Beijing July 12-16 2012

Greetings from China.  We just spent a long weekend in Beijing. It was awesome.  Very tiring but we really enjoyed it.  Beijing is so full of history.  It has been the capital of China since 1421 when the Forbidden City was completed and the Emperor moved the Capital from Nanjing to Beijing.  We loved learning about the culture, history and eating the food.  It was a great trip.  There is so much to write about the trip.  I don't know if it will all get written in one blog.  Hopefully Alauna and the kids will also add their perspective.

Great Wall 

There were so many highlights of the trip.  It's hard to say there was one that topped the others.  I would say that for me personally it was hiking on the Great Wall.  That is something I have wanted to do for years and do to it with my entire family together was a really special experience.  It's amazing being on the wall and think of the work that went into building the wall.  You have to understand that this wall is located in the mountains.  Not hills but very steep mountains.  For my Utah readers think of building a 25' high and 10-12' wall on top on the Wasatch Mountains.  Now extend that wall from the West Coast of the US to the East Coast (it would actually be longer but you get the point.)  It truly is amazing.  For most of the time on the wall I was carrying Declan in our kid backpack.  It provided a good workout for me.  Declan did get down walk for a bit, but I think he enjoyed being carried around.  The kids had a lot of fun on the wall.  They were pretending that they were the guards and keeping watch and defending the country.  We went to the MuTianYu section of the Great Wall.  We rode a cable car up to the wall.  I'm glad the cable car was there.  It was a good hike just to get up to the cable car.  We then hike along the great wall for a couple of hours and walked over to where you go down the mountain.  They actually have and Alpine slide down the mountain.  It was a lot of fun.  I'm still in awe by the experience of being on the Great Wall with my family.  It's amazing how steep it is.  It was also refreshing to be up in the mountains again.

After hiking the wall we went through the souvenir alley that exists at almost every tourist site.  The kids loved shopping at these places.   They always found a ton of things that they had always wanted.  The kids loved having me negotiate for them.  There are a couple of ground rules of negotiating.  You have to see what their floor is.  You do this by giving your price which is usually 80-90% lower than their original price.  They will always say no and then then you can adjust your price if you want.  At some point you have to walk away.  If they let you walk you know they won't go lower and you've found their price floor.  They you buy.  With six kids there were always "bulk" purchases so that came into the negotiation as well.  It becomes a bit of a game to see how low you can get.  At some point you are haggling over pennies.  At this point I always give them the few extra rmb.  After negotiating and buying the latest in Chinese souvenirs, I was talking to another vendor.  He was asking me how much I paid for stuff.  He said that I was a tough negotiator and actually got a couple things cheaper than he would sell them for.  I felt good about that.

Taking pictures at Tiananmen Square.
The grandma holding Declan is almost 90 years old. 

One of the biggest attractions in Beijing last weekend was Declan.  He had his picture taken everywhere.  The locals loved to take pictures with all of our family but Declan was the star of the show.  At one point we were in front of the Forbidden City and one person wanted to take their picture with us, so we did our normal line-up and a couple of people jumped in to take pictures with us.  Next thing we knew we had 40-50 people in a half circle taking pictures of us with others jumping to the side of us to be in the pictures.  This was the most people we had at one time, but this happened all the time.  The kids were really good about letting others take pictures with them.  At times I think they even enjoyed it.  They also saw how happy the Chinese were to take pictures with us.

Declan getting hugged.  

There are street vendors all over the city.  They sell anything from tours to the great wall to 1 RMB (15 cents) popsicles.  The popsicle vendors are all over in front of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden city.  The walk around with a box of popsicles hawking their goods.  The kids loved them so we ate our fair share.  Plus, when it was 90+ degrees the popsicle was a nice treat.  The popsicle vendors, water vendors, and a lot of the street souvenir vendors are not licensed so when the police would come they would scatter.  It was kind of funny to watch them.  You could tell the police were coming because all of a sudden people were jumping on their bikes or scattering with a box hidden under their arm.  As soon as the police were gone they were back calling out 1 rmb, 1 rmb.   I talked to one of the vendors and asked them what happened if they got caught.  He pointed to a big police van about 40 yards away.  He said they would take them to the van and they would get a fine.  He said the fine was 50-100rmb.  $8-$16 USD.  That was probably more than they made in a couple of days.  After watching them for a while it seemed like a dance between the police and street vendors.  Both seem to know exactly where the other was and as long as they didn't get too close to eachother everything was fine.

Beijing has a very different feel than Nanjing or Shanghai.  You could compare Bejing with Washington DC and Shanghai with New York City.  Beijing is the government seat of China and Shanghai is the business center of China.  There is a strong presence of military and police in Beijing.  After spending time in Shanghai and then Beijing, Nanjing felt like a small town.  Amazing that you can say that a city of 6-8million people could feel like a small town.  We went to Tiananmen Square our first night there to watch them take down the flag.  It is a pretty cool ceremony with the military taking down the large Chinese flag.  It was pretty crowded so it was hard to see, but Marissa, Trevon and Brannon worked their way to the front of the crowd so they had a great view the ceremony.  Afterwards the flag ceremony the square closes and immediately the military are there to clear everyone out.  It's amazing how quickly they can empty the place out.  Also there is a bit of a feel that you don't want to linger too long and have them force you to leave.

When we went to the Forbidden City there are many people that approach you to offer to be a guide for you.  We ended up deciding to get a guide and we met Jimmy Mu.  He was a great guide.  I'm so glad we had him.  He offered a ton of insight and historical context to the visit.  The Forbidden City is a huge palace.  It is where the emperor lived from 1420 until the last emperor in the 1920's .  It was really cool to see all the history and hear the stories that live within the walls.  It is massive.  It is over a half mile long.  While there Jimmy took us to a room that had the last emperor's nephew there.  He is now a famous calligrapher in China.  He has not official title other than as a calligraphy professor.  The government has taken away any connection to the emperors in title or even family name.  We had him write our Chinese name on a scroll for us.  It was pretty cool.

"Duck Taco" Beijing Duck

Scorpions on a stick.  Pretty tasty when roasted.  

We ate some great food while in Beijing.  The most interesting was scorpions.  The entire family including Declan ate a scorpion.  Our favorite was the Beijing Duck.  We had Beijing Duck two different nights.  Both nights were delicious.  Beijing Duck is probably on of my favorite meals in China now.  They take the duck meat and skin and put it on a small thin pancake (looks like a tortilla) along with scallions, cucumber and a brown duck sauce.  They then roll it up so it's almost like a small softshell duck taco.  It is so tasty.  It was funny because the kids now just call it duck tacos instead of Beijing duck.  The first night we at it a a famous duck restaurant.  The second time we just got a duck to go and ate it in our room.  I was surprised at how much the kids loved it.  We also went to Hot pot.  There is a pot of broth in the middle of the table.  They serve you raw meats and then you cook the meats and veggies in the broth.  It is pretty tasty.  We went to Haidilao resturant.  It is famous for it's service.  When you order noodles a guy comes in and gets them ready for the hotpot in a very interesting and entertaining way.  Check out this link.  Noodle Dancer at Haidilao hot pot. 

Ducks roasting in brick oven.  

Trevy eating a forbidden popsicle at the Forbidden City.  

One of the highlights of the trip was spending an evening in a hutong.  A hutong is an old neighborhood.  Some are 700 years old. Most of the houses don't have bathrooms so there are public restrooms that they use.  Jimmy took us to the hutong and gave us a quick tour and then left us on our own.  He dropped us off at a famous dumpling place.  I think it was the Cafe Rio of Beijing dumplings.  The place was packed.  You would wait in line and then get to the front and quickly tell them what you want and then jockey around to find a place to sit.  There was not seating for 8 so we got our dumplings to go and ate them on the street.  After dumplings we went to a local shop and got the kids soda's and yogurt drinks.  Many times in China I know they are giving us the foreigner discount.  I had a feeling that they were at this shop as well.  I proved my hunch right when a local came in and they charged her about 30% less.  Because I spoke Chinese I could hear what they charged her.  The lady said it was because we were American's and get paid a lot more than the local Chinese. I tried to plead my case that I was "local" and living in Nanjing.  She still felt we deserved the American discount.

After the sodas and yogurt drinks we went to a small courtyard where the locals congregate in the evenings.  I found a little shop that made hand cut noodles.  They are so tasty.  They have a large block of dough and then have a rounded hand blade and hand-cut the noodles off of this large ball of dough.  They were a hit with the kids.  The courtyard also has exercise equipment around the outside of it and the kids were having a lot of fun on it.  They even had a back massager that you ran up and down your back.  They had a large open space that the couples come out and dance.  Marissa and I started dancing and then Alauna came and joined us.  Alauna and I started doing a couple of country dance moves that she taught me when we were dating.  The locals were watching pretty closely so I asked if they wanted me to teach them, so I started dancing with them to teach them our signature move.  It was such a fun night.  It really was about enjoying time together as a family.  Everyone enjoyed that night.

Picture with a soldier.  He was pretty low ranking.
His superiors wouldn't get in the picture with us but made him. 

Two cute girls peaking out of the great wall.  

Declan catching some ZZZZ's on the great wall.  

Jimmy our guide.  He did a great job. 

Tiana worn out.  

It was such a fun trip.  Sunday afternoon, after we got back from church we were exhausted and everyone took a nap.  I'm really glad that we were able to experience so much of China's history and culture as well as spend some great family time together.