China 2: Forbidden City and The Temple of Heaven

On Saturday, October 7, 2017, Eric Leach, Merlin Carpenter and I visited The Forbidden City, while Steve went and met with a contact in Beijing.

We had actually driven by it the night before.

And we saw some other interesting things in that area the night before as well.

The moon looked big (full moon) and reddish (due to the haze).

I kept seeing little kids stuffed in the front of bikes and scooters.

These steps are lit up at night with animated graphics on them.

And here's a long exposure shot out my hotel window at night.

I thought this door on our hotel's main floor looked cool.

As we neared The Forbidden City on Saturday morning, we saw some interesting flower art.

The entrance to The Forbidden City is flanked by flower arrangements, too.

The Forbidden City was built from 1406-1420 when the capital moved from Nanjing (down by Shanghai) to Beijing (formerly called "Peking"). The city is "forbidden" because one was only allowed to visit there upon invitation from the emperor.

But invitation or no, in we went.

Here is looking back out the entrance, where you can see the huge flower pot at Tiananmen Square (which we visit a little later).

By contrast, here is the view through the next building. Those two pictures, of course, look almost identical, and it turns out that much of the Forbidden City consists of huge plazas surrounded by awesome buildings that are all designed very similarly.

I love the intricate colors under the eves.

I also enjoy the curved roof lines.

And the cute kids are fun to watch.

A couple of areas had a pretty water feature.

Here is a panorama of the above scene, showing how many buildings are all around.



And I always enjoy the almost-right translations on the signs.

And I love even more the awesome names they give to stuff.

• "Hall of Supreme Harmony", 
• "Gate of Manifest Virtue", 
• "Gate of Divine Might", 
• "East Glorious Gate", 
• "Hall of Military Eminence", 
• "Palace of Heavenly Purity", 
• "Hall of Mental Cultivation" and 
• "Palace of Tranquil Longevity," among others.

 It just never got old to me. I totally need a new name for my gazebo.

One after another, there kept being huge squares flanked by massive, impressive buildings. (And swarmed by people, since it was still Golden Week when everyone in China gets the week off).

Here's the inside of one of the buildings.



And here's everyone trying to get a picture of that.

There were vats all around whose purpose was to hold water to use in case of fire. In the winter, the water could freeze, so sometimes they built fires under them. Hopefully none of those ever caught the place on fire, cuz that would be ironic...

There were many selfies going on in the area.

And other posed pictures. Here's a girl in ethnic garb.

And here's a more typical random modern Chinese girl.

The symbol of the dragon was only supposed to be used by the emperor. Because, dibs.

The corners of the roofs often had this same series of dragons with a guy on a dragon at the front. I could swear it was Santa's sleigh with dragon reindeer, and Santa riding Rudolf the Red-Flamed Dragon at the front.

Here's another one.

A small museum housed dishes from various dynasties. This bowl was from about 1500 A.D.

And this one was from the 1700s, when yellow became the new white!

And there were a few cool statues around, like this turtle.

The last section we came to was where the emperors lived, and it was finally one full of trees! (These two seem to be giving each other a hug).

The bamboo reminded me of my grandpa's house in Oregon that had bamboo along the side yard. We used to harvest some to use for Boy Scout projects.

I thought this monk looked cool.

Of course, his smart phone seemed a tad out of place.

 24 emperors lived in The Forbidden City between 1420 when it was finished and 1912 when the last emperor yielded control to the new Republic of China government. It eventually became open to the public.



As we exited The Forbidden City, there was a cool building over on the mountain.

These cute kids got traditional Chinese hats from the gift shop.

I love this shot from the outside of The Forbidden City. In fact, this might be my favorite picture from the whole trip. (You might want to click on it to see a full sized version.)

Outside there were some couples posing for wedding pictures.

This gal apparently had comfy boots under her traditional dress.

Since we exited the opposite end of The Forbidden City, we had a long walk up a tree-lined street to get back to where we started.

There were some cute traditional scenes as we walked along. I like how this place has the misty Chinese mountain scene, stone dragon guardians, a Chinese flag, and an old bicycle.

In an underpass near the subway station, we saw this ethnic family, who looks especially concerned and anxious for someone's arrival.

Across the street from the entrance to The Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square.



It was decked out with huge flower balls and flower pillars and stuff.

They also had this monument to Thomas Edison, which seemed thoughtful of them. (Not really, of course).

Speaking of flowers, this is unquestionably the largest flower pot I've ever seen.

Next, we joined up with Steve Nickle again and visited The Temple of Heaven (天壇, Tiāntán), where the emperor used to go for spiritual activity. It was built during the same years (1406-1420) as The Forbidden City.

Steve gave as an overview of what we were going to see, and some interesting things to look out for.

And, in case there was any question, absolutely nothing is allowed there.

For some reason I always like the purple flowers wherever I go.

The long approach is flanked by a huge park on both sides.

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿) has three levels of stairs and three roofs.

Each of the 3 sections of stairs has a slab that tells a story.

That building was my favorite part.

There were also several other awesome buildings around, with different colored roofs.

I loved the juxtaposition of this young lady's outfit with her rose gold iPhone.

I like how the roof sort of zooms out at you here.

The Imperial Vault of Heaven (皇穹宇) is surrounded by the Echo Wall.

Supposedly one can call from one part of the Echo Wall and hear it on the other side of an intervening building.

Do you like my hat?

This picture was inspired by my dad's photo of the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, with help from a Native American statue.

Like The Forbidden City, this had the Santa's Sleigh-looking dragons.

The Circular Mound Altar (圜丘坛) has a center stone that is very popular for taking pictures.

It reminded me of my brother waiting for an hour to take a picture at the 4 Corners point where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona all meet.

I guess in some ways, we're all the same.

I loved how cute this little girl was taking a picture of her parents.

On the way back out of the park, there was this amazing line of trees that goes off to infinity, but a road that turns abruptly. There's probably a deep message in there somewhere.

We saw these ethnic dancing ladies posing for pictures on our way out.

This is a sign in front of a urinal saying, "One small step for man, One giant leap for civilization," or something to that effect (basically asking you to stand close enough not to miss).

Somehow they've made this car into a 4-door!

I love that this bicycle has eyes!

These yellow city bicycles are everywhere. Apparently you get an app that lets you unlock one wherever you find it, then you ride it to wherever (for a tiny sum) and lock it up again, and it's ready for whoever else needs one. I think it has cellular built into the locking mechanism so the apps can know where all the available bikes are. And no charge for extra passengers.

That evening we dropped by "The Silk Market" to do some shopping. The place was fairly modern, kind of like a mall, but it still had the old market feel, where everyone aggressively tried to market to you, and you had to haggle aggressively to get a good deal on stuff. I bought some T-shirts, fans, headphones and some chopsticks.

When I texted my siblings to say why I was my way to China, one of them asked, "Why are you going to China?" I replied, "Because I'm low on chopsticks." Kelsi chimed in with "^^^Truth." After explaining why I was really going, I added, "But we do indeed have a haggard assortment of mismatched chopsticks that makes eating ice cream quite untoward. I ask you!"

That night we did our first subway ride. Eric and Steve (both Chinese speakers) figured things out, while Merlin played a more "supervisory role" (no idea what's going on).



And that was the extent of our sightseeing in and around Beijing.

In the next episode, we take a high-speed train down south to Changzhou.

Next episode: Changzhou

China 1: Beijing and The Great Wall

On October 4, 2017, I went on a business trip with Steve Nickle, Eric Leach and Merlin Carpenter, to visit with a company regarding family history records in China. Some of the family books go back to 2000 B.C. It turned out to cost $1000 less per plane ticket to go 4 days earlier, saving $500 or so even after adding in the hotel, so we all went early, first to Beijing, then down to another city for meetings, and finally to Shanghai where Steve had one more meeting, and where our flights departed from.

So Wednesday morning, October 4, 2017, Merlin and his mom picked me up on their way to the airport. I had forgotten that she was from Brazil, so it was fun to talk to her about that. Linette went to the temple that morning with her stake R.S. presidency, so it was handy that they could take me.

We met up with everyone at the airport for our first flight to Seattle.

As we neared Seattle, we got a nice view of what I think is Mt. Rainier. (Maybe they call it that because it's raini-er there than most places?)

Our flight from Seattle to Beijing went over Alaska and Russia (in particular, Kamchatka, which people usually recognize from playing Risk).

While we were in line to go through passport control, I noticed that the two gals in front of us had Peruvian passports. So I started talking to them in Spanish and found out that they live near Lima, but when I told one that my daughter Erika was a missionary in Huancayo, Peru, she got all excited and said that her brother lived near there and that she went there all the time. The other gal wasn't there right then, so later when we talked some more and she heard about my missionary there, she said, "¿De la Iglesia de Jesu Cristo de los Ultimo Días?" It turns out that she was a member of the church, too!

They asked for help getting through passport control, but they didn't turn out to need any. However, one of them left their cell phone at the passport counter on her way through, so after Steve got through the line, he booked it down to the bag claim area and found them. He was able to go with a guard back up to track down where they had already taken the phone and get it back for her. They were really grateful! By then we had all become such good friends that they gave us hugs and a kiss on the cheek good-bye, in the Latin tradition.

The hotels in China were the nicest ones I've ever stayed in, and they cost around $100 a night. Here's a picture of my room. There's a glass wall between the tub and the bedroom (I think there's a way to lower a privacy curtain if needed). It was really fancy. When I FaceTimed Linette, she said, "And why am I not there?"

Here is the view from the window. There are high rise apartments and skyscraper business buildings everywhere there. Even out in the farm areas they build high rise apartments, perhaps to help preserve the farmland from being reduced by urban sprawl.

They had a fancy breakfast buffet, which we got free every day because Steve and Eric both have Gold status with Marriott. Here's my breakfast consisting of a pineapple/berry/yogurt smoothie, French toast and waffles with mango jam, kiwi jam, and vanilla stuff. I also grabbed some bread pudding, fried mushrooms, "Chinese pancake" (spring roll) and some spicy Chinese cabbage. Because who doesn't want that for breakfast?

The spicy cabbage was actually one of my favorite parts.

Speaking of skyscrapers, here is the tallest one in Beijing.

And I thought the architecture on this building was awesome.

Friday morning, a couple who worked for a company that Steve has a relationship with (for FamilySearch) was kind enough to be excellent hosts and take us to The Great Wall of China at the section called "Badaling" (Merlin called it "Badabing", and we taught our host Vivian the phrase "Badabing badaboom", along with the phrase "a hop, skip and a jump.")

On the way there, I saw a couple of these Spider-man things hitching a ride on cars.

As we got close, we saw a glimpse of one part of The Wall.

We entered a mall thing to catch a shuttle up to the tram station.

Inside the mall, these two old guys were taking turns smacking some peanut stuff with hammers to work it into a taffy. Whenever someone would walk by, they'd give them a turn with the hammer.

So I took turns whacking the taffy with the other guy. ("One, two, three, oy!" as it went in The Frisco Kid).

While we were waiting for tickets, this little boy saw me and poked his sister, and then they kept looking at me and giggling. So I talked to them a little (sort of), and motioned to their parents to see if it was ok to take a picture with them. The parents tend to be very pleased (and perhaps flattered) when you pay attention to their kids.

As we stood in a long but fast-moving zig-zag of tram customers, I saw this sign that said "No Visitors".

Ummm...isn't everyone a visitor? Not sure what was up with that.

The tram ride was great. They had a slow cable in the building that then dumped you onto a fast cable that went up the mountain. So then you're going full speed until you just about bonk into the tram in front of you, when the slow cable there takes over just in the nick of time. It was exhilarating.

So it turns out that October 1-7 is "Golden Week" in China, when everyone in the country gets the week off and goes touring around the country, especially to places like The Great Wall. We had been warned that it would be ridiculously crowded, and it did not disappoint.

Here is a short video clip where you can hear Steve and our host having a conversation, and where we get our first glimpse of the crowds on The Wall that day.

We took baby steps all the way up the hill.

Here is a video that captures pretty much what it was like.

I love the warning signs in China. They are obviously translated without the help of a native English speaker, which makes them really cute.

There is a saying in China that seems to mean, "If you haven't been to The Wall, you're kind of lame." One particular tower is called the Hero Tower and if you touch that, then you're especially cool, so the crowd was especially thick from the tram up to that tower. (I was a little worried that if someone fell over backwards, we would all go down like Dominoes. Although, I suppose we might all land on someone soft behind us.)

So now I'm officially a Chinese "Hero".

When we got beyond that tower, things thinned out, and then the only thing slowing us down was the fact that the wall is so steep! (And that I'm out of shape. I mean, I'm a shape, but...).

I had heard that the wall was steep, but I didn't fully appreciate it until I hiked it.

Here's a girl holding on and walking backwards down the hill.

The Wall was built on the ridge line of the mountain, so that the mountain itself forms its own formidable barrier, and the wall is thus harder to scale, because it's already at the top of a steep incline. But that left it subject to going wherever the mountain happened to take its ridge line.

A few places were steep enough to require stairs. Other places could have used them, too, but went "slope and handrail."

Steps near the handrails have been worn by the millions of feet that have walked this way.

Here is the next tower in the sequence. These watch towers kept an eye out for invaders, and could use smoke signals to alert the other towers and the garrisoned armies that an invasion was looming, so that they could concentrate their defenses in that area and repel the attack.

This cute Chinese boy was looking out of the watch tower.

This is about as far as we hiked. You can see the "Hero Tower" off in the distance on that far peak. That's how far we came down after reaching that tower. We eventually hiked most of the way back to that tower before going back down a back way to the tram.

Here's everyone peeking out and saying Ni hao.

I was amazed at this engineering marvel.

It was a bit hazy that day, but you could still see the wall going off into the distance. Building started as early as 700 B.C., and was worked on from time to time until at least the 1600s. It is estimated that 100,000 to 1 million people died in the construction of the wall. Vivian told us a "moving story" about a young couple who got married, and then almost immediately the husband was taken away to work on the wall. That winter, she went to go find him, so she could give him some winter clothes. She looked and looked but couldn't find him, so she sat down by the wall and cried for three days. The earth was moved with compassion and trembled, crumbling the wall where she sat, thus revealing the body of her husband. So she dressed his body in the warm winter clothes, and laid down by him and died. So that's kinda sad.

While slowly wending our way through the line to get back on the tram, Steve struck up a conversation with this little girl and her parents. The girl was shy at first, but then started asking how to say "pineapple" and "watermelon" in English. After we went down separate trams and got in line for the bus, the little girl ran over to say good-bye to Steve one more time, which really made Steve's day.

Afterwards, our hosts bought us lunch at a place where you just grab random stuff. I had some kung pao chicken, some spicy beef soup, and some peach soda, along with a few dumplings.

Our hosts were so great. When we went to say good-bye, I whipped out with one of the few phrases I had learned in Chinese, "Wó hén gǎn xiè" (thank you SO much!).

It was a wonderful day, and it was fun to see all the scooters and bikes and other Chinese scenes out the car window as we drove.

Each night we had time to catch up on work e-mails and each morning we woke up so early (due to jet lag) that we had time to get some more work in then, too, so we were able to get some work done as well as seeing some fun things.

In our next episode, we visit The Forbidden City and The Temple of Heaven.

Next episode: The Forbidden City and The Temple of Heaven