The Blessing of Friendship

During this trip there have been two guys that I hang out pretty much all the time.  They are Adam and Josh.  Josh was in my class back at BYU-I when I as there in the winter but we never really talked all that much and Adam I had never met before.  The first time I really spent any time with these two was when we had gone to the Great Wall and we were making our way down the Alpine Slide.  I had felt out of place with Adam, Josh, Brett and Abby while we were there and actually thought that they found me a little annoying.  Since I thought that they didn’t really like me that much I didn’t spend much time with after that, until Adam started talk to me a little while later in the semester.  At this point things changed.  I wasn’t spending much time with Brandon since we weren’t in the same class anymore so I had to find people to hang out with.  Adam had started inviting me to do thing with them and since I enjoyed spending time with them, we became friends.  These two have been my best friends here.  We have been to a lot of places with each other but the ones this blog is about are the ones that it was just the 3 of us (or in the case with one with Solange).

圆明园 (Yuán Míng Yuán)

圆明园is the Imperial Gardens.  When we got there we attempted to use our student passport to get a cheaper price but they wouldn’t let us.  Adam got a little rowdy with them and made them really mad when he said “it’s because we are white that you aren’t taking our student passport isn’t it”.  We saw some students from a different university to buy the tickets for us and explained to them that they would let us have the student price because we were white (when really it was because we were foreign students) and they were nice enough to do that for us. At these gardens there are ruins far into the park of a large fountain that was built for one of the emperors.  To get to the ruins we walked for a little while enjoying the scenery, climbing through paths on the hills that many people seemed not to acknowledge.  The scenery was beautiful from atop those hills and it was actually rather sad that those people around us did not have a desire to climb up and see this fantastic view.  

When we climbed down from the hill we found a tourist cart that looked like the stretch limo version of a golf cart and took that all the way to the ruins.  Adam and I sat up front with the driver and chatted with him about his family.  Towards the end of the ride we saw a group of older people wearing funny pink hats.  The driver had let Adam honk the horn earlier and so he asked if he could honk at them and he said yes.  That driver was a very nice man. Those ruins were amazing.  I know that ruins just broken down architecture, but I really like seeing ruins and imagining them in their former glory.  While at these ruins we did jumping pictures where we took pictures of us looking like we are jumping above whatever we went to see. I was fun to watch Adam and Josh do it, but most of all Solange.  It was cute to see her jump because it was her first time ever doing something like that. It was a very beautiful place and even more so because I love fall.

Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is where the Emperor and Empress would live along with their servants.  This place is pretty big to say the least.  We had borrowed Lauren’s iPod which had a virtual tour of the City on there so we could learn a little bit more about what we were looking at.  Without it we would have just seen a couple of thrones and living quarters and not known what they were for. Seriously though, the Emperor would have his living quarters in the back of the City, have a thrown halfway to the front gate where he could rest, and then one at the front of the gate as well.  The Forbidden City reminded me a lot of the scene in Mulan towards the end where the Emperor was recognizing the army for defeating the Huns. The only difference is that there isn’t a large staircase leading up to where the Emperor spoke. 

Overall it’s a really nice place to visit… once. I mean if I came back again with someone I would go see it again, but it is definitely a one-time per trip type of deal.  We had found this box type thing inside that had the character for happiness of each side.  Im not sure if it said this or not, but we got the impression that if we were to rub the box that we would have good luck in our dating and joked around saying that we would be married within the next year.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  It would have be pretty fast moving that is for sure.  When we got to the back of the City a woman started talking to us.  She was an art student that wanted to sell us painting.  She took us in a small room to show us the paintings for sale.  They were all very beautiful with the exception of a few awkward pictures that were not that appropriate.  I felt pretty uncomfortable and im pretty sure Josh and Adam did as well with those paintings so we explained to her that we didn’t have any money and that wanted to leave. One the way out we were able to get a picture with a Chinese soldier.  Normally we are not able to do this but we think this man was off duty with some friends or family and so he was willing to snap a few photos with us.  There was also a group of Soldiers that were going through training.  It was kind of cool to see them run around the square in unison.  

After we watch this for a little while we decided to go over to Tian’anmen Square again and look around a little bit but we got stopped on the way over there by a woman that spoke fairly good English.  She started out talking to us about American and good schools over there, what we were doing in China, just small talk.  Once we said we wanted to get going she had asked us if we wanted to get something to drink real quick.  Adam and Josh saw straight through this, and I was not too far behind.  Brother Galer had warned us about the Tea scams at the beginning of the trip.  They send out people who can speak English well and convince people to go get tea.  At the tea shop, which they work for, the employees bring “samples” of tea that are not actually samples.  Each one costs a lot of money for a small cup of tea.  After everything is said and done the person somehow defaults the bill to the tourist, who then ends up shelling out 1000’s worth of kuai on this tea.  Since we were warned about this we knew what was going on and offered if she wanted to exchange emails to practice her English but she said she was not interested in that, proving what she was doing.  After leaving we went over to the Square and looked around for a little while and then made our way over the Beijing Communist Government building. We were looking at it from the outside and we wondered if we could go inside.  The soldier that we asked said that we could be not today because the party was in session. So we decided to come back another day.

Communist Government Building

Mao's Mausoleum 

Early on a Saturday we went back to Tian’anmen Square.  This time we would go inside the mausoleum to see the body of Mao Ze Deng.  When we got in line they said that we would not be able to take a bag inside. This was a problem because Josh had his bag with him.  Trying to be sneaky he hid it under his jacket and we proceeded. Unfortunately there was a security check before we could go in and they told us that we could not take in any cameras or the bag that Josh had to take out of his coat. So leaving our stuff with Adam while we viewed Mao’s body, we continued inside.  They kept us moving, so we didn’t spend a lot of time inside, however Mao did not look real at all.  He looked like a wax figure in the glass casket inside a glass box.  According to Isaac there are two Mao’s, one is the real one and one is the fake one.  I don’t know why they would have two of them other than maybe someone would want to steal his but I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would want to steal a dead body. After we met back up with Adam and he had his turn seeing Mao we went over to the government building.  This building was pretty nice inside.  There were plenty of places that we could not go, but that didn’t stop us.  We had talked to some of the workers and convinced them to let us take pictures behind signs, in rooms that people were technically not allowed in.  One of these rooms was the room where most of the conferences happen.  We got away with a lot of things in there.  The building had a lot of rooms that were for some of the other cities such as Shanghai and Sichuan.  They were beautiful rooms and found out that they were used for meetings.  It was very interesting to see the inside of the government building and see where all of China’s policies are made.  Unfortunately I had deleted all my pictures from there before putting them on my facebook or computer so I don’t acutally pictures of me there but I got Josh’s pictures and I always will have this blog and memories.

To be honest I am very grateful for Adam and Josh.  Without them I would have had a very tough time being here.  I would be a lot more homesick and I don’t think I would ever have seen a lot of this stuff on my own.  I know that my experience being in China would be completely different if I didn’t get to know them and im pretty sure it would not have been as enjoyable.  I am really going to miss them when I return home, but itll be great to meet back up during the summer.  They have become two of my best friends.