Days 1 and 2

I'm a little late with these, but here they are...

Day 1

We arrived after a LONG flight from Chicago to Beijing today. The flight path was pretty interesting. We basically left Chicago and went north, through Canada, traveled about 400 miles left (if you’re looking at the US on a globe) of the North Pole, and then came down over Siberia in Russia, before entering Chinese airspace and finally arriving in Beijing. We left at 12:46pm on Friday and arrived at 3pm on Saturday in Beijing, crossing the International Date Line on the way.

After touching down, we went to the hotel, the very nice Crowne Plaza in Beijing. Some went out for dinner near the hotel, while some got dinner at the hotel and went to bed. Sightseeing starts tomorrow.

Day 2

On our first real day in Beijing, we first hit a local “flea market” where individual vendors were selling all kinds of wares. After that, we were off to TianAnMen Square and the Forbidden City. At TianAnMen Square, we got our first taste of the aggressive street vendors selling Mao watches, tourist books, Chinese army replica hats, and other such necessities. Another very interesting phenomenon was, well, us. The Chinese people were very interested in us, particularly our height. We had numerous photo requests from Chinese people who wanted to have their picture taken with members of our traveling party. Our youngest member, Taylor Millington – age 9, garnered the most requests, mostly from Chinese families wanting to photograph their children with Taylor. Several young Chinese lasses desired a photo with the young American men in our party. The tallest members of our group also had several requests in the Square as well as the Forbidden City. Needless to say, we were as interesting to them as they were to us.

TianAnMen Square featured the Chinese Hall of the People, which seemed to be their equivalent of Congress, a memorial to Mao Zedong, a Chinese museum, and a memorial to their fallen soldiers in the middle of the square. On the North side of the square was the gate to the Forbidden City. Built in the Ming Dynasty in the early 1600s, it was quite a remarkable place. It was also known as the Imperial Palace, and was the home to the Emporer’s in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. As one might guess, it was called the Forbidden City because the general public was forbidden from entering. There was an Outer Palace and an Inner Palace. The closer you got to the Inner Palace, the fewer people were allowed. There were many gates, and the entire palace was symmetrical on each side. Many of the architectural elements drew from the Chinese Feng Shui “philosophy”.

For lunch, we visited the Hutong area of Beijing and ate at the home of a local Chinese family. The food was excellent, and the family was very hospitable. We took "pedi-cabs" through the Hutong area. Hutong originally meant "alleys" so much of the area is not accessible by any means except by foot or bicycle. A pedi-cab is a bike with a double seat on the back. It was a fun experience and the only way we could have seen this area of the city. One interesting aspect of the Hutong area is that none of the homes have central heat, so they have coal-burning stoves in the corner of the house and use pipes to radiate the heat through the house. Many of the homes also don't have their own toilets, so sometimes up to 20 families will share a toilet facility.

Tomorrow we play Tsinghua University at 3pm.