BEIJING: THE FORBIDDEN CITY and the SUMMER PALACE

I"m about a month behind in posting, so I thought I'd post the most recent trip, which I took last weekend (June 5-8) to Beijing . Shanghai's Hongquiao airport is new, modern and huge.   Actually it's breathtaking and familiar at the same time.

 Yes, that's Dunkin' Donuts, a franchise we used to see frequently, with one close to Highline.

And here it is in Shanghai.

And KFC in China is ubiquitous.
You can't turn a street corner without seeing another one.

They are in the malls, and in the underground metro, apparently in every city.

They say to arrive two hours early, and I did.   

 I flew out of Shanghai Friday noon and arrived in Beijing a little after 2.    After getting settled in the hotel, it was about 3:30 or 4:00.    The person scheduled to be my guide was seeing off a previous client, whose flight was delayed, so his supervisor, Tony picked me up at the airport.  Tony, like my contact person here in Shanghai, has flawless English and has been to the states many times.   He was quite candid about his thought on China and the United States. 

I took Tony's advice and took a walk in the 91 degree heat, about an hour heading east from the hotel, looking for the Curio market, which is really an antique market with some questionable items--that is, no one knows for certain what people are selling.  There's a building and then apparently locals who bring in things they have "dug" up, which gives the market the name the Dirt Market, which is spread out on the streets or sidewalk.  By the time I got there around 5 in the afternoon, there was no one, and the guard inside the building gestured that it was closed.   So turned around and walked back (slowly) to the hotel, and later, to a restaurant, which turned out to be the most interesting eating of the Beijing trip.    My friend He Yan read the name of the restaurant and suggested its name to be something like  Old Feng Roast Mutton Spine Hot Spot Restaurant.   It looks like  a chain with sites all around Beijing.

As we drove by the next day, I caught a picture of the restaurant.   The waitress was very sweet, and we communicated by way of her electronic translator.   She told me the spine was the restaurant specialty, and when I thought it looked like too much and was going to switch to chicken, she insisted.

 

It came with some naan bread, with a little something sweet spread
over the top.

And yes, I ordered spinach with peanuts.

And considering there was only I eating, I think I did pretty well as you can see below.

My plate of bones.

 The next morning I met my guide, Xu Guan You, or Michael Xu, and my driver Qi.  

We headed for Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City.   Michael was good about giving me the stories behind the stories, the meridian the runs through the square and through the center of the Forbidden City and extends even out past what was the city to where the Olympic Stadiums were built with the Yin and Yang buildings split by the meridian.   There's more, but I must move on.

 Walking to the Square, here as it seems everywhere in the cities where there is a garden are these displays of flower plantings.

 Here's Michael, my guide.  You'll see more of him later.

 Looking back away from the Forbidden City...

 

And of course, it's China, and there are many people.

 What I remember is that there are about three layers of buildings like these, each with their separate tasks.   Like the business office and the living quarters and the gardens.    And the buildings are set up higher than the main level.   Thus, the stairs.

       This I believe was a garden on top of which is a tea house.

Here is the moat that surrounds the city.

After we left the Forbidden City we drove out quite a few miles, and passed the Olympic Village.  These look like  the torches for the Olympic flames.    A little further we came to a hotel, where we ate lunch.   I believe it was called Hua Mei Da. 

We had a nice lunch, relaxed and headed for the Palace.
But  before we got there, we stopped at a nearby tea shop for a "tea ceremony," which really turned out to be a sales pitch.  Yes, I bought some tea.   Afterward--the next day-- Michael admitted that the shop is owned by the government.   He told me this as we left the Jade Store, where I was given a demonstration of jade designing and another sales pitch, which I was able to withstand.




After leaving the tea shop, it was clear that we were headed for rain, and indeed by the time we reached the Summer Palace, it was rain and thunder and lightning.   Michael opened up his umbrella, though I did suggest to him it might be wiser to close the umbrella as long as lightning was flashing through the atmosphere.    The summer palace, he says, was modeled after West Lake in Hangzhou，where visited last year.  As beautiful as the Summer Palace may have been, in the rain and the numbers of people, it lost some of its potential luster.   There were boats on the lake, but they had stopped running in the rain.

                    

 Note the painting on the ceiling and rafters.

 If I remember correctly, these are the dragon and the phoenix, representing the emperor and the empress.   Michael told how the last dowager empress maintained control of the kingdom even after her husband died, and controlled the new emperor, even at one point imprisoning him here at the summer palace.   Thus, she was called the dragon queen, since she was acting like the emperor. 

We gave it up early and headed back into the city.

The traffic in Beijing is different from Shanghai, for there is less honking, but the freeways seem to be much more jammed.   In spite of leaving early, we were trapped in the unmovable freeway.


Saturday evening, I went to the Beijing Acrobat show.   Michael called and got the tickets.   He walked around the side and a man handed him the ticket, and accompanied me inside, showed me my seat (right in the center of the row) next to a group of guys working for a Utah tech company who were on a week long trip to a factor in a nearby town.  They were here  on a weekend holiday.  

The acrobats were great; it was like watching America's Got Talent but a notch higher in skill.   One woman was standing on point on her partners shoulders and then head; one guy carried walked down the stairs doing a one handed hand stand, and then without resting pushed himself back up the stairs using the same arm, and then carried his partner, another guy , on his back, down another flight of stair, off the stage, still using one arm.

 The finale was a motorcycle troupe up in a steel cage.  They got two and then three motorcycles, and then  a fourth, circling inside the cage up and down around weaving through the cage.  It seemed perilous. And then they added four more to total eight and end the show.

Michael, the guide, had gone home, but the driver waited for me and after the show dropped me off at the hotel.
Dinner this night was a little harder to choose.    The restaurants in the area were very spicy --their menus were streaked with red.   I ended up at a Mutton Soup shop, which turned out to be not a bad choice, considering I'd had a big lunch already. 

There were many choices, but the choices were lined on the street, where people were eating at street-side tables, with food that looked pretty spicy.   I turned those down, and ended up with mutton soup and third night as well.