It's Me and Mao! Day 1 in Beijing

Me and Mao, Tiananmen (The Heavenly Gate), at the entrance of the Forbidden City


Let's see if I have enough awakeness to actually do a post about today... If I don't, you can always look at the 120+ photos I put on Flickr. I need to update the titles and descriptions, but it's there...

I took my sweet old time this morning, getting out of the building at 11am. I wandered down the street until I hit the wall of the Forbidden City, then I walked around the moat until I hit the East Gate. Went in, took photos, got accosted by a dozen people selling things or wanting to be my tour guide.



Then I walked south to Tiananmen and witnessed the breathtaking size of Tiananmen Square. Didn't go through it at this time, but whoa. And that whole street is very reminiscent of Alexanderplatz in East Berlin...



Then I walked back down the main drag until I hit WangFuJing, which is the shopping district/street. It was fun walking up that street and seeing the huge billboards and different stores. I was in a bit of a hurry, though because I had booked a tour to Summer Palace and needed to get back to the hotel.



I made it over to Summer Palace and met up with the Chinese Culture Club, which does English language tours. We had a lovely host named Jasmine, and there were 11 of us. A couple folks from Australia, a couple US expats living in the area and Hong Kong, a nice mix. We had a wonderful 3 hours in the Summer Palace and I am obviously obsessed with roof lines of these Imperial Palaces. You can see that in my photos.



Got stuck in Beijing traffic on the way back, so I made it to my hotel, had noodles at the restaurant and then called into a meeting for work. I am tired.

Tomorrow I want to actually tour the Forbidden City and make it down to the Heavenly Gate. Thursday I have a tour booked to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. Yay!

Things of observation:
- People warned me that there's a lot of spitting here. I understand why people spit. The polution gets in your nose and throat and you want to hock it up. Ick.

- The walkway from the street to my hotel is between the Ferrari and Lambourgini stores. Weird.

- The number of times I got asked to look at or buy something in my 90 minute walk this morning... well I didn't count, but somewhere near 15-20.

- The juxtaposition of western stuff in this "Communist" country is rather odd. I mean, I'd read Beijing was very free but it seems so strange that a government trying to keep up Communism has more Starbucks than the area I live in in NH. And the big billboards with American stars is kind of strange. Who wants Mischa Barton here? :P

- Is it bad that my first purchased meal was at Starbucks? I just needed the coffee first thing.

- Despite sleeping the right number of hours at the right time of day, I still think I'm jetlagged, just because I feel icky. Or maybe that's the polution.

- Cixi, the Dowager Empress who most recently overhauled the Summer Palace was quite a selfish beyotch. No wonder the Chinese folks hate her!