Saturday 20th October 2012 - Day 17 - Beijing

We woke to a phone call in our hotel room at 7am… it was a wrong number. However, we had set our alarms for 7am when we showered, had breakfast and met Yan in the lobby at 8.30am to begin a mammoth 12 hour day of sightseeing. We began at the Tiananmen Square where we arrived before 9am and it was already packed with tourists. There were millions of groups of tourists mainly Asians following flags in groups of orange hats, red hats, white hats and red peaked caps etc. We wandered in the square photographing the Chairman Mao and Government buildings through the smog.

 

We took a short walk over to one of the 7 gates leading to the Forbidden City. As we piled through the huge gate we followed the main path and we could not believe how long it was as we walked for a further 15 minutes passing through several more gates before we finally entered the Forbidden City. Once inside we saw some of the emperors rooms and throne although being crushed in the process. We saw huge bronze cups, a dragon wall and a 1.7m deep stone carving weighing 200 tonnes which had been slid to the City on ice. We went to the jewellery room which was a newly opened section where we were lucky enough to meet a descendent of the Royal family and watch him doing some calligraphy.

 

We then went to a silk house where we were shown how the silk is extracted from silk worms to make silk items and double silk worms that make duvets only made in China. It was actually quite clever how  approximately 1,300 metres of thread came from one of their cocoons! From here we went to lunch in a traditional Chinese restaurant with skinny hard benches where we were given way too much food. We tried everything from vegetables we didn’t recognise to deep fried cows milk.

 

Next stop was the summer palace where 3 quarters of the surroundings are a huge lake and also where the last emperor was bricked in by his mum and banned from seeing his concubines. The mum made him marry someone of her choice and threw his favourite concubine down a well. We walked through a pagoda which was 780 metres long and had over 14,000 hand painted pictures and was in the Guinness book of records. We saw a large marble boat but opted for a dragon boat to cross the lake as the sunset.

 

Back in the van we popped into a pearl farm where we opened a fresh water oyster to find between 20 plus small pearls of pink and white colour. They also get black and lavender colours due to the minerals in the lake. The lady in the shop put a £1,000 pearl necklace on me in pink as she said it matched my rose complexion, I think she works on commission! We learnt how to test the difference between a fake and real pearl which was interesting. We didn’t buy the face cream that was made from pearl dust and sheep placenta but we considered getting some for Christmas presents!

 

Next was a shark fin free restaurant where we had more food which was tasty. Although one of the dishes was covered in chillies and also tasted like flowers. Making our way through the traffic each time we arrived at the theatre for our 7.15pm Beijing Acrobatics Show. We sat gob smacked for a full hour. We watched ladies being flung in the air, bending in all sorts of shapes, men with such strength and balance as they piled up 3 stories high. We saw motorbikes in a circular cage, ladies pedalling umbrellas on their feet and cycling with 12 on a bike! Still, we saw how they did it so we are going to try and top that when we are home. It was a jam packed day where I took approx 200 photos but narrowed them down to just 90!