What a full on couple of days.
Yesterday we vistied Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City. I have never seen so many people in the one place ever. And they were all in massive groups wearing the same coloured hats, following a guide with a flag. It was insane. The buildings themselves were grandiose. They certainly built the city to inspire awe and exhibit their power. It took us nearly the entire day just to get through it.
As a side note on China and its helpful people - We wanted to visit the 'hall of clocks and watches' - no idea why it just sounded the best of the myriad meseums scattered throughout the city. We found the entrence but could not find the ticket office to save ourselves. We asked several people who all gave us less than helful guidance. The woman at the ticket counter just screamed LEFT at us repeatedly. So we figured we'd go have a look at the massive building called 'information centre'. It was a beacon of hope shining to us from accross a massive courtyard, however upon closer inspection the information centre was a doorway with a massive shiny sign inside and and nothing else. It was hilariously ridiculous. We eventually got tickets and saw some clocks.
Today we headed out to the Summer Palace. Again - just a massive expanse of royal dick swinging. It was lovely to walk through and the view from the very top of the garden was breathtaking. The highlight, for me at least, was a random massive choir that seemed to spring up out of nowhere and sang so loudly and beautifully it was show stopping. Such a perfect backdrop to the palace.
We then visited the Temple of Heaven. Some weird shit went down there as far as we can gather. There were definately sacrafices but we're yet to discover of what variety. The Palace of Abstinance was disappointing to say the least. But then that was probably to be expected....
China itself is proving to be challenging. The food is great, the subway is exceptional - only 2 yuan (about 30 cents), to go anywhere on the subway and the sights are amazing. There's only two issues - the toilets and the staring. I thought we had issues with the Japan toilets - but they don't have anything on Chinese ones. They have squats which we became acustomed to in Japan, but you can't flush your toilet paper. So what does one do with ones toilet paper if not flush it? Well one leaves it in the waste paper basket next to the squat. Which means every time you squat down to take a pee your face is about 20 cms away from an overflowing basket full of soiled paper. I'm desperately trying to get used to it - Jazz just laughs at me. And then there's the staring. Jazz told me to expect the Chinese to stare at us. What he didn't tell me is that they would stop mouth agape staring at us for a full minute after we had walked past, or that they would run into walls on their bikes because they were too busy checking out the "wai gua ren" (forigners). We have had 3 families and 1 soldier stop and ask to take their pictures with us. Who would have thought that we would be as big a tourist attraction as some ancient ruins!! Sometimes it's fine other times - and particularly for someone who is already self concious - it can be very awkward.
Anway enough rambling - we're off to get some Peking Duck and tomorrow - The Great Wall!!
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