Day 1 - Beijing - October 31

After maybe 5 hours of sleep and a pretty nice (recognizable) ‘western’ breakfast, we met our tour guide at 8:00 in the morning for a very eventful first day in Beijing.  We first went to a park next to the Temple of Heaven and watched people doing “morning exercises”.  That is, thousands of people (mostly retired) go to a park every morning before work and they exercise. (Danny says it’s an outside Y.)  We saw all kinds of people stretching, scratching, grunting, playing music, singing, lifting and bending in all sorts of ways.  We also saw people doing tai-chi, doing the Chinese version of Hacky-Sack, dancing, ribbon twirling, flying kites and selling books, scarves, postcards and “real” Rolex watches, among other things.  Some remarkable things we quickly learned:  Beijing has a lot of people (17 – 18 million), people in Beijing ride their bikes to get around, Chinese people in the park are always smiling.  (It’s fun to do morning exercises!)   Chinese people like to pose with Americans and take pictures.  Anne Marie has reached celebrity status now based on the number of times she’s had her picture take with perfect Chinese strangers.  Too funny! 

The Temple of Heaven was absolutely beautiful and the weather this day was perfect, clear and crisp.   And the further we got from the center of the city, the fresher the air.  The trees and the flowers were very pretty, and the city of Beijing we all noticed was very clean.

From the Temple of Heaven we toured Hutong (which means ‘small streets’). Hutong is an old area of Beijing which the government is preserving as such.  No tall modern buildings are allowed and the current small dwellings and courtyards are being re-built.  We actually toured the city in Pedi cabs and went to a family’s courtyard, talked to the father about his home and family and actually toured his home.  We have lots of pictures (but due to technical difficulties, we can’t get them off of our camera for this day).  So, so different that anything we’ve ever seen in the US.  By US standards, what this family has is next to nothing, but they were so hospitable and so proud.  We were humbled.   

From Hutong we went to the Chinese theatre and watched an Acrobat show … well some of us did, some of us couldn’t keep our eyes open!