May 20, 2005 Beijing: Forbidden City, Summer Palace

At the Forbidden City

We started with the Forbidden City. It is first off Tian'an Men and I decided to use the video camera because we had little things and I wanted to be able to get through the"city" and catch as many views as possible. I began the video of Tian'an Men and saw the Great Hall of the people and Chairman Mao's Mausoleum and the Monument to the People's Heroes. Then we entered the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian'an Men) and I knew we were going to have to move fast. Therefore we moved quickly down the middle of the "city". I also noticed that there was much reconstruction, on both sides of the "city", so we wouldn't be able to see those sites. One of my favorite scenes was to video and was coming through a connecting hallway into another courtyard. The most interesting change was when we entered the imperial garden, the trees and rock construction made it look like a fairy tale.

At the Summer Palace

In the afternoon, we went to the Summer Palace, we started at Dong Dong Men and went south to the arch bridge and Nanmu Dao. We took a dragon boat to the marble boat. From there we went back to the boathouse and then up Longevity Hill (Wanshou Shan) from which we could view everything around Kunming Lake. Gao Huiying was very tired with the pace up the hill and said that she was still hurting from our run yesterday up the great wall. We came down the hill beside Leshou Tang and rejoined our group at Dong Dong Men.

We went back to CRI when I spent an hour recharging the video camera and talking with Li Peichun about how well his team was taking care of us. Then we found out we were late for dinner. we had dinner and hurried to the Beijing railway station. Gao Huiying told me, as we waited in the crowded station that she had never been in an airplane. This was in response to my comment that is had been many years since I had been on a train.

We traveled on the train to Xi'an with 4 men to a sleeping car.

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