The first day, we went to one of many interesting markets. We bought some very cool beads and a Mah Jong set. I don’t remember what else we did the first day but probably not much. I think we walked around in the neighborhood some to see what was available there. The next morning we were up early and went to The Forbidden Garden. We thought we would get there early before the rest of the tourists. Ha, what a joke on us! There were already thousands of people there when we arrived and they kept coming all day. One of the most remarkable things we noticed was that probably 98% of the tourists were Chinese. This surprised me. And it was here the other curious thing started with Chinese people wanting their picture made with me. Chris thinks a lot, of not most, of the Chinese tourists came from other parts of China and probably some had never seen a light skinned person before and perhaps they wanted to show the picture to people back home. Who knows!
The Forbidden City was truly awesome and it went on forever. We finally took one of the side tours where it was less crowded and after a while decided it was just too crowded for us. Then we went to shopping street and shopped around some and went to a Chinese mall. I was looking for a Taekwondo uniform which we eventually found. Last Friday, I had my first Taekwondo class. I will be taking three times a week; one hour of Taekwondo followed by one hour of Yoga. The Yoga helped to prepare my body for Taekwondo.
The next morning we headed out for Tiananmen Square. On the way there we met a young Chinese man who persuaded us to walk through a beautiful park that was part of the Olympic reconstruction. It was quite beautiful. He told us he was an art student at the University and when we got out of the park, he asked us if we would like to come see some of his work, only a few blocks away. So, away we went and yes, we bought one of his paintings. Or was it? Whoever painted it, it was very nice and he was a nice young man raising money to go to an art exhibition in NYC. Then we continued on to Tiananmen Square.
I don’t remember who told us about Bei Hai Park, but that was our next stop and we did take a taxi there. We had already walked enough for one day. Bei Hai was absolutely beautiful, like an Oasis in the middle of this beautiful city. There was a round house, a park and a lake with an Island in the center. Part of the Island was in the park but part of it was residential housing. We decided to rent a boat. Our choices were paddle, row or battery operated so we chose battery operated. Chris had never driven a boat before so he was pretty funny but we had a great time out on the water. At times, the hardest part was avoiding other boats. After the boat excursion, we walked across a bridge to the part of the park on the island. There was a temple and like the other temples, there was one after the other and all up hill. We walked up a lot of steps that day. We definitely got plenty of walking exercise while we were there. One nice thing about being at the top of the hill, we had some really great views of the city.
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