Forbidden City
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2005
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3
20
Trip End
Jan 15, 2006
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Beijing,
China
Thursday, December 29, 2005
Forbidden City
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After a breakfast of croissant & coffee & after an hour of swimming out at the hotel gym, we went to the Forbidden City. Amazing palace. HUGE place. From a distance the palace is not all that impressive however up close, the intricacies of the carvings & craftsmanship makes the palace that much more impressive. The emperor & his "mandate of heaven" allowed him to mobilize 1,000's of laborers to build the palace. The most absurd was the 200 ton marble carving of 9-dragons. That took 20,000 men 1 month to move that slab to the palace. What is more intriguing was the way they did it; the laborers would freeze ditches full of water as to be able to slide the gigantic slab to the palace. Other interesting tidbits are stories about the emperor who died after an orgy w/his concubines & the other emperor who had 29 sons, but only 1 son w/the empress. How did this emperor choose a successor? By drawing a name randomly!
Hutongs
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Leaving the palace we went on a walking tour of the local Hutongs. The Hutongs were essentially the old remnants of the Beijing common households. The essentially consisted of large courtyards & tiny rooms split by many different families. There are no bathrooms per house rather that there are communal toilets shared by the different Hutongs. The Hutongs are more of what I had imagined Beijing to be rather than the large skyscrapers we see today.
Dongcheng
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After the Hutongs we just followed the walking tour to the Dongcheng area. We had lunch at the Passby Bar. Nice cheap eats. The mutton pizza was tasty but a bit gamey for pizza. The pepper beef was nice & spicy & very tasty. Total cost? $12 including 2 beers. MHH from last night was good but not $60a person good.
We next went to the neighborhood foot massage place. $6 for a 1 hour Chinese acupressure type massage. How can you beat that price? Supposedly the massage on the foot could help positively stimulate various internal organs. The 2 young people giving us the massage was trying to explain but I guess the gist of it was it all was that it had something to do w/the body's "chi". Regardless, after a hard long walk though Beijing, the rest & massage was well worth it.
Quanjuede: Duck House
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For dinner, we ate at Beijing's most famous Peking duck house. Essentially all meals there were some sort of duck based dish. We ordered 1/2 Peking duck w/ all of the dressing. Very tasty & very cheap with dinner being ~$25.
Comments
new jack city
yo oliver.
nothing like getting jacked by some jackasses in beijing. i was led about a mile to a bar in beijing's hotel district by a runner, fed drinks, and karaoked with several women, and was specifically noted that the beer and singing was priced cheap. beer and song were about $2 US each, so i thought 'cheap night' until i got the tab: $200 US!! the drinks and songs were about $40 bucks but $160 was for 'hosting' time. i yelled and screamed and got out of there for about $80 US, not causing too much trouble.....
beijing: new jack city!