Click here for pictures from China
Incidentally, I managed to figure out a way around the email 'problem' so it's good again. Except I have 27 messages today!
I woke up nice and early today because I knew I had a packed day ahead of me. I hopped on the subway and headed to the famous Tiananmen Square. I think everyone knows about this place; it was the site of the demonstrations in the late eighties. Certainly there's no sign of that now, it's just a massive square in the heart of the city filled with Chinese tourists. At one end you have Mao's Mausoleum (no interest since I did Ho Chi Mihn's and wasn't exactly thrilled). I took the obligatory picture and headed to the North of the square where the Forbidden City is.
The Forbidden City is simply massive; it was the home of the Emperor for 500 years and never were mere mortals allowed in. This all changed when the commies came in and now it's a tourist mecca. The City within a City is actually a series of buildings that the emp used. Basically he'd have up to 7,000 mistresses in there at once, and he had to find a place to house them all! I spent a few hours wandering and listening to the audio tour. The funny thing is that the English audio tour is narrated by none-other than Roger Moore. So I technically got a tour given by James Bond! The tour was very cool. I was very entertained by the signs all over the place reminding the Chinese tourists that the place was burned to the ground numerous times by the evil Anglo French!
As I was finishing the tour I met an American guy, and we were both heading to the summer palace so we negotiated the public transport together. I can't stress how massive this place is; took us about an hour and a half to get to a local tourist attraction, amazing. The summer palace was okay, just another place for the emp to take his girls I think! Lots of great architecture but lots of tourists. My friend and I (don't know his name yet) just kind of wandered around. The day had been pretty exhausting. (By the time I got home I calculated I had walked close to 30km!) We went and found our bus back. We were sitting behind two Chinese girls and he decides that he has to talk to one of them. His opening line was 'I think you're beautiful'! Quite funny, her response was 'I don't speak English'. So he continues complimenting her and she just kind of looks embarrassed.
To help restart the conversation we ask them (by pointing to the Mandarin spelling in our book) how to get to our subway station and she tells us that she's going there too (in English) and she'll show us. We end up chatting in some broken English and between us manage to arrange to meet them for drinks later. It was only at this point that I exchanged names with my friend (Joseph). Typical backpackers!
We end up meeting the girls at Hard Rock Cafe (very Chinese) and chatting away. Their English was actually pretty good but it was just great to talk to such unlikely people. They were our age but from a city south of Shanghai. Their town was very small they said, only 3,000,000 people! This is typical China, in a land of almost a billion people, 3 million is small!
I had already signed up for a tour with my hostel of a remote part of the great wall the following day. The girls however also are going and offer to drive us. Pretty cool so far.
Posted by Admin at June 13, 2002 07:16 PM