FRIDAY & SATURDAY- Shanghai & Beijing

Soooo... didn't end up posting later that night, once again we've been extremely busy and I only have a 1hour break before I have to get to my next class... so I'm going to type quickly.

Friday we headed back to Hotelex we saw a few different companies and organised some meetings. We had Italian coffee that was terrible and saw many more dishes and plates. Afterwards we headed out to famous Renmin Square... sorry to disappoint, but it literally was just a square. We had Dairy Queen for lunch (which is the American version of Wendy's) it was great to have some real milk again!

That night we flew to Beijing, and miracle... I wasn't air sick! YEY! but we were pretty tired so we headed to our hotel, then out to Maccas for dinner (which was in a 7 level shopping centre down the road... including stores like Burberry, and many other expensive swiss watch places which I can't remember the names of right now. Oh we also saw a beautiful catholic church up in Beijing, and there was artists painting characters with huge brushes in water on the front sets, it was very impressive. The guy had a brush in each hand and was literally mirror-imaging the characters at the same time.

SATURDAY
This was the big day! :)

We were up at 6:30am - even though I felt like I was up half the night! (I've discovered Dad snores VERY loudly!) Our private little tour started at 8am with our guide 'Jason'. He was really nice and made the trip very entertaining with the mispronunciation of a few words! :) Like 'restaurant' instead of 'rostrum'.

Now for those who don't know, this weekend was a special long weekend to pay respect to your dead ancestors. I thought that maybe that would mean the tourist destinations would be a little less crowded as everyone would be doing family things. OH NO! ... Tiananmen Square was PACKED! ... and I mean literally. I will never complain ever again about ques in Australia! If you know how big Tiananmen Square is, you'll understand how many people I mean when I saw that the que filled up majority of the square! (see pictures) So you might be asking... why so packed out?? ... well the Chinese are huge fans of Chairman Mao and that's where his grave is. So it was literally like a pilgrimage for Chinese people to come up to Beijing for the weekend que for hours in the sun and pay respect to their leader.... Imagine if that happened in Australia! hahaha... queing for hours to pay respect to Kevin Rudd?!? mhhhh... I think not!

Next was the Forbidden City, this was AMAZING! ... I can best describe it like Shrek does it's like an onion! It had gate after gate after gate! ... courtyard after courtyard, building after building. It was basically impossible to get into the middle section where the emperor lived! The detail that was put into it was incredibly beautiful! Everything was gold or hand carved/painted.
Also it was really interesting having a guide to tell you all about the history of it and it's design. Did you know that the ground in the courtyard is 20 something layers deep of bricks each layer going in a different location because the emperor was scared that someone was going to dig up underneath the walls and kill him in his sleep!

Also the dragon symbolises the emperor and the Phoenix the empress... it just had such amazing history!

Afterwards we headed to the jade factory, there's not much to say about this one, but I can tell you there is a lot of different types of jade and jadenite is the best! ... Oh and for Untie Lynden I know how much you love your feng shui, so the low down in China is that you should get a bok choy made from jade and have its leaves facing in to bring in good fortune and money!

Also the best way to test whether it is high quality jade is by wrapping a piece of hair around the jade and then lighting it. A high quality jade will protect the hair from burning (because of the very cool temperature) Also jade changes colour to a deeper green the older it is.

Finally, we stopped in for lunch at a Chinese Cloisonne factory. (This is amazing hand crafted copper vases) we got to see how they are made all the way from making the vases through to carving, painting and firing! Mum and I each bought a 'masterpiece' vase (these designed and crafted by the master) they are really beautiful! However, upstairs was the restaurant and that's where we headed first! ... it was nice 'western' tasting Chinese and we also tried some famous Beijing liquor which knocked our socks off with 56% alcohol! (it tasted and smelt like straight metho!)

After lunch we then headed across to the 'Badaling' section of the Great Wall! It was BREATHTAKING! The views from up there were incredible and the wall just stretches on and on and on......... We climbed to the 4th turret (about 1 1/2 km uphill) it was incredibly steep, it definitely would have kept the Chinese soldiers fit! You can check out the pictures for yourself... I'm slowly uploading everything, so if it's not up yet, sorry you'll have to wait a little longer. :)
Also our guide Jason informed us after we'd finished climbing, it's said that you aren't considered a real man unless you have climbed the Great Wall, so yes I'm feeling very manly right now!

Last but not least, we finished off our huge day with a performance by the Chinese acrobats. This was really good, with people flying everywhere and about 20 people on 1 bicycle it was impressive to say the least! But by far the best was one guy lifting another guy up and down using only his calf muscles! He was ridiculously strong and yet he wasn't overly buff!

But all together it was an amazing day, we came back to the hotel completely exhausted, I soaked in the bath for a good 1 1/2 hrs. We knocked over all the 'must-sees' in China and I must say they were all just as amazing as I expected them to be!

Well I have to head off to my Ting Li Ke (Listening Class) so I'll make you all extremely jealous tomorrow when I tell you about the shopping we did on Sunday.

Zai Jian! xx