The next morning, we woke up and headed to 7-11 for what I consider a normal breakfast for me, a can of coke and a bag of Doritos.  The kids got a kick out of having chips for breakfast.  We caught a taxi again and headed to the Forbidden City.

While I was in Guangzhou, I had been warned that since the last time I went to Beijing was in 1985, I would find many things very fake.  I wondered how that could be possible.  We entered the Forbidden City and I found that the amazing stairs between all the buildings now have metal plates over them to prevent wear and tear on the original stone.  The signs over the buildings have all been replaced by bad replicas (they are all written in simplified Chinese).  Also, as the last time we were there, travel within China was not easy, so there were hardly people at all these places.  Now, it seems that all one billion people in China visited on the same day.  There were some areas that were so packed that we couldn’t even get close to the door to take a picture.

The Forbidden City though is still an amazing place to walk through and I am still in awe of it.  There are 999½ rooms in the Forbidden City, apparently in the old days a room consisted of four columns and there 3,998 columns, hence the ½ room.  There are no words to describe seeing something like the Forbidden City, Great Wall or even something like the Summer Palace, as it is astounding what people were able to do before computers, the planning that must have gone into these projects.

We walked starting from the front gate, starting at what was considered the front palace, where the emperor would hold court every morning.  Through to the back palace, where the emperor and his family lived, the only outsiders allowed back here were maids, eunuchs and doctors.  We got to see the rooms where the emperor and empresses lived and the emperor’s study.  We then exited the palace through the back gate and walked to BeiHai Park.

BeiHai Park was originally the imperial garden attached to the Forbidden City.  The park is now separated from the Forbidden City and the entrance is a short walk away.  By this time, it was about 1:00, so we decided to eat in the park.  In the front of the park, there were a number of small restaurants competing for business.  We chose the busiest looking one and quickly ordered some dumplings, noodles and a dish of vegetables.  I expected an order of dumplings with 6 or 8, like we usually get in the U.S, but when the dumplings came to the table, we were greeted by a plate of 20+ good sized dumplings.  However, it turned out to be a good thing that there were so many dumplings, as the other food was once again too spicy for us.  Thank goodness my kids like white rice. 

After the quick lunch, we started walking around the park and one of the first things we saw was a man practicing Chinese calligraphy with a giant paint brush and a bucket of water.  He obligingly wrote out the kids’ Chinese names for them.  We continued to walk and saw many people selling various toys, such as miniature kites.  Similar to the Summer Palace, there is also a huge lake in the middle of Beihai Park, which technically means North Sea Park, so once again you can rent a boat to ride from one end of the park to the other.  We walked around the lake and saw people practicing tai chi, Izz got into the action and practiced her tai kwon do form.  At the north end of the park is the Nine Dragon Screen, this Nine Dragon Screen is one of three in China and is unique in that there are dragons on both sides.   As we were leaving the park, we saw another man with a paint brush and a bucket of water, but instead of Chinese calligraphy, this man was drawing pictures of people.  Without asking, he drew pictures of both of the kids.

There is a Chinese saying, “You have not been to Beijing if you have not visited a Hutong.”  As we were leaving BeiHai park, we were approached by a number of people advertising a rickshaw (these are now powered by people of bicycles) ride through a Hutong.  A Hutong is a series of old narrow streets, which connected a bunch of old courtyard houses.  These narrow streets hide many treasures that are no longer seen in newer neighborhoods.  Once again, we quickly struck a deal with one of the guys and he quickly went off to find a friend as we would need two rickshaws. 

The hutong we were taken through was approximately 400 years old and was the main area of residence for the palace eunuchs.  There was a huge (now abandoned) building, which used to house the eunuchs’ members.  Eunuchs were extremely protective of their removed members, as Chinese people believed that a corpse should be complete and these parts were put in their coffins with them.  This hutong was also the location of the imperial ice house the elementary school that Jet Li went to.

After the hutong tour, it was still early enough to head north and visit the 2008 Olympic Village.  We took a city bus to the area closest to the bird’s nest and started walking. We got there as it was starting to get dark, so we got to see the bird’s nest with and without the lights on.  We were however too late to go inside of the buildings, so we just took pictures from the outside.  We then walked over toward the ice cube and got some pictures of that.

At this time, it was fairly late and when asked what they wanted for dinner, one kid promptly replied KFC, while the other answered McDonalds.  We decided that we would head back to the hotel and see which was closer and get that.  Upon return to the hotel, we were told that KFC was a 15 minute walk, while McDonalds was a 10 minute walk; however McDonalds delivers 24/7.  We went upstairs, called McDonalds and were eating in our hotel in about 20 minutes.