Sunday, November 8, 2009

Sunday morning we left the hotel at 7:30AM for the hour ride to the Great Wall. The day was again cool and foggy. We were driven to the Great Wall in a very comfortable Mercedes van. Along the way we stopped at a state-run “jade” store, which sold thousands of jade items. Once at the Great Wall we took pictures and walked along with many other thousands of people. While the weather was very cool and breezy, it was very comfortable walking. We left the Great Wall after one hour and had an early lunch on the way back to Beijing at a cloisonné factory and store, again with thousands of cloisonné items for sale. We retuned to Beijing around 1:00PM and had a tour of a Hutang Village on bicycle-type taxis. The Hutang Village was once a wealthy area of Beijing that evolved into a working class area…but because of its great location near the Forbidden City was now being renovated as an area for wealthy people. Next was a long walking tour of the Forbidden City, a huge complex of more than 9,000 rooms were the emperors’ once lived. We also took a brief walking tour of Tiananmen Square where were two huge television screens displayed. The both screens were at least 100 yards long and about 10 yards high and they were displaying a video of various scenic areas in China in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Peoples Republic of China which occurred during the first week of October. We ate dinner at a restaurant famous for the dish of Peking duck, which was the main entrée. Finally, before going back to the hotel we went shopping at the Silk Market, a crazy marketplace filled with thousands of vendors who were incredible experts at driving customers crazy with their bargaining skills. We bought quite a few items, but returned to the hotel exhausted.