Doubletree by Hilton Beijing

... with 56 pillars, symbolizing the different ethnic groups living in China. There was also a portrait of Sun Yat-Sen located in the middle of the Square, in front of Mao's Mausoleum. Opposite Tiananmen Square there is the Gate of Heavenly Peace which marks the entrance to the Forbidden City. The gate is decorated with a Portrait of Mao.<br><br>Our next visit was the Forbidden City which we entered through the Gate of Heavenly Peace.<br>Like the Great Wall, the Forbidden City is now a ...

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... us become imersed in Chinese culture. It was also nice for this trip to have a small group, since the point of it, though it was a tourist trip, was to try to get off the beaten path and not be such tourists, at least a bit. It was so fun. Friday was technically the last day of our "tour" but there were no planned activities and we didn't see Frank, we just got to stay in the nice hotel one more night. The group decided to stay together for ...

... Palace's central area, which is several buildings on a very steep slope called Longevity Hill. Near the summit of this is a tall building called the Buddhist Fragrance Pavilion which housed a 5m statue, from here we also got some great views back across the lake. Onwards and upwards to another building which had some wooden statues inside and used to contain many other smaller statues that apparently the English and French destroyed. As ...

... prospective world power that was supposed to open up to the rest of the world. But these Games were more about spikes and poles and goggles. China was exposed to international scrutiny of its social interactions at levels that upset the ruling Communist Party. There was no more stark illustration of this than the opening ceremony, when a seven-year-old Chinese girl singing an Ode To The Motherland was replaced at the last minute by another singer, cute as a ...

... s coming-out party. But that all went out the window with the Tibet riots of March 14 and its aftershocks. Now each unit at the command centre - the Public Security Bureau, the Paramilitary Police, the People's Liberation Army and the main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security - is focused on "stability" at the expense of almost all else. At the start of this month the command centre's 100,000 police, troops and intelligence officials were instructed to work ...

... way we look stand out a bit! Everybody is also very nice in China..very friendly..and they have a wicked sense of humour here..shame it all goes tits up when you have to queue to get in somewhere..they don't queue..so we are off to the bar and then bed..after we have sharpened our elbows to make it through the throngs tomorrow! Will add photos when we have done something interesting..think we will try to go to the Olympic stadium tomorrow! Lots and lots of love Laura (currently ...

... but nearly) as my own. A traditional brunch at Grandma's with Tash revived me, and the presentation went fine for the most part. I vagued out in the middle of one question but managed to cover it. That night we met up with some friends living out of Beijing who came for the weekend and I surreptitiously didn't drink. Sunday was a quiet breakfast in a trendy little Hutong we frequent frequently called Nanluoguxiang where they had their first 'Street Festival'. By ...

... didn't really like this place... it wasn't very pretty at all, and all i knew was random english captions they'd have posted. next our tour group went to qing hua da xue... tsing hua university, the harvard/yale of china, along with bei da, beijing university. this place also kinda sucked.... they pretty much dropped us off and said be back in half an hour. another awesome thing about our tour group is that they told us everything was ...

... time we've begun to develop friendships with some of our tour mates. They are a great bunch of people and I hope that we do keep in touch. Two of the couples we have met are from Australia, while the other couple are from the Greater Vancouver area. Our tour ends for us and we head back to our hotel. A few of our tour mates opt-in for a martial arts show that our tour provider has graciously arranged. James and I head up to ...