Jade, a Great Wall, a Forbidden City, and a rickshaw ride

This is Lora providing some more details about Tuesday.

We went to the jade factory. We walked in and got to see a guy carving designs in into a jade rock and making it into a small statue. Did you know that there are 36 colors of jade and 1,200 different kinds of jade. The first jade was used 7,000 years ago. Hard jade is used for jewelry and soft jade is used for carving. We were also taught to differentiate between fake and real jade. Fake is real, has bubbles. Real jade is cloudy in the light. The finer and higher quality jade has a higher pitched ring when you tap on it. Real jade is really expensive too so if it's really cheap then it's probably fake.

We walked in the store and there were massive jade carvings for sale and on display, two or three times bigger than me, and they had the most intricate details too. Shanae, Cami, and Lynea bought something but I decided not to because everything I wanted was at least 300 yuan.

Juyong Pass of the Great Wall

We left and went to Juyong Pass of the Great Wall. The Great Wall should be renamed as the Great Path of Stairs. There are soooo many stairs. And they're uneven and steep too so you don't get any relief on the way down. In fact, it's easier to go up than down in my opinion. Mom, Dad and I only hiked up past two tours and then we went back down to look at the art and souvenirs. We got key chains that say we climbed the Great Wall. Shanae, Cami and Lynea hiked past three towers and came down later while I was watching a guy paint amazing pictures with just his hands. I bought a beautiful painting of the mountains and the great wall.

After, we went for lunch at a restaurant in a cloisonné factory. We watched the process of making a cloisonné vase. The detail and art is very intricate because each vase is hand designed and hand painted. It's a tedious process but they turn out beautiful in the end. The vases are very expensive too and rightfully so. We didn't buy anything there sadly. We'd only be able to afford the smallest cloisonné vases anyway.

There were humongous vases too, bigger than me and maybe even bigger than the large jade statues we saw.

After that, we drove to a tea shop and watched a tea ceremony. We didn't drink any but I would have liked to taste the non-caffeinated ones. There were a lot of different and interesting types. One was a shell of leaves that were tightly wrapped around a flower and when you added hot water the leaves unwrapped and the flower bloomed in the cup. There was another dessert tea that had different dried fruit. It smelled sweet and didn't have caffeine either because there were no leaves. We bought a small container of dried roses to try at the hotel. My sisters didn't like it that much but I didn't think it was that bad if you just added some sugar.

After the tea ceremony we hung out at the hotel. We tried to find a supermarket like three times and it turned out to be right around the corner of the hotel. Then we bought sprite, noodles and yogurt and ate dinner and went to bed. My mom wishes we had better instant noodles in America like the ones here. And... That was our day!

Wednesday went first to Tianemen square. The history is so interesting and everywhere they a have beautiful statues and flowers and plants. There were some beautiful columns mace of patterns of red and green plants. The chinese talk of the long history of tianemen square with no mention of the tragedy we associate with it. They a also seem to revere Mao so much...surprising that the advances made during his control seem to outweigh the terrible things suffered then.

Traditional curved roof building - Emperor's inner palace at Forbidden City

Next we went to the Forbidden city, which was in unbelievable!! It is the home of the emperor built in 1420. It is so ornate and huge. We walked through courtyard after courtyard thinking as we went through the gates to leave we were finished to find yet another courtyard. A couple of amazing facts: only the emperors closest family were allowed to be there. It is called the forbidden city because no one could be there without permission or they would be killed. There are enough rooms(counting very small spaces as rooms) that the emperor could spend the night in a different room each night and it would take him 23 years. also he was so fearful of being attacked the huge stone courtyards are made from 15 layers of bricks layer in different dirt toons on each layer. Totally amazing place !

Sharolyn and Warren in Hutong Village

After this we had a really fun experience. We were driven in rickshaws ago the Hutong district, which is a very old part of Beijing the government has set aside to preserve the old ways of life for the culture. The ancient courtyards used to be home to a single family. When the communists came into power They moved 5 more families into each courtyard. Today there are approximately 800 of these courtyards, making about 10,000 people living in the small spaces. The village streets are very narrow and winding so it is peaceful from the traffic and the people who live there have a very close feeling of community. We ate a traditional meal in one of the houses which was delicious. Even as old and humble as these a little houses were, they had televisions with surround sound, etc.

Shanae and Lora at Hutong Village

Lynea and Cami at Hutong Village