Day 2-5 - Beijing

The first thing I noticed about Beijing was how big and modern the airport was. It was HUGE, and incredibly clean, and empty! It was hot the moment we stepped out of the plane into the long thingie that connects to the building. Gateway? I dunno. Anyway, it was hot, around 31C+humidex. I was wearing my jeans from the cold flight so it was even hotter. The washrooms were really modern too, and they electricity and everything! Automatic urinals, and taps, and hand dryers, just like in Canada. Wow!

Then came this really long lineup for customs. I was scared at first, because there were soldiers everywhere. I noticed there were a lot of "Beijing. Candidate City." With their cool Olympics logo. When we got out this short stumpy woman came up to us, at first my parent thought she was a boy. She said she wasn't the tour guide and the real tour guide was going to come later, she was caught up in traffic.

Finally she came, our tour guide. She was about my age, maybe a year older, and her english name was Serena. We never called her Serena though, just Xiao Jei ('young lady'). Since our tour was a private group (just the 6 of us), we all got on this mini-bus.. with A/C!!! Wooohooo!! cuz as soon as we got outside it was hot and hazy.. really hot.. REALLY HOT!! I mean, nothing could have prepared me for that kind of weather..

We stayed in Novotel hotel.. every hotel we stayed at in China was a 4 star hotel. Anything lower and you run the risk of food poisoning for every meal, and bugs, etc. Novotel was probably the best hotel we stayed in over all throughout the trip.

In Beijing, we saw a lot of places. It was cool, from me and my brother's hotel room, we could see the city, and, we could see the Forbidden City, not far from where we were.

The first full day (we arrived in Beijing in the afternoon) we saw Tianamen Square and Forbidden City. Tianamen Square was huge! There was this long lineup to see Mao Tse Tung's tomb. I think they preserved his body or something in there. Anyway it seemed like a lot of people wanted to see this dead body, cuz the lineup was.. well imagine people lined up around Skydome, maybe 2 twice, all the way around it twice, that's about how long the lineup was to see this dead dude, the father of communism, in china. That's pretty crazy!

Forbidden City was really nice too.. we saw the throne where the Last Emporer hid his cricket. I don't think there was a cricket in there for real, though I could be wrong because we weren't allowed to go into the throne room. Or was it a grasshopper? This palace was unbelieveably huge. Judging by the names of each of the buildings like Hall of Tranquility and Peace, and Hall of Wonder and Good Luck, it sort of gave me this picture if my head of a lot of ancient chinese people running around smoking pot or just high or something when they built the thing. It was huge and not all too practical, at least in my opinion.. but the architecture was really awesome!

whoops. i'll finish this later!