10 days ago... wow, time flies!

 (Mark)

 

'Lo everybody! We're in Hangzhou now and it's awesome! but that's not what my blog is about :( I apologize in advance for this entry. I'm writing it more than a week after it actually took place, i didn't take notes at the time, and I was kind of ambivalent towards everything 'cause I was just so tired of traveling.

 

On that note, our second day in Beijing was incredibly cold. Before it, we really hadn't had sub 50 degree weather anywhere, and even the first day in Beijing hadn't been that cold. As such we were all completely under dressed and not prepared for the day. Even so, we headed out to Tiananmen Square, a little curious as to what we'd see there and what Ashley (our guide, in case that hasn't already been established) would tell us about the events of '89. On the way there, we passed the street on which the famous picture of the single Chinese student stopping a line of tanks from entering the square was taken. When we arrived at the square, Ashley gave us some info about it. For one thing, "Tiananmen" literally means "Gate of Heavenly Peace." A little ironic, I'd say. Also, the square is apparently the largest city square in the world. Yeah, it was pretty big. She then proceeded to tell us that the Square is a huge symbol for China because of the many key events that have occurred there. She rattled off a few that I don't remember, then got to the "Student Protest of 1989" and left it at that. I was debating whether or not I should ask her to go into further detail about it, but I decided against it.

 

With nothing else to say, Ashley took us across the square to the entrance to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City isn't actually a city, it's basically a mansion. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties (around the 1500s, I think), the Emperor, his concubines, and his eunuchs lived in there. The place is huge. There are enough rooms that if you slept in a different room every night, it would take 27 years to sleep in each one. There was a paranoid emperor who did just that, in fact, though I don't think he managed to sleep in each room. To get into the city, we had to cross one of five bridges that were all lined up. Only the Emperor was allowed to cross the middle bridge. The top officials of China crossed either of the bridges to the left and right of the middle, and peasants were only allowed to cross one of the two outer bridges. Even today they have guards posted on the middle three bridges, so that visitors can only cross the peasant bridges, but we assumed that if high ranking officials visit, they're allowed to cross in the middle. After the bridges, we proceeded through a giant door into the entrance way of the city. Each door had nine rows of nine tumor-like bulges on it, apparently because nine was a lucky number back then. There are also nine entrances to the city, according to Ashley, which we took to mean that there are nine sets of doorways as you walk through the city. As we walked through we stopped and looked at some of the rooms. They were all incredibly spacious... there was one that must have had about 500 square feet of floor space, and the only thing in it was a throne on a raised platform with stairs leading up to it. What a waste of space!

 

From the Forbidden city we headed to the Summer Palace. The summer palace is basically supposed to be a microcosm of China, filled with all of the most beautiful aspects of the country. Kunming Lake, around which the entire area is constructed, is a man-made replica of Hangzhou's West Lake. All the dirt and such that was dug up was just put right next to the lake to make Longevity Hill. The whole process took about 15 years. The biggest story in Chinese History regarding the Summer Palace is that of the Dragon Lady (Empress Dowager Cixi).  Basically, this woman wanted power, so she did a bit of research on the emperor, AKA bribed his eunuchs, and discovered that he enjoyed Peking Opera. She thus learned a song or two, and one day she pretended to be practicing her singing while the emperor was walking through a garden nearby. He heard her, and of course fell in love with her. She bore him a son, which was fortunate, as he died soon after. Her son was thus destined to become the next emperor, but he was too young, so the Dragon Lady took charge. She was pretty much a despot who loved living in style... she loved pearls, so eunuchs would fill kunming lake with them for her to find (along with fish for her to catch). She was never officially the Empress of the Qing Dynasty, but she was in power for 48 years. Her son was supposed to take over when he reached the right age, but for a long time he was simply a puppet controlled by his mother, until he "died mysteriously" at the age of 20. The death of her son meant that her nephew would become Emperor, but he was too young, so she continued to rule. Seeing that she would do anything for power, the nephew tried to overthrow the Dragon Lady, but was unsuccessful, and was thus placed under house arrest for 10 years. COMPLETELY coincidentally, he died a few days before he was supposed to be released. So yeah, she ended up ruling for a long time, and the fall of the Qing dynasty is largely attributed to her, but she did do one good thing. Apparently, one day, one of her eunuchs approached her and said he had found something that shined more brightly than a pearl. She eagerly asked what it was, and he showed her a light bulb (no idea where he got a power source...). The Dragon Lady loved it, and had electricity run to the summer palace so she could have light bulbs, making it the first building in China to have electricity.

 

We headed back to the hotel after the Summer Palace, as we had dinner on our own that night. Alex didn't care to go out, and I forget what Allison was doing, but me and Lianna went out and discovered the BEST mall ever. It had every store and restaurant we could possibly want, including a supermarket that sold American food. It was a lot of fun. We had Pizza Hut for dinner, marking the first American dinner all trip.

 

So yeah, that's pretty much it for now. It's getting late, so I guess I'll write about the Great Wall and such tomorrow or the next day. Just had to get this done at least 'cause Viz was getting angry!