Backwards Blog: Beijing, China

In September I embarked on my most ambitious trip yet and took the kids to Beijing and Xi'an China. I had dreamed of going to China to walk the Great Wall and see the Terracotta Warriors since childhood but never really thought that dream would come true. Baby Girl Castello had some time off of school so I took a leap of faith that things would work out and put the trip together. Most of our trips take place over long weekends but I knew China was too big and there was too much I wanted to do to cut it short so I planned an itinerary that spanned nine days. This entry gives a little general info and details our first day in Beijing.

I nearly had to sell a kidney on the black market to pay for the travel visas (Americans pay more than any other nationality) but found plane tickets, hotels and souvenirs to be quite affordable. September was also the perfect time to go as Beijing has frigid winters, dust plagued springs, and brutally hot summers. The weather in September was perfect - pleasantly warm days and slightly chilly nights.

Thanks to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing is fairly easy for westerners to visit. Most signs were in several languages including english and there was someone who spoke english pretty much everywhere we stopped. The further away from the city we got the less english was spoken and at times our communication had to be conducted through improvised sign language but we always managed to get where and what we needed. My kids got frustrated by the language barrier one time and I took that opportunity to explain to them that WE were guests in THEIR country so we could only be frustrated with our own ignorance. In our case the following stereotype is true: If you speak three languages you're tri-lingual. If you speak two languages you're bi-lingual. If you speak one language you're American.

We arrived in Beijing early in the morning and did our best to reach the hotel in time to meet up with the guide I had hired. I say we did our best because the traffic in Beijing was horrendous. Our taxi driver didn't speak a word of english but thankfully I had printed out our hotel name and address in mandarin so he knew where to take us. After stashing our bags we met our guide and headed to Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.

I was carrying Miniman to preserve his legs for the rest of the day and was extremely grateful when a stranger on the subway offered me his seat. My guide explained that women with small children are always offered a seat and I found that quite chivalrous and definitely not the norm throughout much of Asia.

Frankly, I thought Tienanmen was rather boring. There was little to see and nothing to do but I was still glad to have gotten to see the place where that iconic photo of the lone demonstrator standing in front of a tank during the protests in 1989 was taken. Rumor has it that there are no benches or seats in Tienanmen Square so that people can't sit around and plot protests. I don't know if the rumor is true or not but I did note that there wasn't one single place to sit.

Monument to the People's Heroes in Tienanmen Square



Our next stop was the Forbidden City where I found I had totally underestimated how large the site was and how many structures it contained. We had a guide walking us through the sites and it was easy to close my eyes and imagine what life in the City was like hundreds of years ago. I tried to impress upon my children how important this place was and how lucky they were to learn about it in person rather than in a textbook. I'm a sucker for history and architecture and the Forbidden City delivered both in vibrant colors and jaw-dropping craftsmanship.

















Our first day in China ended with an acrobat show and Peking duck dinner. I was assured that even though the best acrobats in China had been drafted by Cirque du Soleil, the ones we were going to see that night were still pretty good - and they were.










Our flight to Beijing had us up quite early that morning so by the time the show ended we were getting tired and cranky - and hungry. Thankfully our guide knew a great place to eat that wasn't too far from our hotel and dinner was a big hit. First, we got a tour of the kitchen where the famous Peking ducks are prepared and cooked. Next we sat down in the nice restaurant and enjoyed the duck, green beans that didn't taste anything like the ones at home, and paper-thin fried potato sticks with green onions. To eat the duck, you take a small pancake and fill with the sliced duck, scallions, cucumbers, a little plum sauce and enjoy. The skin on the duck is so thin and crisp that it disintegrates in your mouth. BGC begged me to learn how to make the duck at home while Miniman was partial to the potatoes. Personally, I enjoyed just sitting down with a cold drink and watching the two of them dig in.
























As I always do when I'm somewhere new with the kids, I took few minutes in the hotel before drifting off to sleep to think about how fortunate I was to be in such an amazing place and to have the opportunity to savor the experience with two of my favorite people.