I awoke slightly eager for my first day in China, but mostly not knowing what to expect. I was on the other side of the world, how could I possibly know what to do? I headed down to breakfast at the hotel to thankfully find familiar faces of other students in the group. The schedule for the day hit us head on. Our very first day here we were planned to see Tiananmen Square, the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace. Yikes, get out your comfortable walking shoes people!
On our drive over to Tiananmen Sqaure I observed many cultural differences. The most immediate one I found was that, unlike here, there is no "You go, then I go" policy. People cross the street and cars drive by at the same time.
The cars will see you, don't worry.
It is a similar situation with just cars too. "We all need get on that road. Well... we'll figure it out."
Seen below is Howard. Everyone say "Hello Howard!"
Howard is possibly one of the most adorable Asian tour guides I have ever met.... not that I have met a lot of them. He sort of reminds me that of a turtle. He loved to tell us little stories or useful things to know in China. For today, we learned the Chinese word: 茄子 (pronounced: Ched-za). This certain world means "eggplant". However, the Chinese commonly use it for how we use the word "cheese" to take a picture! So before a picture everyone says "Ched-za!" with a big smile. Thanks for the help, Howard.
The size of Tiananmen Sqaure can not possibly be captured on camera. Unless of course you get a birds eye view.... which we did not. But a little fun fact: The square is capable of holding one million people... making it the largest city square in the world.
Across the street from the square is the China Nation Museum.
At one end of the square you can see the entrance to the Forbidden City. This is also where the famous protests happened in 1989. Click in the panoramic picture to enlarge it.

Entrance to the Forbidden City:
The Chinese really like to make things that are massive. It's a stereotypical thing to say but the more I saw on this trip, the more I found it to be true. T-Square, The Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors, Hong Kong light show... it goes on an on. But the most massive thing out of all of them was probably the Forbidden City. It is 720,000 square meters, making it more then half the size of Minnesota's Mall of America. Except this one was built several hundreds of years ago...

Upon entering it, it is just courtyard after courtyard. And each courtyard is about the size of a football field. Or two. This certain courtyard has a river going through it:
What I found most intriguing though was the amazing design the buildings had. Incredible detail and color.
These bricks are 100-300 years old. There is also about 15 layers of bricks, so that no one can dig a hole up through the ground and sneak into the Forbidden City.
For hundreds and hundreds of years, the Emperors of China would live here at the Forbidden City. However, in 1911 there was a revolution and this type of government ended. The People's Republic of China started in 1912. Now today, the Forbidden City stands as a land mark. Upon exiting the other side of the City, I look one way:
And then the other:
These walls that surrounded the city spanned up to 30 feet high. After seeing Tiananmen Square and the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City, it was time to see the Summer Palace. Just in case... you know... the emperor got bored of his massive city.... he had a summer palace to go to. On the drive there we passed by the Bird's Nest, from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The summer palace is almost as big as the Imperial Palace. It sits on a high mountain, overlooking Lake Kunming.
This impressive tunnel of a walkway stretched for almost half a mile. Again, with an impressive design and color scheme.
I could not resist but take a picture of this. What does that sign say?

thanks for the advice.
On another side of the hill is a shopping center for the emperor. Because sometimes the emperor wanted to feel like a normal person, so they built him a private shopping center and would give him money so he could walk from stall to stall and buy stuff. Irony? I know.
By that time it was getting close to dinner. That night we went to a very old yet well-kept restaurant and had a Peking duck dinner. Don't know what that is? Imagine a cooked duck, except 3x more delicious and the skin tastes like bacon's brother. Yeah.
After dinner we went to the hotel to rest up for the next day: A tour of the old city in rickshaws and then rehearsal for a concert that night. This is called a power-vacation.
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