Day One: Beijing

So after travelling all day, I got in last night at about 5pm.  The flight was uneventful, and I even had an empty seat next to me. By the time I got to my room, unpacked a bit and ate the complimentary fruit they left (the BEST asian pear, and a bannna), I was ready for bed at about 8 PM. Ambien helped make that bedtime, no matter what my internal clock said, and I slept 10 hours straight.

Before I start giving you details of the trip, let me give you some background: The trip is being sponsored by the Bryn Mawr College Alumnae Travel Program. These trips always have some kind of educational or scholarly bent, and the groups usually have a faculty guide. This one is titled "Vanishing China: Ancient Traditions and Natural Wonders". Our trip is being led by June Mei, a Bryn Mawr alum, who while not on the faculty, is a very distinguished cultural and language interpreter for political and business leaders throughout the world. She is Cantonese by heritage, but was born in the US, lives in New York and speaks fluent Mandarin. I am beginning with the optional pre-tour extension, 4 days in Beijing seeing local sights, along with 10 others. The remaining 20 of the group will join us on Day 4 for the trip proper. 

So here begins my account of my actual China Travels:

The Beijing Grand Hotel is very close to Tiananmen Square, so there are older buildings mixed in with all the new construuction. Here's part of what I can see through my window.

This morning I had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Typical mixed Asian and Western breakfast buffet: cereal, fruit, eggs as well as congee, fermented, pickeled and shredded things, and lots of variously filled dumplings. I went for congee and fruit. 

  

We then met in the lobby, and boarded the bus with our "national guide" Wendy. She will be with us for the remainder of the tour, and we will pick up local guides in each region after leaving Beijing, of which she is a native. Her English is perfect, her sense of humor wonderful, and her knowledge of a variety of things seems nearly encyclopedic. (I heard her go on at length about pearls while eating lunch, and now know more than I though possible about the industry.) Whenever she leads us through crowded streets she holds a yellow panda-shaped umbrella, complete with ears, well above her head so we can always see her. 

Our first stop was the Drum Tower and the Clock Tower, ancient Imperial structures that used to be amongg the city's tallest structures. No more with all the sky scraper. After climbing 70 of the steepest stairs I've ever met, we were treated to a drum performance very much like the one that was part of the Olympic opening ceromonies, but on a much tinier scale (5 drummers). 

After coming down the same stairs,

 we were taken to a tea house on the ground floor of the Bell Tower, and sampled a variety of tea blends, all completely unlike anything I've had in the States. They were all, of course, available for purchase at the convenient gift shop adjoining.....

   

Next stop was reached by a fleet of pedicabs, which swept us off to llunch at the home of a family in one of the remaining "hutong" neighborhoods. 

These are the old alleyways lined by courtyard homes, traditionally inhabited by multigenerational families who were artisans working for the imperial court and other nobelmen. After the revolution these were taken by the government, broken up into multiple small dwellings, and built onto willy-nilly. With more recent development many of these areas have been razed to build modern high rises. 

The family we dined with has made arrangements with tour agencies to serve lunch to groups of tourists 3 days a week. We had a home cooked meal of wonderful dishes, including lotus root, pork meatballs with cucumber, shredded greens with chicken and delicious little dumplings. 

  

Then the neice of the cook told us that before the revolution her family owned the whole house. Now her aunt lives in 3 rooms in what used to be the northeast corner of the complex. She only got this portion back from the governement a few years ago. 

(That's Wendy, our guide, on the right, holding a model of the original courtyard home.)

Here's the postage stamp sized kitchen that all the dishes were cooked in, along with the smiling cook and owner of the home:

After lunch we went the Temple of Heaven, a site of several holy places the Emporer used to pray for good harvests and other good fortune. 

More interesting than the buildings was the park that surrounds them. There were crowds of retired people playing cards and selling hand crocheted hats (really! they were busily crocheting when not asking you to buy a hat!) on every stone step or wall. 

One the way home we stopped at a pearl market. Let me tell you, those jewelry sales girls give a whole new meaning to hard sell. And I ended up with a pair of earrings. Sigh. I'm just glad they weren't selling boats. 

Dinner was at a fancy, clearly for tourists, Peking Duck restaurant. (This was the first appearance of what turned out to be ubiquitous enormous glass lazy susans on nearly every restaurant table we encountered.) Though there were many dishes, I have to say I enjoyed the home cooked lunch more.

So far Bejing seems to be an odd combination of brand new cars, haphazard destruction of the old, endless selling of cheap (and not so cheap) goods, and people enjoying themselves in groups in public spaces. It's very cold and clear, none of the fabled air pollution in evidence. 

My fellow travellers are all somewhat older than me, with the exception of one or two. This is evidenced mostly in a total lack of comfort with the technologic advances of modern life. (With the exception of one or two who are incessantly texting.) Most do not own smart phones, some don't understand wi-fi, or foreign funds withdrawal from ATM's. None is blogging, and few are even photographing anything. But all are excellent conversationalists, and some have travelled widely.  At the end of Day One, it promises to be an interesting trip.