China

As I said in the previous post, our other trip with Nana was to Beijing, China. It was a very enlightening experience. I had some misconceptions about life in China. I always thought of it as an extremely opressive and depressing place where no one laughed or had any freedom whatsoever. I assumed the people there would be so miserable that they would be ready to make a mad dash for the border whenever they got the chance. However, they appeared to be happy and somewhat friendly; moving freely about their business. They are definitely MUCH more westernized than I had imagined. Nice modern cars, infrastructure, clothing, etc.
Regardless of my recently discovered misconceptions I am not thinking of packing my bags, changing my name to Su Ling and heading east. The people might be friendly but life in China is still not ideal. You probably know that Chinese families are only authorized one child, but did you know they are also limited to one pet and one car? And, if you own a house you don't own the property under the house. Like the sun? Don't move to Beijing. They rarely see the sun because of the thick smog--which the government insists is just fog.

The following tourist spots were among the places we visited. Tian' anmen Square (Gate of Heavenly Peace), built in 1420, was as the south gate to the imperial city. It is the largest city square in the world. The Forbidden City, built from 1407 until 1420, contains 9,000 rooms. Twenty four emporers lived and reigned there over a period of 5 centuries. The Summer Palace-- covering 3.2 million square yards, it is mainly formed by a man-made lake and beautiful imperial gardens. Olympic Village, site of the 2008 Olympics, duh. Last but not least, The Great Wall (my personal fav). It is 4,120 miles long and was constructed by hand from the 7th century BC through the 17th century AD.

Another tidbit... I was not aware of how many inventions came from China until reading a few brochures during the trip. This is an imcomplete list of things: belt drives, blast furnaces, cast iron, firearms, fireworks, gun powder, the horse collar, the kite, land mines, the lottery , noodles, paper, toilet paper, the rudder, stirrups, toothbrush, wigs, the wheelbarrow and many more.

After returning home from our whirl-hind trip we decided to have a discussion with T and K about what we had seen and experienced in China. Afterall, it is one of the most ancient and historical areas of the world. One should commit the experience to memory. Cement the info into ones mind. Build ones intellect. You know, decide what interesting things you'll tell your friends in years to come.

So, we asked them what their favorite part of the trip was. Was it the Great Wall? The Palaces? The beautiful architecture? The cool Chinese acrobat show?
Nope. The pool. What more can I say...