Beijing: Day 1

I'm going to skip ahead to what we did our first day in Beijing and continue updates about things we did earlier in later posts.

On Wednesday evening, 19 of us boarded a train to Beijing. The ride was going to be 10 hours long and we would arrive in Beijing at 7.20 and then take the metro to our hotel after which we would go out exploring.

Shanghai Train Station

Train Sleeper Cabin which we did not get

Our compartment

Driving at 163 km/hr!

After getting to the hotel and storing our stuff, we split off into groups and took the metro to Tiananmen Square. We moved into the Forbidden City after that. You get student discounts on tickets if you show your student IDs. I enjoyed walking through the City and it was fun just people watching.

Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City

During our entire stay here, we weren't surprised when Chinese people would approach the white people in our group and asked to be photographed with them. However, during one of our tourist visits in Shanghai, someone approached one of my Indian friends and asked to be photographed only with him while I was standing right there. I was kind of sad. BUT, in the Forbidden City, I was approached by a group of 3 people (2 women and 1 man) who started gesturing to me with their camera. I assumed they wanted me to take their picture but that's not what they wanted. They wanted me to be in their picture! I was soo happy. The one photo they asked me to take with them turned out to be an entire photo shoot. They took pictures with all possible combinations of the 3 people in the pictures with me and they didn't just stand beside me and smile. They tried a new pose in every picture. My favorite was when they stood sideways beside me and put both their hands on my shoulder. I thought it was soo sweet but I was having a hard time controlling my laughter which was not helped by my friends watching me and laughing in the background. But the people were very nice and thanked me after taking pictures.

Soon after, someone else came up to me to take a picture with them. It was a man who wanted me to take a picture with his kid. His kid was a very healthy 3 -4 year old boy. So I bend down to be in the picture with him but the father gestured that I should carry him! Carrying him wasn't going to be easy so I began giving my camera and purse to someone else to hold. As soon I was done I took a deep breath and started bending down to pick up the boy. Right then, the kid runs to his father and refuses to be in the picture. The father kept trying to persuade him but the boy just refused to come next to me. Yes, all the Michigan kids who were with me wouldn't stop laughing and yes, there is a video which I will post once I get it.

People who wanted to take pictures with me. Andy (left) jumped in for the last picture of the photo shoot

Afterwards, we went to Beihai Park which was pretty. We saw the Nine Dragon Wall and the White Dagoba.

Nine Dragon Wall - Notice the Maize and Blue Dragons

After the Beihai Park we headed back to the hotel and all the groups got together and soon we set out to Wangfujin. This place had malls and was famous for this small street which had very interesting food. This interesting food included scorpions, lizards, caramelized fruit, fried bananas, fried ice cream. So there was disgusting and really yummy stuff. I did not go near any of the weird stuff but some friends ate scorpions and donkey private parts(yuk!). I just got some caramelized fruit, chicken on a stick and some turkey that was cooked in an arabic style. Since, it was raining and it was going to rain all day the next day, many of us bought matching coats that we thought were raincoats in different colors. Since we had nothing better to do, someone suggested we do a runway show in the middle of the street with our raincoats. So that's what we did then called it a night. We had done A LOT of walking that day and were very tired.

Nayana