On Sunday, we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City--the Emperors' and Empress' Palace. The weather was very cold and windy, so we were freezing. Plus, there were crowds of people visiting these famous tourist attractions, so it was not the best of circumstances; however, the Forbidden City was beautiful. It really was interesting to see such old and exquisitely decorated buildings still standing. Our guide told us that Forbidden City was built in the 1400s. It was incredible to think the Chinese had the ability to build such elaborate buildings that could last for so many hundreds, thousands of years. I was thinking that this was being built even before Columbus sailed to America. Pretty neat! Our guide told us many interesting stories about the emperors and empresses. My favorite part was the empress' building which was pink! I was laughing that even the females back then loved the color pink. Ruthie would have loved this palace! I also really liked the gardens behind the palace. The Chinese brought in these neat rocks that they stacked and made into caves to decorate the garden and to use as rooms. There were also many huge copper pots surrounding the palace area, which our guide told us they discovered and learned that they were filled with water to keep the wood palace from burning down. It was supposed to "protect" the building-but really it was just water to use in case there was a fire.:)
We REALLY had a great time at Beihai Park. This park was built right after the "new China" came into being with Chairman Mao. This is a beautiful park with a lake in the middle where the elderly people of China go each morning to exercise. They do Tai Chi, ribbon dancing, Chinese yo-yo, western-style dancing, singing and more. The people were so generous and nice. They wanted to know all about where we were from and why we had a Chinese boy with us. One elderly man had a silk dragonfly attached to a fishing pole and was flying it around. He told Levi and another little girl that if they sang loudly enough the dragonfly would come down and let the kids touch it. Levi started singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" in Chinese. It was so cute to see him running around chasing the dragonfly and singing. Of course, this drew quite a crowd of people who asked many questions to our guide about us and about Xiaolei. One girl even kept taking pictures of Xiaolei and us. Our guide, Michelle told Levi he as a superstar!
Xiaolei and I really liked watching the women doing the ribbon dancing. It was beautiful! So, of course we joined in. Rich didn't want to join us, so he took pictures. :) Ribbon dancing is not as "manly" as climbing the Great Wall! Ha! (That's another blog entry.... ha!) It was very good exercise for the arms and really difficult to keep the ribbons off the ground. We had such a great time!
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