The architecture in China reminded me a lot of the architecture in New Zealand. I thought that was very interesting. Just the way the beams on the roof were and the beams coming down from the roof. I loved how colorful and bright all the buildings were, and the intricate carvings and paintings were so amazing.
This was the Garden of Harmonious Interests at the Summer Palace. I really loved it. There were so many lily pads in the little lakes and ponds there. I'd never seen a real lily pad before that. The Summer Palace was HUGE! I think we walked about 15 miles that day when we walked around it. Apparently the Empress Cixi built this palace during her 50 year "behind the curtain" reign. Her son died at an early age and then her grandson really couldn't take over until he was old enough, so she had a pretty long reign.
Can you see the amount of stairs? The Summer Palace, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, and lots of the other sites had SO MANY stairs! Buns of steel...that's all I have to say.
We took a short plane ride to Xian mostly to see the Terra Cotta Warriors. Guess who we saw on the plane? The SLC Channel 4 news anchor! Funny huh? In Xian, we also went to the Wild Goose Pagoda and this culture show. The culture show was a bit of a disappointment. The acrobat show we saw in Beijing was much cooler. Those people could seriously do amazing things...like balance on a ladder on a tightrope or juggle 9 balls while tap dancing. Coolness.
They had street vendors everywhere selling questionable things on a stick. I opted for the watermelon on a stick vs. the scorpion on a stick. At the train station they also had little old ladies who were making these crepe egg roll things on the back of their bicycles. I had to try one of course and it actually was pretty good.
The Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian were simply amazing. This emperor back in 200 B.C. spent his whole life planning his funeral. He only ruled for about 17 years and died at the age of 29, but in that time he managed to build a terra cotta replica of his entire army. He employed like 700,000 people to work on it. His tomb is apparently filled with booby traps and mercury and silver streams. Because of the mercury, it has not been excavated, but they have found records of the plans of his tomb.
The warriors were only found in the 70s when some local farmers were drilling for a well and they stumbled upon lots of pottery and artifacts. So they started excavating and found just tons of soldiers, pottery, weapons, terra cotta horses, and just a ton of stuff. Since the 70s they haven't even excavated all of it...it's a work in progress. Each warrior is a replica of an actual person. You can tell because each one has a different face. And they are all life size. It's pretty incredible. I can't imagine living your whole life planning your funeral though. Crazy.
After Xian, we flew to Shanghai. You can tell from this picture how extremely polluted the air is there. Gross! You can't even see the tops of the skyscrapers. Shanghai was very modern and European compared to the other cities we visited. Oh and they have big plans to clean up the air for the Olympics. Like shut down the factories, regulate the cars, and cloud seed to make it rain. I am interested to see how China will look on TV during the Olympics.
The coolest thing that happend in Shanghai was that we got invited to a tea ceremony by some people we met outside the museum. They have a different type of tea pot for each kind of tea and you have to smell it before you drink it. It was really cool. We had the herbal tea selection, and most of it was pretty tasty.
While in Kunshan with Caron's cousins, we got around on electric motor scooters. So fun! Here is Caron driving one of them. I did not attempt to drive one because that was right after my attack by the human leech and I was still feeling traumatized. So I was not up for a crazy driving adventure on a scooter.
Caron's cousins were awesome! They are teaching at an international school in Kunshan. We stayed in the dorms with them and went to their class. It was out of control crazy! The kids were jumping off the walls. But they were cute. They all gasped when they asked how old I was and I told them I was 27.
We also went to church in someone's house in Suzhou. That was pretty cool. There were a lot more people in church than I expected. Another interesting thing is that they have to have separate branches for the Chinese people and the foreigners. They cannot attend church together. But at least we could go to church in China! I just think that is really cool.
OK, I think I just have one more post after this one and then I will be done with the China blogging.
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