Beijing Day 4

Tim had apparently had enough photography on Wednesday, so I got to take the pictures on Thursday. We joined an organized tour to the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ming Tombs with some others from the conference. We had a crazy tour guide ("call me Joe"), so we got the tour largely in English, which was nice. Who knows how many of the tales he told us were true (ask us about why the emperor wore a jade belt at night), but it was surely entertaining. We started out to Badaling. There was a terrible traffic jam on the highway, but our bus driver knew a "back way" so were weren't that delayed. At Badaling, we wandered through "Bear park" full of some sun bears (though it was kinda sad since it wasn't clear they had drinking water) to the "pulley car" which transported us up the mountain to the wall. Unnecessary, perhaps, but fun. The wall here was (according to Tim) visually more impressive than his visit the previous day, especially in the way it snaked into the distance. This is also probably why this place was PACKED with tourists. We walked along the wall for an hour or so, then caught the pulley car back down to the bus.

Back on the bus, we headed to the Friendship Store (a government run store that used to be the only shopping game in town for expats; supposedly, in the 70s and 80s, the store even only accepted foreign money). Now it's basically a tourist trap, though a good one at that. Souvenirs may be overpriced here, but it was an easy place to pick up some traditional Chinese gifts. There was also a cloisonne factory within the store that we got to tour. That was very neat. Upstairs was a restaurant for lunch; probably the most unauthentic food we had (they even served french fries!) but it was good.

From lunch, we headed to the Ming tombs. Conceptually, this is an impressive place. the grounds contain the tombs of 13 of the Ming emperors, though only one of the tombs has been opened. Joe led us around the most famous of the tombs (though it hasn't been opened yet), but we missed both the tomb that is open and the famous avenue of stone figures. Alas, something for next time.

We arrived back at the hotel earlier than we expected, so we changed into clean shirts and got a taxi downtown. We hit the main shopping district in central Beijing (Wangfujing Dajie), grabbed some more souvenirs, sampled some tea, bought a lot, and then had the famous roast duck at Quanjude. Yum. I regret (ok, I don't) to say that I didn't sample the duck brain. But I did try the soup they made out of the remnants of our duck...

Beijing Day 4