Today was our last day in Beijing. We first went to the Temple of Heaven at the Peoples Park. This place was incredible. They have a huge temple that they built in 1420 AD to pray for a good harvest. It is in the middle of a beautiful park they built. Now the retired people of China go there every morning to do Tia Chi, play cards, dance, do sword Tia Chi, and many more activities. It was so great to see the older generation out being social and enjoying life. 
This picture is the area next to the temple. There are two identical buildings on the left and right of the temple. You can see one of them on the left side of the picture. The emperor would use them to get dressed and ready for the ceremony. What an insane amount of effort to build such a thing just for a changing room! On the right side of the picture is the gate to come into the temple grounds. Most places we went to had enormous entryways like this. It would be so hard to shut one of those doors. I can't imagine trying to build it and put it up in 1420 AD.
Next we went to Beijing airport and flew 2 hours to Shanghai then took a bus to Suzhou to see Tiger Hill. This is the where the "leaning tower of China" is. They have a building much like the one in Pisa but they have fixed it so it wouldn't fall and now it doesn't lean drastically. You just can't imagine how beautiful the gardens are that they would build around their special places. I wish I had just one of their cool walkways, waterfalls, or bridge in my backyard.
We were all pretty beat tonight so we were glad for an early night in our hotel room. You could get a massage in China for about $20 for an hour! Many in our group did get massages often but I didn't. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to communicate with my masseuse of what I did and didn't like and then I'd just hate the experience. Some people in China spoke great English but many had no idea what we were saying-- as we had no idea what they were saying.
Here is a picture of one of their special dishes. It is a fish they turn it inside out, snip the meat, dip it in batter, and then deep fry it. I couldn't get past the fish head on the plate but others said it wasn't bad.
This is what it looked like outside our bus window before we'd pull away from somewhere. These people on the street were always trying to sell you something. The funny thing is, we'd travel for 45 min. to go to a different site and when we'd get back on the bus the same people were there trying to get us to buy again. I'm sure they hopped in their Mercedes and followed the bus!
1 comment:
Wow!! What an experience.
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