Kevers in Japan: Beijing

My last China post is all about downtown Beijing.

For our sightseeing day we were fortunate to have our own personal tour guide for the day. My friend Leisy's mother knew some people in China who offered to show us around for the day. They went above and beyond. They paid for everything and took us to some really amazing restaurants. To be chauffeured around the city like that...wow.

Thank you to David, and Miley from China Youth Publishing! Our experience could not have been better.

With Miley and our driver we gave the name 'Gus' This was taken after our morning in the Hutongs.

We walked to Tiananmen Square to begin our history lesson. It was a warm, muggy, and dirty day. The square was SO vast. All day as we toured the square and the Forbidden city, I could not believe the amount of space. Tokyo is so tightly packed.

EVERYONE wanted their picture with us, after a while we started to avoid eye contact because it was seriously slowing us down

There is something surreal about seeing in person the places I have heard about and seen pictures about growing up.

Forbidden city

We entered the Forbidden city and walked and walked and walked. It was vast. Unbelievably so. This place housed Emperors and the Chinese government for 500 years during the Ming and Qing dynasty. The US is such a baby in terms of age, and Canada even more so in terms of country age and yet so ethnocentric. China has been around for so much longer.

Soooo many layers to this place

I need a dragon to guard my house

or a turtle dragon

The view looking down on the Forbidden City

It rained just a little bit one day we were there, and the dirt on the cars after the rain was disgusting. You could scrape it off. I can't imagine what it would be after a long rain.

This was the back yard of the forbidden city. Where the kids got to live.

Large rock garden

From here we headed to the Temple of Heaven. Cool, but lets just say I have seen a lot of temples.

We saw about 6 brides having their pictures taken here

I love this picture!

Our Peking duck lunch

carving it up

They eat it like a taco, with cucumber, cantalope, onion, and various sauces.

very good, no not good, Amazing.

Best Chinese food in my entire life

After fueling up and resting for a bit, we wanted to shop!! We visited the super touristy silk market, but Miley also took us to her favorite local market. It was all Christmas themed

of course.

there were all sorts of strange animal statues everywhere

kinda creepy

We also went to an outdoor market called Wangfujing. Crazy place.

The street was lined with vendors selling atrocious food items. Scorpions, starfish, and seahorses.

Snakes anyone? Giant beetle grubs and crickets too

fried and dried critters

So I tried the scorpions and grasshoppers. Yummo. The scorpions were pretty good, the hoppers, not so much!

At the end of our last full day in Beijing, we were taken out to dinner to possibly the most expensive restaurant I have ever been to. Each dish was over $100, and our host seemed to order everything on the menu to share. We had jellyfish, shrimp, scallops, braised beef, pork ribs, chicken, veggies, dim sum, gyoza, lobster...