BEIJING

Apart from flying to Beijing and having lunch with the group, the rest of the first day in Beijing was “at our leisure.” I had the privilege of hanging out with my friend Sara Safan who is studying abroad there this semester. Sara only got to Beijing two days before we arrived and I am so happy that she agreed to meet me at my hotel and get lost together. She brought three more friends that were on her program and all of us decided to go walk somewhere. A big thing that I wanted to do in Beijing was go to the Pearl Market. The Pearl Market is home to four floors of cheap everything. The first floor was for electronics, the second contained clothes and accessories, and the top two floors were dedicated to the pearls. Since this was the only day that was not insanely packed, that afternoon was dedicated to going to the Pearl Market. The plan was to go to the market however our tour guide informed us that it closed early because of the New Year. Slightly depressed about not being able to go to the market, Sara and our small group decided to walk to the Temple of Heaven. Lo and behold along our walk we stumbled upon an OPEN Pearl Market. Needless to say we went in and I got everything I wanted- my panda hat, lanterns, fake marc Jacobs bags, etc. Jenny obviously went insane and purchased everything inside the store. After the nice surprise of going to the Pearl Market we continued to walk towards the Temple of Heaven but by the time we reached it, it was just closing. Regardless it was a great afternoon and it was nice hanging out with a friend from home. Thanks, Sar!

That night we hit up pizza hut for a non-Chinese meal. For the record Pizza Huts abroad are sit down restaurants. I ordered a cheese pizza and asked for the non-spicy version of the tomato sauce and was obviously brought plain cheesy bread. Anyway despite these American Food issues we proceeded to go out that night. The problem with not speaking English and going in multiple cabs is that the cab driver has an underrated amount of power. That being said out of the four cabs, two made it to the right location. One ended up at a club a ten minute walk away from bar street and our cab ended up at a random bar on bar street. I along with Ivy and two boys ended up at a random Japanese live Karaoke show bar. Luckily we figured out that everyone else was on the same block at another bar. The second bar was packed with SASers and a lot of fun- apparently Chinese like hookah too. We decided to meet up with the fourth lost cab that we left with initially and made our way to Club Mix. I however passed on that opportunity and tiredly cabbed it home with Jenny. It’s a good thing we did…

The next morning was the start of another very fun but very long day in Beijing. The morning consisted of touring Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The Square was HUGE and I took some cool pics with Mao creatively placed in the background. Though Tiananmen was huge the Forbidden City was even bigger. The problem with being in an organized tour with 97 other people is that you are part of a group. It took us years to get through the whole thing. We kept passing through gates to more courtyards only to go through more gates and more courtyards. It was really cool and the architecture was gorgeous and awesome but in reality the half hour spent in each courtyard was unnecessary. My thoughts: if you are in Beijing you have to go to the Forbidden City but you do not have to spend absurd amounts of time in every courtyard that looks almost identical to the previous one. A cool fact about the Forbidden City that caught my attention was that it was built 70 years before Columbus discovered America.

Post the three hour tour of Tiananmen and the Forbidden City we went on three-wheeled rickshaw rides to a residential old-Beijing area to have lunch at middle-class families’ homes. Our large group was obviously divided among several families. The rickshaw ride was so much fun. Jill and I kept trying to convince our driver to “race” in Chinese which he did. It reminded me of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. After walking down some alleys after being dropped off by the rickshaw driver we made it to the family’s home. Some cool things about the house: there was a rabbit in the bathroom, crickets that were caught for good luck in the dining/main room, and lots of food. This was the first time since being in China that I LOVED everything I ate and felt completely full after my meal. After we finished eating we were taught how to make dumplings and had a dumpling making competition. I will not be entering the dumpling making business and seeing as how I could not really use chopsticks to get the food into the dumpling dough I opted out of the competition. One day I will reenter it and be victorious.

By this time in the day we were all exhausted. For me though, the coolest part of the day was upon us. We went to the 2008 Summer Olympic Village which was amazing. I could not have been more thrilled or excited the entire time. Seeing the Bird’s Nest, for that matter going inside the stadium and sitting in the chairs was indescribable. It looked cool when I was at home in LA watching the games but trust me, it is way cooler in person. The interior of the stadium was turned into a type of winter-wonderland with real snow imported for sledding and different booths of games for children and families. The one unlucky thing about the Olympic Village is that the Bubble Aquatics Center is being remodeled and thus touring was unavailable. I would have obviously loved and died to see where Michael Phelps pulled it all off. At least I got the Aquatics Center in the background of some pictures… Apart from all the typical touristy things to do in Beijing- Great Wall, Tiananmen, Forbidden City, this was something that I really wanted to do and did not feel that I had to just because we were in China. I’m glad to report that it was awesome.

The tour proceeded to take us to a Silk Market. Note: this place was like being in a live infomercial. For a hot ten minutes we saw some cocoons and how the silk was produced and stretched. This demonstration quickly turned into the Silk workers telling us how much the silk duvets cost and how amazing they were. We were then able to shop around the silk market which turned out to be a disaster. Since our tour guide mistakenly told us the Pearl Market was closed the previous day the overwhelming majority of students missed out on the opportunity to buy countless knockoff, souvenir items. On top of it no one wanted to be in the silk market where duvets were being sold. Anarchy in the Silk Market soon commenced and the students won. We quickly left the silk market and had the option of being dropped off at the Pearl Market or going back to the hotel before dinner. Since I went the previous day and was exhausted I went back with a small minority to nap at the hotel.

After being in better moods and higher spirits as a result of alleviating a certain shopping desire or in my case a much needed nap, we all went out for a Peking Duck dinner. The only thing worth mentioning about this dinner was that midway through soup and some preliminary appetizers music started blaring and the duck carving chefs came out with their knives and started slicing away pieces of duck meat for us. I thought it was pretty comical and caught it on video. I would post all my videos but since I am paying for internet in terms of both time and data used a video would be too costly to upload. This blog is slowly becoming the most expensive blog in the world- at least I know my parents approve because they keep telling me to post. Moving on from my monetary online-ship expenses, I was too tired to go out that night and ended up chilling in a room with Rachel and Chelsea which led to us getting late night dessert. They were on a different SAS Beijing trip which overlapped with ours for two days.

What could there possibly be left to do in Beijing or mainland China? If the answer is not obvious I would recommend reading up on a certain 5,500 mile long wall built during the Ming Dynasty. The day of all days was upon us. We were finally going to visit the Great Wall of China. Might I add that Rachel went to the wall the day before and reported being flooded with emotion and shedding a few tears in honor of mankind in general. However this moment would not come for several hours. We first went to visit a traditional Kung Fu school. The students at the school ranged in ages from 16-22 and performed different Kung Fu sequences- sword, stick, body, and followed those by breaking various objects with various body parts. The scariest was a kid who had a spear placed at his Adam’s Apple and then walked forward with enough force to break the actual stick part of the spear. The whole time I thought I was going to witness a death. Once again this is all filmed on videos- videos that you probably will never see. We were then taught some Kung Fu moves and I must say that Ivy may or may not have been a Kung Fu master in her previous life. This proceeded to me dressing up as the butt part of the typical Chinese dragon costume and running around with Ivy who was the head and body part. That was a workout.

After this fun and slight detour we were on our way to lunch and the GWOC! Lunch was more of the same- lazy Susan, not being totally full after, and floor pothole toilets. It was then time for the Great Wall. This was one of the coolest things I have ever experienced. We passed through shop upon shop of Great Wall and China souvenirs on the way to the gondolas. Ivy, Jill, Brooke, Jenny, and I somehow maneuvered to be in the first Gondola up to the top of the Great Wall. Once we were up there were in constant shock and awe. The “oh my god we’re on the great wall of China” feeling did not diminish at all. I of course felt obligated to the country of China to experience the Great Wall in my Panda hat. Two things about the panda hat: one, I am definitely going to be a panda for one night of Halloween next year and two, if you ever need to find obnoxious Americans in China look for a panda hat. Anyway the Panda hat is my new favorite hat and accessory. Pictures were taken, walls were rock-graffitied, and towers were climbed. I had been preparing for this day to be very cold and windy and I could not have been more wrong. We got extremely lucky and experienced fifty degrees sunny weather on the Great Wall in the middle of February. I’m telling you, my panda hat brought us good luck.

We were on the Mutianyu section of the wall and had the option of tobogganing down it. I could not have been more excited. Not only did I climb the Great Wall, I TOBOGGANED DOWN IT! I actually went pretty fast on it because I controlled my own speed- I regret not breaking the rules and videotaping the descent. Once we got to the bottom of the hill we were still in that shock of “oh my god we climbed and tobogganed down the great wall.” We proceeded to go to a coffee shop and buy souvenirs from the vendors. I got some postcards, a Buddha, two t-shirts (one of which is legit meant for a toddler, so if anyone knows of a baby that wants a great wall shirt let me know), a Japanese wall painting thing and a magnet. I still can’t get over the fact that I was on the Great Wall. Wow. I’m pretty sure this was the moment in the trip where I bbmed Jackie and informed her that she is going on the SAS Spring 2014 voyage whether she likes it or not.

To add to this already amazing day we had another typical Chinese dinner and went to an Acrobatics show that was amazing. Seeing fourteen girls all on one bicycle or a man stay on the outside of a rotating hamster cage type thing blindfolded was insane. Cirque de Soleil had a run for its money. One thing I definitely noticed was that there were some girls in the show who were said to be sixteen years old but were definitely way younger. Repeat of the 2008 Chinese Olympic Gymnastics team anyone? Regardless they were all very talented, potentially underage (maybe not for this performance but I’m still holding the Olympic grudge), but talented. It was about 12:30 before I got into bed to go to sleep and would be receiving a wakeup call at 3:45 to make it to our 5:30 AM flight to Hong Kong. Peace out Beijing.