A Weekend in Beijing

Temple of Heaven, built in 1420 during Ming Dynasty, used as a place for ritual for good harvest.
Tiananmen Square leading to the Forbidden City.  Many Chinese soldiers stood guard keeping a watchful eye on the crowd of visitors.

One of the chambers inside the Forbidden City (it has 999 rooms, supposedly one less than the one in heaven).  This is the largest single stone carving.  It was so heavy that it could only be moved over frozen ice during winter time by pouring water on the ground. 
This Chinese guard approaching the ladies should have been standing still.  He'll probably get reprimanded later.

Peking duck being carved up for us in Beijing.  I hope this is the original recipe.



Our weekend started early in the morning on Friday when we boarded a flight on China Eastern Airline in Inchon. When a stewardess in a silk Chinese outfit served us beef with broccoli and fried rice for lunch, I knew that we were unmistakably heading for China. China, a home for 1.3 billion people, a quarter of the whole earth’s population, is a vast country about the size of United States. Not knowing a single soul in Beijing, we were happy and relieved to see a guide holding up a sign with our names when we landed. He was a recently married, 27 year old third generation Korean who spoke fluent Korean but with a funny mixture of northern (Pyung Ahn Do) and southern (Kyung Sang Do) accents, if that’s possible. I understood about 80% of what he said and Joanne understood about 50%.

After a lunch at a Korean restaurant, we were first taken to the Temple of Heaven and then to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We thought Japan and Korea was over-crowded, but they don’t come close when it comes to the number of people we saw in Beijing. Maybe because it was the weekend, but people came from all over China. We also saw many foreigners (westerners and Koreans) as well. Our first day in Beijing didn’t finish until very late at night after we were taken to see a circus, had a Peking Duck dinner, and a visit to Wangfudong (Beijing’s Rodeo Drive, Ginza district or Myungdong).

After a night’s stay at what seemed to be a brand new hotel (very nice), the second day started out very early, with the tour guide picking us up at 7:30 AM. We visited the Tomb of the 13th Emperor & Empresses, the Great Wall, Ryong-Kyung-Hyup Lake and finally the site of the Olympics by the night fall. Way too soon on the very next day, we got on board an airplane to Zhang Jae Jie, the first national park of China.