If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao...

My bad; we weren't supposed to go to the Wall Saturday, instead it was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City tour day!

First we drove to the center of Beijing to the Square. It's absolutely CRAZY how large that place is! I can't even imagine the number of people it would take to fill it, and imaging it full of tanks and soldiers and rioters was terrifying. It was really peaceful when we were there though. just lots and lots of tour groups. Claudia, our tour guide, told us that in the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, Mao's body is preserved and people line up forever just to pass by Mao's body. Kind of creepy, but pretty cool as well. There was an Olympic countdown clock, just like everywhere else, but everything else was amazing. The portrait of Mao was huge. You could see it all the way across the square, and seeing it in relation to people walking on the balcony was phenomenal, because you can't realize how large the picture is until you get some perspective. Katie and I kept humming parts of "Revolution" by the Beatles because it talks about Chairman Mao. It's amazing how Mao was in reality a detriment to the country in as many ways as he was a benefit, but the Chinese worship him. He's on every piece of paper currency but two denominations, and everything everywhere is about him. Amazing.

We toured the Forbidden City after the Square. The buildings just keep going and going and going! It's ridiculous how many buildings there are, and what they were used for. There are three halls that were used just for preparation of the Emperor for ceremonies. He got dressed in the first one, walked twenty yards to the next one to rest after getting ready, and walked twenty yards to the last one for the actual ceremony. If you get tired walking 60 feet, I think they should've added a royal gym to the complex. The workmanship was worth all those buildings, though. The whole city is under restoration right now, so some of the buildings are newly repainted and very vibrant. Even the ones that aren't are spectacular, though. The one bad thing about the restoration, according to Claudia, was the Manchurian writing along the molding. Since only about 100 people in the entirety of Chia speak Manchurian anymore, the workers didn't know any of the language and just didn't redo it, so the Manchurian is lost. Some of the traditions about the city are so strange; there's a big red box in one hallway and a row of knobs on a certain door that are supposed to be good luck if you touch them. People were pushing everyone to get to these things, and taking pictures of their hands touching them. It was very bizarre, especially because we couldn't find any information about either object. As we were walking out of the back gate, one of the many many vendors came up to Alex and tried to get him to buy a Rolex. Being the master haggler that he is, Alex managed to get him from 180 yen down to 30 yen for the watch, but still walked away without buying the watch!

After our tour, Connie and Vivian, our Chinese guides throughout the trip, took us to a restaurant and shopping center. We had the traditional meal with the lazy susan again with even different food than we've previously had. The strangest thing was rice noodles, which the kids made me try first. Even though Alex made fun of me for having trouble with the chopsticks, the noodles turned out to be good, despite having a weird slimy texture, sort of like jello but nowhere near as sweet. Vivian told us the tea this time was jasmine tea, which is why it smelled so good. Then it was time for shopping! Katie, Christy, Kayla, Jenna, and I wandered around this huge outdoor shopping center (sort of like Pearl St in Boulder, CO) for a few hour, finding gifts for people and just looking around. Kara was right though, the constant haggling and the aggressive salespeople get REALLY old really quickly. I got some fun stuff though, and we saw a mall that was 8 stories of stores! The stores were a lot of high-class American stores in the mall, but outside of that it was more like what you'd expect to see at a Chinese market. When we met up with everyone later, we found that Alex and Josh were completely Mao-ed out...shirts, hats, and waving Mao watches. Amazing. When we came back to campus, we all napped for a little while and then just hung out on campus and at one of the local bars.

I'll finish my updating later, time for the next company visit!