After we went to the Great Wall, the next day we went to a different the Temple of Heaven. That was pretty interesting, I met a lady from Israel. The Temple of Heaven was a temple that the emperor visited to worship Shang Di, who is the god of China's original religion. Most Chinese don't worship Shang Di anymore, but a lot of them appreciate the religion of the past. The religion worships Shang Di, and then the five elements under his control. It was a very beautiful temple, but my camera died at the time, so I don't have very many pictures there. When we were done at the Temple of Heaven we went to the Pearl Market that was near by. They are really famous for having cheap pearls. The only thing that is annoying is that the sellers there are very aggressive about selling and they will actually drag you into their stores. So it's pretty exhausting to shop there.
The next day was Sunday, so we went to an international church. Went to dinner around the area where the Silk Market was (which as you can guess sells silk) and while we were at the restaurant we found an example of classic Chinese attitude towards foreigners. We were looking at the menu and we saw that it was pretty expensive, so we were thinking about leaving and instead we decided to stay. When we went to look for the waiter to make our order, we found a menu that was all in Chinese (though we could understand most of it) that had prices for Chinese that were about a third of the price. So we ordered from the Chinese menu, and made the waiter frustrated cause we wouldn't pay the foreigner price. After that we went to the Silk market and went shopping, but we didn't stay for long because it was just as exhausting as the pearl market.
On Monday we went to the Summer Palace, and I had to give a presentation for a homework assignment. Once again it was really cold, but even more so than any other day. Each person had a history assignment to give a presentation on a book that we read. My book was a touristy book about the Summer Palace so, unlike most everyone else, I had to give the presentation like a tour. It was actually a lot of fun, to finally see the thing that I had been reading about. The Summer Palace is the place that a lot of emperors and empresses stayed during the summers, and sometimes even ruled from there. It was built like a painting, with a lot of lines and balance, making it really beautiful scenery.
On Tuesday we checked out of our hotel and left for the Forbidden City before we got on the train for Shanghai. We walked through Tienanmen Square and looked at the big picture of Mao, then we went inside the Forbidden City.
This was the palace that the most of the emperors lived in. Really beautiful architecture, and it was interesting to see all the things that they put into the architecture to show status and the things they put in because of their superstitions. This was the presentation of another student in the group, but while he was presenting, and while we were visiting, the Chilean President visited the palace so they kicked out all the tourists so he could have a private tour. Most of the stuff that he was going to talk about was blocked off and we never got to see it. It was a bummer, but it defiantly made the experience more memorable.
Here's one of the guards. He and all his friends were pushing everyone out by holding ropes that blocked off the rest of the square and funneled everyone into the section that tourists were allowed to be in. We didn't get to see much, but we went into the Imperial Garden.
Instead of flowers like you would normally think goes in a garden, they had interestingly shaped rocks. It was really interesting. There were different paths and buildings inside of the rock formations that were really beautifully designed.
After we were done going through the Forbidden City, we went to this Buddhist Temple that was behind the city. The temple was partially on a mountain top (more like a big hill) and it had a lot of pagoda's on top of the hill that looked over the city. It was amazing.
After that we went to the train and left for Shanghai.
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