Touring Beijing

Our 3-day touring weekend was filled with long days, lots of traditional Chinese food and cool sights. In light of the whole “long days” thing I’ll just share the major highlights of the tour that included the Great Wall, Beijing Water Treatment Plant, Beijing Suburbs (a.k.a. ideal Communist community) Ming Dynasty Tombs, Summer Palace, Winter Palace, Beijing Opera and copious amounts of Chinese food:

The Great Wall

On Saturday, we bused out to the Badaling section of the Great Wall, a.k.a. the section with the most tourists. We could see the wall from the street, but it was just a tease for about 30 minutes. Luckily for us, Mexican President Felipe Calderon decided to pay a visit right before we got there. His presence essentially shut a major portion of the wall down for about 45 minutes while he could do a photo-shoot and his own personal tour. I have however, decided to harbor no ill feelings towards our neighbors to the South. After finally getting through the yellow tape and to the entrance, we were held up there again while Calderon got tea and had a picnic lunch (maybe a slight exaggeration on his actions). My feelings towards umbrellas in China need to be saved for another post, but lets just say they are ridiculous. After being completely smushed against other students for another 30 minutes we were finally let in, and IT WAS WORTH IT. Everyone’s heard the stories about seeing the Wall from space, but until I got to see it first hand, I wasn’t truly aware of its size. The terrain in the Badaling area was incredibly mountainous and the fact they were able to build such a structure against those natural barriers was perhaps the most intriguing thing. Add to the fact that it was basically all built with unskilled labor and it turns into one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Some areas are very steep and it was interesting to see that the step sizes varied widely up an incline. One step might go up a foot, but the next one is just a couple inches. Paying attention then becomes necessary.

Summer Palace

We visited the Summer Palace on Sunday and it quickly became one of my favorite spots in Beijing. Built specifically as a get-away place for past dynasties the Palace essentially is a huge park with tons of water and willow trees. And mixing water with willow trees always turns out well. One of the emperoresses even blew all of the country’s naval money way back when and built a huge ship out of marble, which is on display in the palace. It was her personal playground. An incredibly beautiful place. Also, I had my second photo shot with a Chinese person. I’m guessing this time she recognized me from my leading role in “A Simple Twist of Fate” alongside my close friend Steve Martin. Luckily, I was able to get away without signing too many autographs.

Beijing Opera

The last event on our weekend tour was the Beijing Opera. Let me preface this paragraph by saying I’ve never been to an opera and had no idea what an opera was supposed to look like, but I’m guessing it’s not the Chinese version. Filled with hilarious translations on a side screen, really loud sound and unusual movements, the Opera was certainly a first. The plot went no-where and took forever to get where it was trying to go. Along the way it became impossible to follow. The costumes were quite humorous and people singing opera in Chinese was also funny. According to some Chinese we talked to, even they can’t understand what’s going on or what the characters are saying. Lucky for us, we had simultaneous translation on two screens next to the stage. The translations were a show in itself. I continue to firmly believe that someone could make an absolute killing here by going around and correctly translating things into English. They just can’t seem to do it correctly 90% of the time.

Another thing to note about the weekend tour was the 6 consecutive traditional Chinese meals that we ate. For lunch and dinner everyday we ate family style and were served essentially the same thing at each place. I can’t pass up free food, but