Hey hey! The weekend is over, but much fun was had, and many sights were seen. Sunday was spent at the Summer Palace in Beijing, which is this huge area that was built for a Chinese emperor a long time ago. Apparently this is one of four of his summer retreats across China, because apparently one ginormous resort x100 isn’t enough. There’s a big lake at the center of this palace, which by the way is completely man-made. And it’s not like this lake is small, either…it’s probably 10 or 20 times the size of Lake Calhoun, maybe more. It’s massive. The architecture everywhere is super cool too, and unfortunately some of it is off-limits, but you can at least see most of it. The biggest attraction was this building on top of a hill that we climbed up, and inside was this Buddha where you’re supposed to make a wish (and donate money too). Very impressive.
There are tons of boats on this huge man-made lake, and you can take one down the river connected to this lake and go to the Beijing Zoo, which we all did afterwards. They have pandas there! Real pandas! A very important diplomatic tool, it turns out. America has received many pandas from China.
The last thing we did on Friday was to visit (and I’m probably going to spell this wrong) Nan LuoGuXiang street which had many shops and lots of interesting foods being sold all over the place.
On Monday night, the Chinese engineers took Dave and I to a Korean barbecue restaurant, a place where you cook all of the food yourself over hot coals that are inserted into the table when you arrive. There are also people coming in constantly to remove the gratings above these hot coals as we cook food. I can already imagine the FDA’s response to a restaurant where you cook all the food yourself and dodge the scalding hot gratings that are being removed regularly by the waiting staff. But the food was incredibly good. I took pictures of the meal as well, which I will share soon!
The remainder of the trip is four days of work, and we’ll fly back home on Saturday morning. But one evening will be spent visiting Tiananmen Square which should be great, and maybe another evening might involve looking at the Olympic Grounds. Plus I still haven’t eaten any extremely bizarre or dangerous foods yet, though I did have cow tongue tonight which was very chewy but tasty.
Random things that pop into my head now…when I was walking around at the Summer Palace, an Asian man pointed at me and exclaimed “American!” When we were at the zoo, a trolley was playing “happy birthday” wherever it went. On the roads, there are dash marks to indicate lanes, but the drivers are completely unaware of them. The moment the last person at the table finishes eating, that’s when you get up and everyone is excused; nobody sits around and chats more. Finding your way around here would probably be easy to do because almost everything with Chinese writing has english writing as well, like all the road signs, restaurant menus, etc.
I will look forward to a regular sleep schedule, and, well, sleep in general, when I get home. The initial jet lag was very tiring, and it’s taken me a while to readjust my biological clock. This is the first night of the trip where I haven’t fallen asleep prior to 10:00 PM, and I typically wake up at around 5:00. But it’s a good kind of tired, and I didn’t come to China to sleep! Regardless, I do need sleep so I will sign off for now (I’m writing this on Monday evening though I plan on posting this on Tuesday morning at the factory’s free internet).
Anyway, I am having more success uploading pictures today, so here you go!
This is what we had for dinner last night. We had to cook the meat ourselves at the table with hot coals that were sitting underneath that grating.
There were several structures at the Summer Palace, but this was probably the biggest one we found. Very cool architecture!
The "Silver Pagodas" out in the countryside of Beijing. We also climbed up those mountains in the background after checking these out. Needless to say, we all got our exercise that day.
I suppose I should prove that I really am in China! This is a bridge going over the massive man-made lake at the Summer Palace.
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