Day 2 - Evening

Guest post by Ryan:

We spent a great day on Friday during the day at Tieneman Square and checking out the Forbidden City.  Tieneman Square is a shrine to many Chinese people who flock there from all over the country to see it. Everyone is still talking about Chairman Mao (see his picture in the background above Pauline's head) Even though he died in 1976, you get a real sense that he is admired and border-line worshiped. You can still see his body preserved under glass. We didn't want/need to.  

As you can see, the weather was great: windy and sunny.  And people everywhere.  We stood fairly close to our tour guide, George, and the others in our group. It's a little weird to see Chinese military standing at various guard stations. This picture is of Tyler & Dylan joining one of the stony-faced guards. He barely blinked when I thanked him. Oh well, I guess the British ones in London keep a pretty stern face, too. Yes, that's an enormous flower bouquet in the back ground. Considering it's October, it's really impressive how green and alive the vegetation and flowers still are.

We left the big square and then toured around the Forbidden CIty. It's a massive compound many hectares in size, where the Emperor and the governmental elite used to live. Tons of buildings, lots of interesting architecture. The emperor's throne is somewhat of a shrine as well, but we were more interested in people watching the masses that were elbowing their way to get a picture of it.

As beautiful as it is to see, there really isn't too much to do. You walk around the huge open spaces and stare at the buildings, and after a while they start looking the same.  In the above picture, you can see us traversing up a fairly steep ramp up to one of the Gateways. We did get a bit of action, though.  A handful of square maintenance workers were hauling away a fairly unwieldy load of construction debris (timber, rocks, tiles, glass) and they were using a rickety looking biycle wagon rickshaw to move it. Problem was the vehicle was overloaded and they had to go down one of the steep ramps. This could get interesting:

My video camera was poised and ready to capture the disaster about to unfold. This video clip was going to go viral on this on Youtube. Much commotion as the 5 guys communicated to each other loudly about best braking strategy and correct angle of descent. I couldn't tell if they were angry or just speaking normally to each other. But, to my disappointment, it was uneventful.

Dylan and Tyler caught in a rare moment of quiet brotherly affection and solitude.

Here's a photo of our entire group together. All of these people are adopting a Chinese child through C.C.A.I. (Chinese Children Adoption International) our adoption agency.  The Chinese fellow on the far right is our most excellent host, translator and CCAI rep, George. We're on the far left. To the right of us are Ed & Kylie, a couple from Indiana who are adopting and this is their first child. The Asian teenager in the front center is Jade (and her mom, Nancy) from Dallas. Jade was adopted at 9 months of age from China, and this is her first time seeing where she was from. The young lady beside Jade was adopted from Ethiopia and is with her mom Lisa.  The couple with sunglasses is Mike and Allison from Kentucky. They have 3 boys and are adopting a girl. The couple besides George are Megan and Jamie, are from Colorado, have 3 boys and are adopting as well.  What a nice, fun bunch of people.

In the evening, after a group dinner at a night restaurant, we checked out the Night Market. It's a place where you can sample and taste all kinds of truly Asian snacks and treats from a variety of vendors. It's within walking distance from our hotel, and we thought it would be a fun cultural experience to check it out. One of the first things you see are live scorpions impaled on sticks. Yep, they're wriggling and thrashing about. If you want it, the vendor pops it into the deep fry and a few minutes later, you are crunching on some high protein snacks. That's a sea horse in the top left (long dead) but you can find grass hoppers, locusts, mega-centipedes, cicada nymphs, moth pupae, squid, lizards, tarantulas and even snakes. This is not some novelty bazaar: it's an ordinary market that many, many ordinary people flock for a good time and for daily necessities

You will find hundreds of food booths just like this, with 3 or 4 people working inside.

I watched ordinary looking people wolfing down these mini-chickens (young chickens) with the same enthusiasm that someone inhales an Edaleen ice cream cone on a hot summer day. I guess I'm not used to seeing the chickens' faces intact with pained grimaces still on them. 

All of us found it fascinating to see this. You can see Dylan and Tyler just drinking it in.  Dylan is probably getting a double-nostril whiff of the delicacies just inches below his nose. About 3 seconds after I snapped this picture, the lady reached over to a card board sign on her left (which I couldn't see) and flashed it at me. It said, "No photo"  - I of course apologized, slipped my camera into my pocket, and she calmly returned to her business of impaling scorpions and organizing the coiled snakes.

We had a bit of a scare when we thought we'd lost Tyler. Michelle and I searched the different side streets and main corridor only to realize he had been ahead of our group with Jade and Jade's mom.  I wonder what it would have been like to try find your missing or lost child in a night market in the middle of Beijing. We were VERY thankful we didn't lose anyone. Below is a picture of our hotel in Beijing, the Sunworld Dynasty Hotel. Our impressions of this city are quite positive so far. People are well dressed, cars are new, traffic is extremely busy and things are fairly orderly. It is also interesting to notice a very strong police presence wherever you go. Not an intimidating presence, more of a friendly community policing kind of thing, but definitely there as a visible presence to make you think twice. We got back to our hotel room around 9:30 and all of us hit the hay after a busy day!  Day 2 under the belt!