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Me outside the gate to Tiananmen Square! |
T H E R E ' S J U S T A S much history in the heart of Beijing as there is along its outskirts, and today we traveled inwards, rather than outwards.
Tiananmen Square was to be our first stop of the day--a stop I'd been looking forward to for days!-- but upon arrival at the legendary locale, we found it gated off and surrounded by security. The occasion was National Youth Day or something of the sort; the general populous was barred from the Square and some groups of kids could be seen ambling about inside. We wandered about the exterior, snapping picks and discussing the historical significance.
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An example of the surveillance at the Square-- yikes! |
Admittedly, I'd looked forward to confronting Mike about the controversial place, but unfortunately the opportunity didn't present itself.
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Bike Culture in Beijing |
W E S W A M T H R O U G H more traffic on foot, bike, moped, or auto, and emerged at the famous
Forbidden City which, unlike the Square, was very much open. In fact, it was hard to move through most of the massive complex due to all the crowding!
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The Forbidden City |
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A view of the crowd-- look through the arch!! |
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The spectacle was often outside the throne rooms rather than inside, as people swarmed to snap blurry pics of old furniture |
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A view into one of the numerous throne rooms |
Again, I was blown away by scale-- so many people, such a massive facility, so many gates and bricks and buildings. It was truly humbling and overwhelming! There was a 200+ ton sculpture here, a giant golden cauldron there, more throne rooms than one can shake a stick at, and, according to Mike, 15 layers of brick beneath our feet to soothe the nerves of paranoid emperors who feared attack from below.
I wandered the length of the city and then took a stroll through an incredible rock garden filled with rare rocks found only along the ocean and back-breakingly transported here to the capital. Towards the end, a gentleman approached me and began scribbling on a plate. I could tell where this was going and felt guilty already that I had no money to give this street artist, but at the same time I hadn't exactly commissioned this work. I couldn't carry a fragile plate with me on my travels! After trying to sell me the plate and quickly giving up in frustration, he smeared the plate clean and walked off to his next potential customer-- it had been a dry-erase marker anyway! I was able to snap a quick picture of it...
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The artist and his masterpiece! |
T H E
T E M P L E O F H E A V E N is another attraction in the heart of Beijing. Here, Taoists historically worshiped the heavens and prayed for good harvests.
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The gate to the Temple of Heaven |
A F T E R A N O T H E R M E A L at a suspiciously touristy buffet, we headed to the Hongquiao Pearl Market for some shopping, followed by the Jia Sha Theatre for an incredible acrobatics performance--they got
five motorcycles going in one giant steel ball! I was a bit frustrated with how touristy our visit to Beijing had been, but I knew that a hard week of rigorous studying was ahead of us when we got back to Korea, so I tried to accept this leg of the trip as a brief vacation before the real work began. It was, after all, an incredible experience, even if I didn't feel as academically engaged.
That night, filled with more free time than we knew what to do with, we decided to take advantage of our opportunity to hit the town. It was odd that we spent more time in a taxi getting to the central bar district than we did getting to any of the historical sites we visited during the day, as if China's history was just a stone's throw away and its urban modernity some external addition. I had a blast that night-- drinks are
incredibly cheap in China, and bars are flashy, fun, and ubiquitous. Strangely enough, we ended up running into some other UGA students on a separate study abroad in a bar that night, as well as a host of other Americans and tourists such as ourselves. We even ended up
Calling the Dawgs (forgive the quality) in a bar-- in Beijing, over 7,000 miles away from UGA!
I ended up getting bored hanging out with Americans-- I can do that in America!-- and venturing off on my own, which was fun, but a
terrible idea, because I so nearly got deserted without enough money to catch a cab
or any emergency numbers
or the address of our hotel. I would have been ruined, too, had it not been for the keen eyes of my groupmates, who somehow picked me out of the crowd as they were driving by and convinced their taxi driver to stop and let me in. Had I been a second later, I would have been stranded. Talk about a close call! What a dramatic way to end a night.
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i would love to hear any thoughts, comments, questions, concerns, or feedback of any form or fashion you may feel inspired to leave me.
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i e b
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내가 어떤 생각, 의견, 질문, 문제, 또는 당신이 날 떠나 영감을 느낄 수있는 양식이나 패션의 의견을 듣고 싶어요.
진심으로 당신,
이사야