Day 3: Tour Beijing
Today is the first full day in Beijing. I'm traveling with a group of 10 families and have started to get to know them today. Our adoption agency has everyone spend 2 days touring in Beijing to help get over jet lag before we get our children. Today we toured the Hutong neighborhood, a silk factory, Tiananmen Square, and Forbidden City.
Hutong neighborhood. We rode rickshaws though the little alleyways, learned how different elements of the entryway signify social rank, and got to enter and go through one house.
We entered Mr. How's house (striped shirt). This is his central courtyard and the buildings all around it are his. Four people live here (along with one dog, three cats, and probably 40 pigeons). Our guide was amazed by how much room Mr. How has.
A government silk factory in Beijing.
This machine unravels the silk cacoons and puts the silk on a spindle. The cacoons are floating in the water.
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square looking towards the entrance to Forbidden City.
This is a family in our group. The two little blonds girls probably had 1,000 photographs taken of them today. Crowds gathered around them everywhere and people wanted to be photographed with them. Our guide thought that most people living in Beijing see enough foreigners that they would not take photos but that other Chinese people visiting Beijing might be seeing a blond foreigner for he first time in their life. They were a spectacle and probably will be more so in our next city (since that city gets fewer foreign visitors).
Inside Forbidden City
This is one of 4 or 5 courtyards that make up the ~1 mile long Forbidden City.
