Welcome to China

Beijing: Host city of the 2008 Olympics. Had to take this picture in an 'official' store for merchandise. Erika will really love this picture.

The Cube for the swimming events. It has already been used for a few months for competitions.



The Bird Cage for the Opening and Closing ceremonies. It was used a week after we left for a practice event. Amazing construction techniques. We couldn't visit them but our coach driver drove by a couple of times so that we could take pictures. It will be great to watch the Olympics and see these places.




Tian An Men Square. A quick 360 movie. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating. Note that there are no tanks around, but quite a few soldiers.





A hallway in the Summer Palace for the Emperor. He had this park-area built so he could get away from the hustle and bustle of the Forbidden City. On the ceiling are some great pictures.

This is an artificial lake, only 3 metres deep at the max. People can rent little paddle boats or take a dragon boat(like we did) from one section to the other. The bridge in the foreground goes out to a little island. Note the crowds for early April. The lake is drained every winter.

---------------

The entrance to the Forbidden City. My kids will like the picture of chairman Mao.


Once inside, you notice all the space that the average Chinese citizen was not allowed to visit until Communism took over and the reign of the Emperors was finished. The Forbidden City is almost 2 kilometres long and 1 and 1/2 wide. All cobblestones and many, many buildings like these.




This is the view from the other side which leads to the Summer Palace which you can see in the background.




This sculpture was found inside the Concubine's courtyard. The sign below wasn't in this area, but in other places. You couldn't scratch the metal on the dragon anyway. It wasn't referring to old people either.

----------------------------

After lunch, we headed to a Jade Factory. We were allowed to take all kinds of pictures of the sculptures, furniture and paintings with Jade accents. This was our first visit to an 'Official Government Store' where we were given demonstrations(5 minutes) and then time to shop(1 hour) We found out later that the guides get a huge commission on everything that is purchased here. There is no bargaining allowed, but they give you a ten to twenty percent discount. Yeah, right.

This picture was teasing us for the next day trip to the Great Wall. Loved this picture but not enough to spend 300 dollars for it.


Here is the Happy Buddah. He's happy because he gets to eat everything he wants and nobody calls him "hoover". Because of the huge meals and amount of food we ate during the three weeks, we, Greg and I, often were called the HappyBuddah. Annie, from Montreal, really enjoyed that expression.

-------------------------------

So ended our first day in Beijing. We got to experience the traffic, the street vendors, the construction, etc. We arrived with some preconceived notions about China but were pleasantly surprised. Yes, there were lots of people but not huge masses. There were bikes on the roads in special bike lanes, but not thousands. The mass transit system seems to work very well. There are lots of cars though (Beijing adds 2000 cars daily to the traffic), with some very expensive Audis around. But, there is a lot of pollution in the air. The coal powered plants aren't very clean and the older cars and motorbikes and scooters also contribute to it. We really didn't see blue sky because of the weather and the pollution for two weeks.


Next post will be the Wall and the Terra Cotta warriors. That was our greatest day in China.