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!
