Last Day in Beijing!

We woke up to smog this morning! It was crazy how yesterday was perfectly clear, then today was so smoggy we couldn't see past the building or two in front of us! Our guide said it was because the wind stopped, so the smog rolled back in. It's unbelievable how fast it happened!

Today was a really great day of touring. I loved every stop! First on the agenda was the Olympic Park.

The gymnastics building

The cube for...swimming. Quin was posing so we made sure to remember what the building was for ;)

Olympic Stadium or The Bird's Nest.

After Olympic Village, we went to the Summer Palace. I loved this place so, so much!! It was so extraordinary! I could have roamed the grounds all day! It was similar to the Forbidden City, but in such a beautiful, picturesque location! The Summer Palace was built before the Forbidden City, but it wasn't used a ton until the Dragon Lady started using it in 1888 and reconstructed and expanded it quite a bit. It was destroyed in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, but has been replicated and rebuilt. It is now a park of sorts and is called Yihe Yuan. It was great to go on a Saturday because there were many families enjoying the outdoors together. It was fun to see! An interesting bit of Chinese culture that our guide told us several times is that women typically retire from age 52-55 and men between the ages of 55-60. After that, their main goal is to take care of their grandchild. Because of the one child policy in China, many times there are four grandparents to care for one grandchild while the parents work. We did see many, many grandparents with one grandchild. Our guide has a younger sister and thinks the one child policy is unfavorable because of how spoiled the children are. Six adults doting on one child makes the child feel the world revolves around them. Her words, not mine ;)

We've seen this baby dragon/mythical creature many times the past few days.

The Temple of Buddhist Virtue in the background. Magnificent!

In front of Dragon Lady's residence. Her real name is Empress Dowager Cixi. She's an evil genius who figured out how to rule China as a woman! Too bad she didn't do more good! She was selfish and cruel, but very clever!

This is called the "Long Corridor". Our guide told us it is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest corridor in the world! Every painting is a Chinese story. 1400 of them in total!

The Temple of Buddhist Virtue again. I SO love this building!!

In front of the Temple. I loved it so much I was willing to pay more and hike all the way up Longevity Hill to get there! I had two favorite buildings in Beijing, and this was one of them!

Once we got up to the Temple, this building was up there as well! Our guide said it was a Tao temple.

On the way down from the Temple. Kunming Lake in the background. It is a natural lake that the Dragon Lady had made much larger. It's a huge lake and gorgeous!!

A marble boat. It's said that boats represent the Emperor and the water represents the common people. If the Emperor is respected and loved, the water will support it. If the Emperor is hated, it will sink.

After the Summer Palace, we went to lunch. Today we had pork wrapped in tofu, cabbage, spicy beef, dumplings, and tomato egg soup. Never in my life would I order food like this, but every one of these dishes was absolutely delicious! I think one of the most worthwhile parts of the tour was having a native local order food for us! We asked our guide yesterday if she'd ever had Mexican food. She has not. Funny enough, the tofu pork today looked very similar to a taco! The pork was wrapped in the tofu shell, and we joked that it was a Chinese taco!

After lunch we made our way to the Temple of Heaven. This was a building where only the Emperor could go. He would go twice a year: once on summer solstice, once on winter solstice. He would fast three days prior to going and would go to pray for a good harvest. This and the Temple of Buddhist Virtue were my favorite buildings. So, so ornate and beautiful! This temple thankfully didn't get destroyed in war. It is original! This amazing piece of land has also been turned into a public park. It's called Tiantan. There were many, many people here! Groups doing T'ai Chi, groups playing cards, people dancing for exercise, men playing Chinese Checkers, kids flying kites, grandparents looking after their grandchildren, etc. Such great people watching!!

In front of the Temple of Heaven

I can't remember the name of this! It represents heaven, people, and earth. As with every single piece of architecture in China, it had great meaning. In China, the number 9 is magical. There were nine stairs separating each level. There were nine stones between each level. At the top, there were nine rings. The first ring had 9 bricks. The second had 18. The third 27 and so on until the 9th, which had 81. All done perfectly without computers and machines!

Quin on the heaven level with the Temple in the background.

 

A beautiful row of trees leaving the park.

After we finished at the Temple of Heaven, we went shopping. Holy aggressive salespeople! They would grab at us and pull us places. I HATED it! We did buy a special gift for our girls there, then ran out as quickly as we could. Ha!

That ended our tour! What a whirlwind three days it's been! We have had such an amazing, magical time in Beijing! The people here are so, so nice! Everyone has been incredibly accommodating to us and so friendly! I will never forget the time we have spent here and I'm so grateful we have had this opportunity!! I'll admit that China has never been somewhere I have wanted to visit. I was so scared to come here! I was afraid of the food, people, and such a difference in culture. It hasn't been intimidating at all, though! Everyone is over the top nice, the food has been excellent, and I have absolutely loved seeing everything we've seen!!! I am so thankful to have such a love for the people and country my son is from!

One last thing I wanted to mention about Beijing is how fascinating every single building is. Not just the old historical buildings, but the new ones as well! Every single one of them is unique and mesmerizing! You can tell from the Water Cube and Bird's Nest built for the Olympics that the Chinese people have a flair for unique architecture! I wish I could have taken a picture of every interesting building we've seen, but it's impossible to get a good shot from a moving car! Here are a few, though! I took one of these, and the rest are buildings we've seen while here.

This is a hotel that's designed to look like a dragon.

This is the Chinese TV building. It's near our hotel and even though we've seen it loads of times, I still have to stare every time we pass it! So crazy!

I don't even know what this series of buildings is, but it's so awesome!

This is an Apple store I believe. When you're passing on the freeway, it looks like a building with a completely hollow center. Crazy!

We're pretty much packed up and ready to go to the train station in the morning. Tomorrow we travel by bullet train to Henan province. Guess who lives there?? MILO!!! In about 36 hours from right now he will be in our arms forever!! I seriously cannot believe it! I am doubting my ability to sleep the next two nights. I'm just so, so excited! And nervous! And elated!

Watch out, Zhengzhou, here we come!!