CHINA Day 4: Summer Palace, the Zoo, and Kung Fu Show

For our second day in Beijing, Herbert suggested we go to The Summer Palace, one of his favorite places in the city. We took a boat down the river for about 30 minutes, which is how Empress Dowager Cixi used to get there. It was a pleasant little trip. (Except for the woman behind me on the boat who kept telling Herbert that I needed to hold Marie more tightly and that she was too cold and I should have her wear more clothes. So, sometimes it's better when you don't have a translator... I did ask Herbert about it later, though. I asked him why people were so concerned about my kids being cold. It was spring, not winter, so it must get a lot colder in Beijing than it was when we were there. His response was, "The Chinese are weaker than European people." I kid you not, he admitted to being weaker. It was priceless.)

Here is Bobby with a gargoyle of some kind on the 17-arch bridge. He's making a dragon face.

This is the Seventeen Arch Bridge. I mentioned that they had 9 animals on the roof in The Forbidden City, and apparently 9 was the symbol of the emperor or something (it comes up again at the Temple of Heaven later in our trip). So, this bridge has 17 arches so that when the emperor went through the middle one, he was going through the 9th arch counted from either side.

This is the Temple of Timely Rains and Extensive Moisture. Emperor Qianlong used to come to pray for rain here and it worked at least once, so they kept doing it.

Family picture. There were so many people, it was impossible not to have extra people in the picture. It's a busy place! Marie was sleeping.

This is the longest continuously covered walkway in the world. It was built because the Emperor enjoyed taking walks along the river, and this way, he could take walks even when it was raining.

The ceiling of one of the pavilions

Here's another shot of the Temple of Timely Rains and Extensive Moisture (or Guangrun Lingyu Ci)

Not sure what this is, but I thought the architecture was fun.

Matt decided to do a little photo shoot with some of these pretty trees before we left.

Poor Scotty. His lips and nose were so chapped. We all had a cold while we were there and to add in the pollution and the humidity being cut by about 70% from what we're used to just made it worse.

One of the bridges we walked over as we left. It really was a very beautiful place to visit. I can see why the emperor and empress enjoyed visiting. They had juniper trees planted all along the river which provided lots of shade.

I felt like the boys were getting antsy after a day and a half of sightseeing and recommended that they might enjoy the zoo. It was kind of a big mistake. It wasn't that great of a zoo and the boys weren't all that interested. We did rent strollers, so at least we didn't have to listen to Bobby crying, "I want you to carry me!" for an hour or two. And, we got to see a panda...

...and buy a panda hat

Scott's hair was very unkempt that day and I think the fox thought it was something to pounce on. He came right over when Scott sat down.

Pretty cool tiger statue. It's gigantic.

We sat and watched the kangaroos for quite a while. This little guy was hopping around the room, and it was fun to watch.

These bears were fighting almost the whole time we were there. There was a guy throwing food in over the wall. Doesn't matter that there was a sign posted to not feed the animals...

Marie had a fun little visit to the zoo!

After dinner, we went to the Kung Fu Show at the Red Theater. It was really fun. It follows the story of Chungyi, a child who is dropped off by his mother to become Kung Fu Master at a Buddhist monastery. You see all the things he learns and then he becomes the new abbot and trains people himself. Marie cried during the quietest moment of course, when Chungyi becomes a monk and gets his white robe, so I took her out for a bit and went in and out a few times and stood in the back, but it was still fun. The boys loved it. At the end, Matt had the boys take pictures with the cast.

Then we decided to get Marie in on the action. She could not take her eyes off that dragon!

I thought she might cry because she was so tired, and she was being held by a complete stranger, but no! Her good nature seems to know no bounds. I can't wait to put this picture in her First Year album. What a crazy life she's had already, and she's only 8 months old!

Sunday we took the day off from touring and spent some time with friends we met in married student housing at BYU in 2007 who now live in Beijing. It was the week after LDS General Conference, which is broadcast live while Asia is sleeping, so it's the week most people on this side of the world watch it. So, we watched one session with our friends. They have sons almost exactly the same ages as Scott and Bobby and then two more younger boys. We will have to watch the session again to get anything out of it, but they had fun listening for key words like, "family" and "temple" and then getting candy after hearing it 5 times. We had dinner and then took a taxi back to our hotel. It was fun to see our friends. I only wish we had taken pictures!

We went to bed very much looking forward to the next morning, when we would see the Great Wall of China...

CHINA Day 3: Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City

On Day 2 we were still in Xi'an. We decided we had to take some days off from touring for the kids' sake. So we didn't plan to see anything on that day. So, we spent most of the day trying to get money. Matt tried 3 ATMs at the airport before we got any cash, and we ran out of money after a quick trip to Wal-Mart. We finally found out that ONLY the Bank of China accepts credit cards from outside of China. So, we walked with all the kids about 1km away from the Wal-Mart and about 1.5km from our hotel. So, the kids were pretty tired. After the bank, we stopped at Ying Ying Diang or something like that for lunch. We were pretty lost because the original menu was only Chinese text, but we did eventually get a menu with pictures and interesting translations, so we did get some food and ate. Then, we had to really hurry back to pack before our taxi arrived to take us to the airport. It turned out to be kind of a stressful afternoon.

On our first day in Beijing, our tour guide, Herbert, met us at our hotel and led us to our hired van. It was great. It's the only way I want to travel from now on.

Here we are in Tian'anmen Square. You will very often see Herbert in our pictures instead of Matt because Matt wanted to wield the camera.

The National Museum of China, across the street

Here's the Monument of the People's Heroes, for all the fallen soldiers, I think.

Here's Chairman Mao's Mausoleum. There were about 1000 people in line to see it.

This is the Great Hall of the People, where the equivalent of the Congress meets.

Herbert and Bobby in front of the Forbidden City

All of us in front of the Forbidden City

In Xi'an, Diana taught us how to tell the difference between the male and female lions that are in front of countless buildings in China. The male lion has a ball under his paw, which represents power.

The female lion has a baby lion under her paw. She is in charge of caring for the babies. The rest of the time we were in China the boys pointed at every lion we saw and told us whether it was male or female.

Very impressive painting on the buildings. It was very vibrant on a few of the buildings who get repainted regularly, but not all of them do.

These are Chinese zodiac animals, I think. They're on the corners of the roofs of lots of buildings in China. Only the emperor had 9 animals on his roof. Other government buildings that were important might have 6 or 7. A little restaurant might have 3.

Very cool stone carvings.

Throne room

A turtle!

A crane. Both the crane and the turtle are symbols of longevity.

Happy baby today

This was in front of the empress's house, I think. There were so many buildings in the city it was very hard to keep track.

Probably my favorite part of the trip was the Imperial Gardens. I really wish I could have sat and had lunch there, or at least spent an hour there. But there were so many people, we kind of got pushed through the place pretty quick.

These rocks were taken from the bottom of a lake

This is a game table of some kind. The boys hopped in and pretended to play "Chinese Checkers." And... a bunch of Chinese people took pictures of them.

There were hundreds of these little mosaics on the ground made of little rocks. It was hard to get a good picture of them because of all the people, but if I could spend an hour staring at the ground, that would make me very happy.

There were little pavilions around the place. This was the ceiling of one of them

Across the street from the Imperial Gardens is a public park. Matt climbed to the top to get a good picture of the whole city. When I saw the hill he was going to hike up, I decided to stay down on the base level of the garden with the kids, get a snack, some water, and feed the baby. Here are the shots he got. Totally worth it.

There was a big tulip garden up at the top, so I'm sad I missed that, but Matt took a beautiful picture.

Next, we went to the Hutongs. These are villages that have turned into a popular place for tourists to eat and go shopping.

Bobby picked out this hat. It's a boy emperor hat.

Scott trying on Scott's hat

The last thing we did was go to an awesome acrobat show. Very impressive and fun. Marie was so tired and I was worried I would miss the whole thing because she would be crying, but she was totally enthralled. It was so cute.

Here are the boys in front of the theater. We weren't allowed to take pictures. (That didn't stop the lady in front of us from recording 80% of it on her cell phone even after an usher told her to put her phone away, but hey, what are you gonna do?)