We started our second day with the Buffet in our hotel- A lovely combination of Chinese and western breakfast ideas. You could eat eggs and toast or noodles and vegetables. You choose!Anyway, we left the hotel at 8am to get to the Great Wall early.
JADE FACTORY
On our way to the Great Wall we stopped at the “Jade Factory” AKA live informercial and store. Little did we know this was to be our fate throughout our time in Beijing. ANYWAY, we got this unintelligible history of Jade in China and then were harangued to buy jade. While no one in our group bought anything we did get to heAr the difference between cheap and expensive jade bangles. Literally hear. When you chink them together the cheap one clinks and the expensive one chimes. Also we learned that Chinese love Jade. Women wear jade mostly on their left wrist because that’s closer to the heart and jade is good for circulation. Also we learned that jade is usually passed down through families. The jade absorbs things from the earth and therefore from people so it is best to pass it through families and not to wear a strangers jade.
ANYWAY, after our Jade infomercial (but don’t worry, we’re not jaded-ha!) we went off to the great wall.
GREAT WALL
We arrived at the great wall around 9.30 and were given two hours to wander about as we pleased. The section we visited is, essentially, a big circle. The part of the wall that we walked encircles a valley which housed troops and soldiers to protect Beijing from Mongolia, it’s one of the new sections of the wall. 400 years old-you know, still older than America. . Hiking the wall was so interesting. Maybe you know, but the wall travels along the tops of mountains so there’s a lot of stairs. And just to make it more fun, each step is a different height. They go from 4 inches to 2 feet. CRAZY! You couldn’t look anywhere other than the steps you were climbing or else you would fall. At times if felt like you were walking STRAIGHT UP! It was pretty cool.Otherwise the wall was, well, a wall. If we had more time and could have done the entire loop I think it would have been more amazing, but the section we were in didn’t really allow us to see the wall wandering away into the distance. It just looked like a circle filled (packed) with tourists. That’s not to say that it wasn’t remarkable. It was still remarkable.
VASE STORE
After the great wall we piled into the car to go to lunch. Lunch was on the second floor of a vase factory. You know those beautiful Asian vases that look like everything is outlined with metal paint? Those are the vases we saw and let me tell you the process is remarkable! So, you have the vase and then you glue on the detail that you want with copper wire so the design is raised up from the vase. And then you hand paint the detail, but because the copper wire is raised, you have to paint it up to 7 times so that the paint is level with the copper and then you fire it.Wow. I had no idea. I was so impressed. Anyway, when our infomercial was over we went upstairs for our buffet lunch. Delish. Nothing crazy or way out there- just good savory deliciousness.
SUMMER PALACE
When we finished with lunch we headed back into Beijing to visit the summer palace. The summer palace is where the emperor used to live in the summer. It was beautiful. There’s a750 meter covered walkway so during super sunny or super rainy days you can still walk outside.There’s a huge manmade lake and lots of green space. It was beautiful. The strangest thing we saw was this bizarre building, shaped like a boat and half in the water – made out of 100% marble. One of the empresses had it made for her 50th birthday. Oh to be that demanding.
PEARL STORE
After the summer palace we were brought to the pearl store. The talk beforehand was interesting. Many of the oysters come from the summer palace pond. She had us guess how many pearls would be inside. Wanna take a guess? Go ahead. Let me tell you it was the biggest oyster we could find in the tank. Ok. Done guessing? More than 20! Wow! Because they are in it to make a profit, obviously they force the oysters to make the pearls. How you ask? Well, they insert muscle from another oyster INTO one of the oysters they want to harvest. The foreign material annoys the oyster so they coat it. In a similar way that we make tears if something annoys our eyes. Anyway, the oyster coats the foreign material and that coating makes the pearl. Neato. We all got a small pearl as a consolation prize for guessing the wrong number.
KUNGFU SHOW
After pearls we went to dinner-back to the same restaurant of the first night- and then we went to a Kung-fu show! The show was about a little boy who joins a monastery (much to his chagrin) but then goes on to study King-fu and become a master! The audience was filled with foreigners. The show was actually in English with Mandarin subtitles. It was pretty fun.
At the end of the night we came back and collapsed into bed.
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