Breakfast in Beijing, Tian’An Men Square, and the Emperors' Home

We woke up really early this morning.  I got up at 5AM and checked our email.  There were notes from Mom and Dad!  You see, “Zeke’s China Blog” does not work in China.  I think the Chinese government does not like “Blogger” and so they block it inside China. Noni and I figured out a system.  We would send my blogs to my parents in Amherst and they could copy and paste the blog and pictures into “Zeke’s China Blog”.  We were not sure that would work, but it did!  We got a note from my dad saying it was posted!  More posts coming today!

I’m ready for breakfast because I haven’t eaten a good meal in two days! The airplane food was not that good.  On the plane I ate a couple of bread rolls, some custard, and that is pretty much it.  They did bring us pineapple juice and other juice drinks.  Now let’s see what the Beijing hotel has for breakfast!

The breakfast room in the hotel is downstairs.  It is very big and has tables with food all around the outside. 

They had Chinese Churros (without sugar), pancakes with syrup, rolls, juice, bacon, fruit, coco puffs, toast and cheese!!! 

We met David.  He was wearing a black velvet coat with frogs in place of buttons.  He was very friendly, He told us about where we will meet and what we will do today.

 We got on our bus and headed to Tian’An Men Square.

The big Tian’An Men Square is the largest square in the world.  It can have a million people standing in it at once.  It was huge. There were soldiers and guards standing around.

In the square there were lots of people. Some people were tourists.  Some people were Chinese and others from other countries like our group.  They also had many people trying to sell things to us.  Someone called them hucksters.  David taught us some Chinese to use during the day.

Ni Hao = Good morning or good afternoon.

Xie Xie (sia sia) = Thank you.

Bu Xie (sia) = You are welcome.

Bu ya! = Please leave me alone!

David told us to say “Bu ya” if anyone tried to sell us something.

It was a good thing David had given us a little Chinese lesson before we left.  We walked around and saw the huge square and the big buildings with the fancy roofs and bright red trimming. 

When we were ready to go we started to walk toward the area where our bus was parked.  Many of the people selling things rushed at us trying to get us to buy different things.  Some wanted to sell fans.  Some wanted to sell us toys.  One person wanted to sell me a hat.  He even put it on my head.  I remembered what to do.  I said, “Bu ya!” and he stopped pushing the hat on my head. 

People walked really close together and pushed you if they wanted to get by.  It was really hard to keep up with our group.  Finally we got to the area where our bus was parked and got on. 

Next we stopped to look at the Imperial Palace, and a special place called the Forbidden City. These were places where the Emperor of China lived with his family.  There were so many buildings all painted with bright colors. Regular people were not allowed in these places when there were emperors in China.

The roofs of the buildings were all yellow tiles.  The color yellow was only to be used by the Emperor.  If somebody else wore something yellow or used the color on their house they would be killed.  All the buildings in the Forbidden City had yellow tiled roofs. Under the bright yellow tiled roofs there was wood painted with bright colors in beautiful designs.

More to come about the Forbidden City tomorrow!