Recap day 2 AM: Tiananmen Square and forbidden city

Day 2 recap

The day started off bright and early. Not quite as early as I anticipated though. 😉  With the 12 hour time difference, I fully expected us to be up at 3 AM.  

We started the day with the "western style buffet" at the hotel. The buffet was just like I remember.... plenty of familiar breakfast items, and a whole bunch of stuff that I would never consider for early morning entree.  Eggs, waffles, fruit, cold cereal and some not-quite-coffee ( but as good as it gets) were the top selections. The salad bar had 'meat' that I didn't recognize but I did laugh when I saw the bacon bits. ( Flash back --- for those who were with us in 2009, you may remember that Shawna wouldn't really eat much.  But she LOVED bacon bits.  How or why she even came to have them?  I don't remember. I just know that we were desperate to get that kid to eat anything. And somehow,  we got her to eat bacon bits.  So, every morning at breakfast, we'd fill up a cup of bacon bits from the buffet and feed them to Shawna throughout the day.)  Other items of interest from the breakfast buffet included sweet potatoes, fried noodles, won-ton soubp, beans, congee and mixed vegetables.  It's eclectic - to say the least.

We met our guide, Vivian and headed out to visit Tiananmen Square.   While in the entrance line, another American family approached me to ask about Shawna. The woman was from Texas and had two adopted Chinese daughters ( both in their late teens). They were also on their first heritage tour.

Tiananmen Square was much larger than I anticipated.  It can hold up to 1 million people.

 Our guide shared much of the history of the buildings and Chairman Mao.  And much of it matched the summary that Sara had given us a week earlier. ( side note- each of the kids were preassigned a little bit of research on our trip. Sara had Tiananmen Square).   Not surprisingly - our guide did not mention the tragedy of 1989.  (Apparently, the museum also has no reference to the incident either. ). For obvious reasons, we didn't ask either.

The forbidden city is on the other side of Tiananmen Square. Again- there was a lot of history. A lot of tradition. Mythical creatures. The lucky number 9 is everywhere. Circles represent the heaven. Squares represent the earth.  We learned a lot. And walked a lot!  It's so much larger than the pictures can show.  As a function of security, there aren't any trees in the Tiananmen Square or  the forbidden city.  So it was really quite hot ... 99 to be exact.  We attracted a decent amount of attention throughout the day.  Vivian tells us that most Chinese people have never seen an American in person, so they were fascinated by our presence. Many took pictures from a distance.  Seth was approached by a young woman who asked him to pose for a picture with her.  He was a good sport about it.  Honestly, I think he was rather flattered.

,

Shawna was pretty quiet all morning.  I can only imagine what's going on in her little head.  It's got to be a lot to take in.  Many times, people would talk to her assuming that she could speak mandarin

  I think she's a bit frustrated ( or even quite embarrassed?? ) that she can't understand what they are saying. Sigh. 

Before lunch, we headed to the Tea shop.  Hot tea wasn't really on our wish list since it was 99 degrees, but it's part of the trip.  Yes- shopping trips are required.  4 to be exact. You don't have to buy anything, but you have to go.  Otherwise, your fees to visit China are increased. Nope- I'm not kidding.   But it was fine.  We arrived at the tea shop.  We had our own personal tea expert guide us through four different Chinese teas.  We bought two boxes and then went to lunch.

Lunch was a traditional Chinese lunch.  Most of it was pretty good.  Except for that one pork dish... that wiggled a bit too much for my liking.  We were told that it was a famous Beijing pork dish.  It looked like short ribs.  It jiggled like jello.  And, looked like it was made entirely of pork fat.  😝