Our First Day in Beijing

Hello Everyone, we didn't get much of a chance to tell you about Beijing yesterday since we were just tired and didn't see a lot of the city in the daylight.   So let me set the scene a little bit.  We flew into the main airport which is about a 40 minute drive to downtown.   Our guide here with the adoption agency told us the normal population of Beijing is 16 million with 1 to 2 million more people coming in to work in the city each day.  The size is just immense.  It stretches beyond the limits of what we can see.  The airport alone was a mammoth pillow shaped building with a high peak in the middle and slowly sloping sides, all metal grid work, very attractive. We had to fill out health status cards on the plane and turn them in to officials when first entering the airport.  We had to walk by several cameras and scanners which were detecting our temperature!  Anyone with a high fever would be quarantined.  The cards even asked where we sat on the plane and where we were going in the next 7 days!  All the officials in the airport were wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves.  But everyone was very polite and gave us no problems at all, I've had far more difficult times coming back from Canada! 

 

Driving into Beijing was very busy, we were right at the height of rush hour which runs for 3 hours here!  From 5-8pm the roads are bumper to bumper with cars, buses, bikes, scooters, and motorcycles.  I was really shocked by the makes of the cars, rarely do you see a Ford or Chevy, some assorted Honda's, Nissan, and Kia, but the number one makes by far are VW and Audi!  Never would have guessed that.  VW jettas are everywhere and so are Audi sedans.  I'm trying to remember what cities Beijing reminds me of.  First would be New York and Times Square, but the size here is so much more extensive.  There are brilliant flashing signs the whole sides of buildings everywhere.  It is very enticing too, Times Square to me is overwhelming,  but this is more spread out, the buildings are set back a little more and actually very inviting.  Crossing the streets is kind of like a real life Frogger game!  Cars and trucks are going everywhere and the lines of traffic kind of go back and forth like noodles.  Cars trying to turn left across traffic will inch across on lane at a time making oncoming traffic stop or hit them!  We are on a tour bus for about 20 people and our drivers have been amazing.  Many streets are very narrow with, bicyles everywhere. 

 

This morning all the families in our group, I think 7 now, went to Tiananmen Square first.  It was a little chilly, 30 degrees, but not a cloud around.  Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world.  We had to go through security and metal detectors to get in.  Almost every pole had a security camera on it.  Lots of guards and police too.  But very

interesting crowd.  Many native Chinese people on tours, and they were fascinated by some of the small children with us.  The locals were taking pictures of a woman who has a 3 year boy she adopted here previously and he was smiling and loving it.  Another group of Chinese women we saw were all taking turns holding a little American girl with blond hair. The only negative was the walking was difficult with snow everywhere still.  They had several inches last week and are slow getting rid of it.  Haven't seen a plow, pay loader, or anything close to that.  But we've seen hundreds of people with shovels filling hand carts or bicycle carts to remove the snow.  The only other downer is the amount of people coming up to you to sell you hats, watches, and other goodies.  Some will go away, others follow you quite a ways before getting the hint.  Our guide said the things look good but are not good quality.  They call them the 3 generation t-shirt.  You buy a size for you and after one washing it shrinks a little, but the second washing shrinks more and you give it to your son, and the third wash it shrinks even more and you give it to your grandson, hence the 3 generations!

 

Then we went to the Forbidden City, the home for the Emperor until 1924.  It stretches for hundreds of acres and has 9999 rooms, and took 14 years to build in the 1400's.   The design intricacies are amazing.  Nothing is random, everything has a purpose and a place.  Fung Shui is very important. Like no trees are on the grounds because they could grow taller than the buildings and hence eclipse the power of the Emperor!  We just stayed on the main path and it took two hours to walk through fairly fast.  They even have huge incense pots to burn to give a haze around the Emperor to give the illusion that he descended from the gods.

 

Then we had a fabulous lunch at a traditional Chinese restaurant.  It had private rooms to eat in, not an open space with tables everywhere like we would expect.  Also very interesting was there wasn't central heat!  Each room had a private heater for just that room, actually just that corner of the room!  After that was a tour of a silk factory.   We got to see silk worms spinning the cocoons and then workers picking out the end of the strand of thread and pulling to a roll or spool for use later. We bought nice silk gown and bed duvet cover we can give Lainey when she gets older.  From there we got on a rickshaw, bicycle pulling a cart for two, and were driven to the traditional Hutong neighborhoods.  Where homes are built to be passed to generation after generation.  The one we saw has been in the man's family for 5 generations.  The large rooms at the north go to the elders.  The son gets the east side and the daughter the west.  Following generations get the south.  A square or courtyard is in the middle.  Again just heat for each room by itself, and only turned on when it was time to retire to that room for the day.  And the final stop was an acrobatic show.  Picture a man being bounced from a teeter totter about 20 feet in the air and landing on the shoulders of 3 guys standing on the shoulders of the man below them!  Or 15 women riding one bicycle all dangling off at angles  with large feathers to look like a peacock!  Rather exciting.

 

Tomorrow its off to the Great Wall and some tombs.  Sunday we fly to Zhengzhou and on Monday we get Lainey there!  I'll add some pictures here to show some the of things I've described.  Christina is already fast asleep!