending time doing whatever it was that rulers did there. After the Forbidden City, we made our way into some interesting areas of Beijing to find food and souvenirs. We found a walking street with some nice shops. I picked up some more nifty shirts that had unique graffiti designs. The local snacks and ice creams were delicious. By that time it had become roughly 103 Fahrenheit and we were all losing steam to do much else. We called it an early day so we could be well rested for the 3rd day.
The third day was the big one. We made the trip to a segment of the Great Wall of China. We met some students from Tsinghua University who would come with us for the days excursions. The Wall was a pretty intense experience. We visited a section up in the mountains, an hour outside of Beijing. It rained most of the time while were were on it. In some sections, it was steep enough to basically be an experience of climbing stairs with hundreds of other people. The architectural skill and sheer determination to build a structure like the Wall over the terrain its located on is amazing. I can't imagine attacking through the landscape where the Wall was located but then again, I hear the wall wasn't actually too successful as an impediment to invasion. It was still cool to touch a superstructure that can be seen from space. After returning to Beijing and a lovely lunch at a local restaurant, we made our way to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is another architectural marvel that's hard to describe. The setting and design aesthetics are definitely seems more relaxed than the Forbidden CIty. After touring around for about an hour the local students and most of the ASSURE students opted to take a ferry to the royal park surrounding the palace itself. This park has some sections that can only be described are perfectly picturesque. Walking the grounds and enjoying the rain felt like a once in a lifetime experience. To top off one of the most interesting cultural experiences of my life, we went to a bar specializing as an American style bar for dinner. Its an fascinating experience seeing your own culture through lens of another culture. The food was good too.
The last full day was a little more subdued. It consisted of a quick trip to the Temple of Heaven (translated as The Temple of Prayer for Good Harvest at the site itself). The architecture was gorgeous and really showed off the structural craftsmanship that went into wooden buildings. The colors and designs of the temple exterior were amazing and I can only imagine how labor intensive they must have been to paint when the structure was originally built. The rest of the day was spent traveling around the subway (unsuccessfully) attempting to find a place to eat Peking Duck. While it would have been nice to try this famous dish, it was still a pleasant day of traveling around Beijing and seeing the city in a day-to-day light. Its been an amazing trip so far. On to the second half!