Today Rachel and Mike took us to The Forbidden City. It’s almost more overwhelming than The Great Wall, not but quite. That’s because it is a series of squares one after the other. Each has a huge building in the front and back with smaller buildings on the sides. Off of these main squares are other smaller squares where the emperor would house all of his concubines and children. We spent five hours there and I’m not even sure we saw half of what there was to see. From the outside we saw most of it but there are quite a few exhibits that we missed. Somewhere in the maze was a beautiful garden. It was here that we were able to meet with Jenny, our friend from Guangzhou and a few of her friends. Mike and Rachel left us with them so she could take him to the airport. He had to get back home and work the next day.
Jenny took us to lunch and afterwards to the Summer Palace. We had no idea what to expect but I think we were all blown away. We took a boat there and the river we took leads into to a huge lake. We walked about halfway around the lake, which has many bridges to small islands with beautiful buildings dotted around. There is a huge area north of the lake with many buildings and temples that we didn’t even get a chance to explore.
We did however get to watch a man writing a poem in Chinese using water on the path. Chinese characters are beautiful and it was lovely getting to watch him write them with such ease. He let us try to write using the giant brush and water, let me tell you, he made it look incredibly easy.
That night we met up with Rachel back by our hotel and we went to Pizza Hut for dinner. As you’ve already read Pizza Hut is almost gourmet in China and it was fun to eat there again. Also Rachel learned to use a knife and fork because that’s all they give you in Pizza Hut, which was fun for us. We all struggled from time to time with our chopsticks so it was cool to be able to help her with our utensils.
No comments:
Post a Comment