An incredible educational experience in China’s capital city November 2011
Beijing Through the eyes of a Child
Exploring Beijing with ChinaSpree
Experiencing the other side of the world for a week
China, here I come! My name is Danny, and I’m 11. A few months ago, my mom asked if I would like to visit China! Her friend Julie had just booked this trip with China Spree and was looking for friends who would be willing to tag along with her 7-year-old son Reave, and her parents. I didn’t have to think about it very much — Dang, yeah! My Uncle Mark was worried China Spree was a scam. “How can they give you a flight, hotel, and all those tours for so little?” So mom checked them out and here we are!
Tuesday, Nov 22, 2011 Today is our travel day! We drove from Huntington, Long Island to New York’s largest airport called JFK. We checked in with China Air, weighed our bags, made it through security, then jumped into a ginormous airplane. The bird was 2 stories, and had 10 seats in every row. We only had to go 6,828 miles to Beijing—dang! We flew over the North Pole to get to China, and we skipped 13 hours because it’s 9 p.m. Tuesday in Florida, and 10 a.m. Wednesday in Beijing!
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Toasting to our first night in Beijing
After 13 grueling long hours on the plane, we finally landed in Beijing. Before we picked up our luggage, we had to walk through an area that checked everyone’s temperature to make sure nobody was bring a fever with them into China. They checked our passports before we got our bags, then we met our tour guide. It was 7:30 pm when the bus took us to our hotel—Traders Hotel. Wow, there is a lot of traffic in Beijing! Our hotel is very fancy. We ate our first dinner in Beijing at a restaurant underneath our hotel in a mall. I had soup with something that I couldn’t identify, but it tasted good. I never thought a bed could look so good.
Wednesday, Nov 23
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Thursday, Nov. 24
Happy Thanksgiving world! I woke up at 2 am this morning feeling wide awake! Mom was awake too, and we turned on the TV to see a fish tank with music. Four hours later, the breakfast buffet opened. You should see the breakfast they give you each morning! Dang! They had every breakfast food and juice imaginable. I ate more than a lot!
Mom, Reave, Jill, Julie, Terry
You could get eggs any way you wanted!
Elevator to the 80th floor
This was the view from the top!
After breakfast, Mom, Julie, Reave and I went across the street from our hotel to the tallest building in Beijing, China’s World Trade Center. It has 101 floors and we took the elevator up to the 80th floor. There was a fancy restaurant up there and we got some hot chocolate. We could see lots of buildings through the smog, but not very clearly. 4
Tiananmen Square
«««« Squatty Potty
Our tour guide, George
The bus was waiting for us with George, our Chinese tour guide at 9 am. Tiananmen Square was our first stop. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world and can hold a million people. There are communist monuments and Chairman Mao’s tomb. It’s the “front yard” of the Forbidden City, where the emperors lived. When I got off the bus, some random Chinese woman grabbed me and Reave to take a picture of us with her kids. It’s a good thing George warned us that people here would want pictures of us with them because we look so different. George made sure the group knew where we could use the bathroom, and warned us about squatty potties with no toilet paper. The bathrooms were starrated and we got to visit a 4-star bathroom first. There were a lot of venders on the streets and in Tiananmen Square. I learned fast that if you show some interest in what they are selling, they will not leave you alone until you buy something! They were selling some hats, and it was cold! So I asked one vender how much. That was it, she didn’t leave me alone. I ended up buying a Beijing hat from another vender for 5 Yuan.
George taught us lots of history
Like my Beijing hat?
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The Forbidden City We walked through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, under a giant picture of Chairman Mao into the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City has 9,999 rooms where 24 emperors lived for 500 years. It was huge and had many, many, many, courtyards with lots of traditional Chinese buildings that made up the palace. George said the last emperor ruled until 1911 here. There was a really cool garden made up of these really weird giant rocks. The emperor had many girlfriends and many servants. If you were a man working in the forbidden city, you had to cut off your private parts to be allowed to work there—Dang!!
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Hutongs The bus was ready to take us to some small alleys in a Chinese neighborhood called Hutongs. George said the best way to see them is to go by rickshaw. I felt bad for the poor skinny Chinese guy who lugged my mom and me through the streets for 20 Yuan ($3)! At one point, 2 men had to help him peddle us over a small bridge. He couldn’t speak much English. He followed lots of other rickshaws to a house where they made us lunch. The food was ok. Lots of different dishes with lots of sauces and rice. Everyone ate with chopsticks. The rickshaw took me and mom back to the bus. I was really tired when we got back to the hotel around 4:30 pm.
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Birds Nest Water Cube
Friday, Nov. 25
We started our day out going to the birds nest. That is where the Olympics were in 2008. It was really cold, but that didn’t stop the venders from trying to sell us kites, and Olympic medals. We saw the Water Cube where they had all the swimming events.
After a 4-star bathroom stop, we rode the bus to a Jade factory. We saw many jade sculptures and jewelry. I even bought a baby dragon necklace made of green jade.
It’s goodluck to rub the belly of a happy Buddha!
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Ming Tombs The Ming Tombs were next. The Ming dynasty emperors (1368-1644) believed this was the best burial place with mountains on 3 sides that would keep the evil spirits out. We walked down the “Main Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs� that had lots of animal and warrior statues.
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We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant where we all got our own pots to cook for ourselves. I had fun mixing pieces of goose, vegetables, eggs, and tofu in the boiling pot. I’m getting good at using chopsticks!
We cooked our goose!
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The Great Wall After lunch, we drove up to the mountains to the Great Wall of China! There was a lot of traffic, and it seemed to take forever to get there. George said the wall was started in the 5th century BC to keep out foreigners, but it didn’t work very well. It’s been worked on for 100s of years.
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When we got there, I ran up part of it. It was tiring and I had to help my mom up some steep parts. Even though I almost died from exhaustion on the wall, it felt awesome to be there. The Great Wall of China was very beautiful and very cold! I only ran a part of it because the thing is like 3,000 miles
long. George, our tour guide says that a lot of people died making the wall. When they died, their bodies were used as filling. So we were stepping on top of a burial site! It was dark by the time we left the Wall on the bus. I slept part of the hour ride back to the hotel.
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Saturday, Nov. 26 Today we had a busy day! After breakfast, we took a bus to the Temple of Heaven. George said it was the biggest temple complex in China! Through the gates was a park. The park had many seniors doing activities. We saw line dancing, ballroom dancing, singing, hacky sacking, whips, stretching, working out, and lots of game playing. They were all there because they could get in for free. Old people were kind of encouraged to go in the park.
We walked further and saw many Chinese old style temples and architecture. George said that the temples were for sacrifices to heaven. We walked through more and more Chinese architecture and found a huge temple. At the top was an open square and a little pedestal that the Chinese people would stand on to pray. I got to stand on it by pushing my way through a crowd. 14
Back on the bus, and we were off to a silk factory. They showed us how silk is made. They basically have a special worm spit out silk making a cocoon. They boil the cocoon killing the worm, and use the thread to weave silk carpets, clothes and accessories. The silk—really worm spit—made some super soft material that felt really nice, like under armor. It is also really strong. They even made bullet proof vests with it! Of course they let us shop, but mom, being a cheapo, didn’t buy anything.
Summer Palace
The bus took us next to the Summer Palace. This was the vacation spot for the emperor’s family. We had a nice little stroll through the palace. There was more Chinese architecture then I would have ever seen. The palace was next to a ginormous man-made lake. The “Dragon Lady” (Empress Dowager Cixi) was a very powerful emperess. She used the money that was supposed to go to making the military strong, to build a marble boat. She trained the navy in the lake which wasn’t very smart since much of it was only 5 feet deep!
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Chinese Acrobats At the end of the day we went back to our hotel to get ready for the acrobatic show. After dinner at another Chinese restaurant, we saw some amazing stuff at the show. One guy held two people on his arms as they did handstands. Then another guy pulled out this motorcycle ball, which 5 motorcycles drove in at the same time—dang!
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Sunday, Nov. 27 Today we went and saw pandas at the Beijing Zoo! They looked so cute. Even though most of them were sleeping, or trying to go back inside. George said the government treats the pandas better than the people! I can see why because they are so cute. Not cuddly though, because they could rip you to shreds! I saw one of the pandas eating bamboo.
Pandas!
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When we were finished we took a taxi to a silk market. It was way to crowded there because of all the venders. They would all scream out prices and the shoppers would all scream out lower prices. I felt claustrophobic, so I left and me and mom walked back to the hotel. We saw that the ice skating rink was open in the shopping mall below our hotel, so I ice skated until the end of the day. I got back to my room and passed out. My body is still not used to the time change.
Silk Market chaos
The Silk Market 18
Monday, Nov. 28 It’s our last full day in Beijing and we started out with our usual big breakfast. We didn’t have any tours planned today, so while mom went back to that very busy silk market, I went back to the ice skating rink. There wasn’t nearly as many people there this morning! Yesterday, I forgot that we aren’t supposed to drink from our hotel faucets, and rinsed my toothbrush in the tap water. I paid for that mistake this morning, but at least I found a regular toilet, and didn’t have to squat. After a lunch at Subway next to the ice skating rink, we went for a walk through some typical streets of Beijing. We saw a market where they were selling chicken feet and some unidentifiable things. We found a cafe and had some hot chocolate and checked out the paper!
Tonight’s Legend of Kung Fu was a pretty incredible show! There were all these Kung Fu bald guys with funny eyebrows who could do some incredible acrobatic moves. It told the story of a Kung Fu master. We had to take a taxi to the show, and by the time we got back to the hotel, I was ready to pass out again.
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011 It’s travel day today. We had our last big buffet breakfast this morning before putting our suitcases on the bus for the airport. I’m not looking forward to the 13 hour plane ride back to New York.
Yawn. We made it. We are back on Long Island. The plane left Beijing at 1:00 pm today, and landed in New York at 1:30 pm today. It’s kind of like going back in time! By the time we got back to the
house we are staying at, it was 4 pm and I’m going to bed. Tomorrow we fly back to Tampa. What a trip it’s been!!
Things We Heard and Noticed in Beijing “Kill 1 and you are considered a murderer; Kill millions, you can call yourself emperor.” —Chinese tour Guide George “At 7 years old, my son must be able to use chopsticks correctly. We Chinese don’t use forks.” —Tour Guide George “We have too many engineers in China! You should go home, grant them all visas and hire them in America—Please, take some of our people— We have too many!” —Tour Guide George China is the size of the United States, but has 1.3 billion people, versus 311 million in the US. Families can only have 1 child. If you have more than 1, you lose your government job if you have one, and get fined $12,000. This has caused an imbalance of men to women which will be an issue in the near future. The Media is very controlled by the government. Facebook is blocked; YOUtube is blocked. The main TV programming is considered “happy news.” Nothing ever bad happens according to the official News programs. Smog in Beijing: In the mornings is a hint of blue sky, but afternoons look overcast because of smog. China burns a type of coal that causes the heaviest pollution for electric power. Chinese like to spit! But the streets and all public places are very clean. As George says, China has a lot of “slave labor.” 20
Chinese money is called Yuan. 1Yuan = $0.16; $1 = 6.2 Yuan. Chairman Mao’s picture is on all currency. We were warned to make sure you see Mao’s face on change when shopping. Chairman Mao is a national hero considered the founder of the current Republic of China. He is well respected in China, regardless of his mistakes. Christmas trees and decorations are all over, but Chinese are not Christian. China has a 13-hour time difference which makes your body confused as to when to sleep and eat! Drivers have a different sense of space between cars—sometimes about 6 inches! Very few people in Beijing speak English. Lots of different style buildings unusually shaped. With the money saved from the cheap labor, it is spent on architecture plans. Dragon is the sign of the emperor; Phoenix is the sign for the empress. “9” was the symbolic number for the emperor. The forbidden city had 9,999 rooms. At birth, Chinese are classified as “Agricultural” or not. Each “agricultural” person is given a small plot of land to farm. Not large enough to make a living off of. It is more desirable to live in the city.