Beijing, Day 1

Yesterday we took the overnight train from Nanjing to Beijing. Each compartment had 4 beds and was pretty small, but still comfortable for the amount of time we had to spend there. Usually it only takes about 8 hours to get to Beijing from Nanjing, but the train had to stop a few times during the middle of the night due to mechanical issues. We arrived at our hotel a little after 9 AM and immediately started our exploration of the city. Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven. You might notice that I have attached a link to the place we visited. This is because I am way to tired from today to go over all the details of the places we saw, so I have decided to let you look at the information on your own. Just click on the highlighted words and enjoy. The temple was really cool and, as most things in China have done, blew me away due to its age. Most dynasties in this country have lasted longer than the entire existence of the United States. After the temple we went to the infamous Tiananmen Square. This was way bigger than you can grasp from just looking at pictures. It is also arguably the most politically volatile area in China, which you can see from the linked Wikipedia description. I won't go into details about that because I don't want my blog to get blocked, but I will say that there are more security cameras and military personel in that single area than I have seen in all of China so far. I was disappointed to find that Mao Zedong's Mausoleum was closed for the day because I was really hoping to see his body on display. I didn't know this before, but his body is still being preserved and put on display there even though he has been dead for almost 33 years. That is something a lot of people were grossed out by, but for some reason I think it'd be awesome to say I saw the body of Mao Zedong. After Tiananmen Square we went to the Forbidden City. The entrance to the Forbidden City is the picture I posted at the top of this blog entry. It is where the last (I think) government sponsored portrait of Chairman Mao is on display. The Forbidden City is huge and took about an hour to walk from the south entrance to the north entrance. After the Forbidden City we went to an amazing restaurant and had Beijing duck, which is world famous. It lived up to the hype and was the best duck I've ever had. Tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall, which I'm looking forward to. I'll try to fill you in on that after we get back if there is enough time. I am falling asleep while writing this so I'll talk to you all later!