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Our first day of touring began on a cold, rainy morning on Tiananmen Square, the world's largest public plaza:
We went on to see the Forbidden City. Rumors that there were a Starbuck's and McDonalds inside the City were false.
The number of animals on the edge of each building indicated its relative importance. This was the treasure room. Very important.
The Chinese are patient. This carving was made from a single, very large piece of stone that took two years just to move it from the countryside to the city.
The Great Wall was the highlight of the Beijing part of the tour. We went to the Jingshanling section, which we picked because it is less touristy and un-developed. Not to say we didn't have 15 vendors following us for the first half-hour...that was annoying. But the Wall was spectacular.
Dave didn't feel like he deserved an "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirt until he actually literally climbed over it. He didn't make it though...so no T-shirt.
In Beijing, we were dragged to many tourist traps, despite having a custom itinerary. We think they are pretty much unavoidable. The tour guides are required (by their tour companies) to get papers signed at the tourist traps to prove they brought the tourists there. Some traps were government run. However, some of the traps were, surprisingly, pretty interesting! The cloisonne factory was actually a factory (unlike the jade art factory...). Here, the worker is gluing on thousands of pieces of bent copper onto the base vase. The voids between will then get filled with various colors of enamel paint and baked...this is repeated 3 times. Then there are polishing and finishing operations. Tough, tedious job...
