This morning we visited Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and experienced a rickshaw ride around hutong. Tiananmen Square had rich history and is surrounded by many historical and important Chinese buildings. On one side is the gates to the Forbidden City which feature a large painting of Chairman Mao.
The Forbidden City was filed with traditional Chinese designs, such as dragons and the colours red and gold.
The rickshaw ride had a large impact on our perceptions on what Beijing is really about. We saw many people that are less fortunate than us. This made us think about what we believe is hard compared to what they believe is hard. It also made us think about how lucky we are to have the opportunity to be travelling around China with our school. I, Adriana was slightly distressed seeing the way people live and what their future holds, because from what we saw it looked very difficult for them to make ends meet and provide enough for a large family. Synnoeve (Sunny) also found this quite sad, as she has already experienced so much of the world whereas these people were struggling just to make a living. For lunch we ate at a generous family’s home who had kindly prepared traditional Chinese food for us.
In the afternoon we had the opportunity to attend a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. It was great to learn about how to smell and taste a variety of teas. We particularly liked the fruity tea.
In the afternoon we went to downtown Beijing and saw many of the leading brand shops. After that, we went to Food Street also located in downtown Beijing. There we saw many strange delicacies such as spiders, seahorse, starfish and sea urchin. This was an interesting encounter because many locals ate some of these specialties. The people in our group found this quite different and most became slightly squeamish.
We had dinner at a restaurant where we ate from a round table banquet. This is traditionally Chinese and the food was good. After dinner we went to the Peking Opera to see a traditional Chinese opera. One of the actors did his own makeup and put on his costume on on stage, showing us how much time and effort it takes to put on a Chinese Opera. The Chinese Opera was very interesting and different, showing us a piece of their culture.
By Adriana Pinirou and Synnoeve Undhjem
