More Beijing Touring

Today we started off at Tian An Men square followed by the Forbidden City.  The square is a large open space.  At one end, there is Chairman Mao's mausoleum.  Each morning his body is raised up to floor level for viewing and in the afternoon it is lowered.  Thousands of people were waiting in line to see his body.  It has been here for 30 years, but Angela said it is well preserved.  We skipped that line!

In the square, they are making up huge flower displays for the Mid-Autumn festival which is the first week of October.  At the other end of the square is the entrance to the Forbidden City.  A large portrait of Chairman Mao hangs on the wall that is the entrance to the Forbidden City.  The Forbidden City has 9000 rooms.  We walked through the middle of the city, seeing the Throne room, the waiting room, recieving room and the Empress' chambers.  Angela explained that 9 is a number of good luck, so there were many representations of 9.  For example there are rows of 9 knobs on the entrance doors, if you rub them, you'll have good luck too.  I also learned how to tell the difference between the male and female lion statues.  The females have a cub under their left paw while the males have a ball (symbolizing power over the earth) under one of their paws.

Entrance to the Forbidden City from Tian An Men Square

Split pants, did you believe me?

The knobs have the paint worn off

Empress' bed chamber

Under the "hugging" trees

Squatty potty...I chose the western style toilet

Caleb has really taken to Angela

After all that walking, we headed to lunch.  Joshua requested duck again, and we also had deep fried green beans, noodles, sweet and sour pork, spicy beef, and Kung Pow chicken. 

After lunch, we headed to the old neighborhoods called hutongs.  We rode in a rickshaw to the hutong where we got to visit with a local family.  The hutongs were actually neighborhoods built at the same time as the Forbidden city.  The civil affairs officials lived in them. They are concrete buildings lining a main road.  You enter the house through a door on the road.  It opens to a courtyard.  Around the courtyard are the rooms.  In the north, the parents room and living room, in the south, the servants quarters (now families live in all the rooms).  To the east was the son's room and to the west was the daughter's room.  It was believed that the north was the best, south was the worst.  The east represented the rising sun, so it went to the sons who they felt held their future, while the west was the setting sun where the daughters stayed.

Ready to ride

In the hutong home courtyard

After the hutongs, we went to the Kung Fu show.  Very exciting with acrobatics, stunts, and KungFu demonstrations.  The boys were enthralled.  We at McD's for dinner as we were tired and wanted something to take back to the room.  We did some laundry in the room and are hopeful that it will dry by the morning.  We leave out early for a 7:40 flight to Nanchang.  We meet Anna tomorrow.  I pray that we are able to comfort her during this time of transition.  The boys are so excited to meet her, please pray that they are able to handle whatever comes our way tomorrow.