China: OVER

I'm heading home tomorrow morning! I see it as both a sad and happy time...

My experience here has been nothing short of amazing. The people, the city, the job, the culture...everything was incredibly great.

I'd like to thank some people specifically, for their great support and help that allowed me to enjoy this amazing opportunity: my parents, Grandma Conway, Aunt Wendy, Kelly, the Berry's, Sra. Martin, Dr. Wu, John, and anyone else who I may have missed. I very much appreciate the assistance, you've all allowed me to prepare and indulge in a once in a lifetime opportunity and I cannot thank you enough!!

Here are some things that I will and will not miss about Shanghai ;-) ...

Will miss:

• The brewery (when/where will I get free beer and food for an extended period of time!?...uggh)
• The lack of enforcement for traffic laws (constant speeding and red light running, my kind of driving)
• Learning and speaking Chinese (I'm doubtful that i'll maintain any kind of conversational or educational furthering of the language in the near future...sad)
• The helpful personality of Chinese people (sorry, but Americans just aren't as willing to help those in need!
• Street food (late night street food is the best here in Shanghai)
• Shanghai nightlife
• 'English Magic' (it's a phone number that you dial, basically a 411 (but it's free). They know all there is to know about the city of Shanghai...street addresses, directions, operating hours of stores/shops/restaurants, etc. They're main purpose is to tell your taxi driver how to get to where you want to go if the driver doesn't know. It's something that I think every big city should have - it makes life easy)
• The cleanliness (Shanghai seems to be a very clean city...there are people cleaning the streets 24/7 with brooms, and street-cleaning trucks drive around all the time, it's very impressive)
• The people (I've made some incredibly connections during my 3 months here, it has been wonderful meeting great people from all over the world, people I'll never forget)
• Bargaining the price of merchandise (this is something that the U.S needs to adopt...fake or just plain cheap stuff that can be bargained to declare a fair price)

Won't miss:

• Often finding myself in a state of confusion
• Doing sign language (sometimes my Chinese skills just don't hold up!)
• Feeling like people are yelling when really they're just speaking in normal conversation (Some Chinese tones can often come off as loud and obnoxious)
• Pulped juice (the Chinese don't believe in no pulp...only fully loaded pulp)
• Food served in bags (often, Chinese food is served in a bag, so you might get a bag of noodles and you're expected to eat out of the bag...very interesting)
• Shop owners literally pulling me into their store (some people just really want you to buy their stuff)
• Chinese food (granted, a lot of it is great stuff, but it rarely fills me up. I often find myself longing for more about 30 min after I've eaten a ton)
• 'China Cold' (beer and other beverages served at room temperature, or warmer)
• Pushing (a city with over 20 million people has crowded streets and subway stations...pushing is quite common)
• Space invasion (crowded subways = people in your face)
• Curious Chinese (they're always looking over my shoulder to see what I'm doing on my phone/ipod/computer...often annoying!)
• The little things that make life much easier...fast internet, good peanut butter, drinkable tap water, and much more.

Posting on this blog has been a lot of fun for the past 3 months, and I hope it has given you a chance to kind of 'see' what I've been up to over here on the other side of the world!

Thanks to anyone and everyone who has kept up with my blog!!!

Pat, OUT.

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PMM

City Weekend | Day In The Life: Pat McCombs

Here's my DITL Article, which will be published for the September 2010 edition of the City Weekend Magazine ;-) It's too bad I won't be in Shanghai to get a copy of the print! - They said they'll send me a digital version though - not as cool, but still pretty awesome.

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8:30am: A loud pounding is coming from a few floors up, it’s the daily morning construction of my building. I’m forced to wake up. Refusing to actually get out of bed until my alarm goes off in 30 minutes, I play a quick game of RISK on the itouch – world domination yet again.

9:00: Shower

9:10: Gmail, CNN.com, ESPN.com, Woot.com, Google Analytics. Thank god for internet (or Chairman Mao).

9:35: I cook up four scrambled eggs with our very limited stock of kitchen-ware. Cut some pineapple, and eat. Eggs, peanut butter, jelly, bread, and pineapples are the only foods that I actually know how to do something with in the kitchen.

9:40: Time to get working on today’s projects. I’m seeking out and comparing the prices of some local car/van rental transportation companies for www.3Dumplings.com, a new Shanghai cuisine tourism venture that my boss has recently started.

12:30pm: The door bell rings. It’s my Mandarin tutor, Linda, and she’s ready to teach me. I, however, am not so ready to be taught. I use too much English to actually retain the Chinese, so my tutoring sessions are frustrating when I cannot remember yesterday’s lesson. Her classes are always fun and pretty crucial to my daily navigation through Shanghai, so I buzz her in.

2:15: Time to bare the heat of the Shanghai summer. I jump on my bike and join the other crazy street travelers. After being nearly sandwiched by a taxi and a Nissan Teana, I make it to the local Yang’s Fried Dumpling for sheng jiang bao and noodles. Fantastic.

2:45: I’m off to Cantina for a meeting with the boss – Kelley Lee. We chat about the new location for the Boxing Cat, she makes sure I’m accomplishing things, and before she heads to probably her sixth meeting of the day, she encourages me to try a new tequila from a potential supplier…I’ll never turn down a free margarita.

4:40: Head over to the Cat to finish up work for the day. I lock my bike up out front, and sit down at the bar with the laptop.

6:05: Kelly, my girlfriend, skypes me from the U.S. She makes sure that I made it home safely last night after a 13-game winning streak of beer pong at I Love Shanghai. My buddy Paul and I found success in showing the talents of a few American college boys.

6:40: I waiver between the quesadillas and the chili nachos, both are heroic dishes in my eyes. I finish up my last bite, and wonder why there couldn’t have been 3 quesadillas on that plate – Mike Solovey clearly knows what he’s doing in the kitchen.

7:00: I hang out at the brewery for a couple more hours and finish up some work. The atmosphere in the restaurant makes for a perfect ‘office-like’ workspace for me, not too busy, laid-back, great people, and good American tunes coming through the speakers. Plus, who doesn’t love the constant smell of delicious micro-brewed beer? It sure beats the Nut Brown Ale that my buddy John and I tried to concoct in our kitchen last summer.

9:20: Off to Dairy Queen in Xiujiahui. I’ve got to leave the brewery by 9:20 so that I can get there before they close in ten minutes.

9:26: I roll up to the DQ window, the clerk notices my face. No need to order, she already knows what I want: a chocolate oreo and brownie blizzard – LARGE. As the girl behind the counter turns to give me my blizzard, I’m desperately praying that she’ll forget to flip it upside down when she serves it. ‘Served upside-down or it’s free’ – it says it right on the side of the cup! She flips it over and hands it to me. Damn, almost.

10:00: I give a ni hao to the security guard at the gate of my apartment building. My roommates are starting up some pirated episodes of Chuck, a series that I’ve recently become a huge fan of. We’re halfway through season two.

12:05am: I post on my SHANGHAI’D 2010 blog. Tell readers from back home all about my week, share some success stories, complain about the heat a little bit, show some pictures of friends and I enjoying the city, and I try to call it a day.

1:00: Still messing around on my computer, I should be going to bed, but I’m just too distracted – trying to figure out ways that I can improve my website, www.pmmcornholes.com. I open up Photoshop and try for a new logo, but no luck, maybe tomorrow night.

3:25: Sudoku for ten minutes until my eyes can’t handle it anymore. I finally pass out.

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PMM

Back in Shanghai, Just for a Bit Though!

It always feels comforting when I walk into the front door of my apartment after being gone for a few days. Although this place has begun to feel like home, it's about time I begin preparing to head to my real home in the U.S.! ...

Korea was a lot of fun. It was much more of a vacation than any of the other trips I've been on, which was a good change. No work, just play ;-)

I arrived in Incheon around noon on Thursday, and I jumped on the subway to head in the direction of Kyle and David's school (Incheon English Village - ICEV). From the subway station, I took a taxi to ICEV...giving the taxi driver my finest Korean accent while saying the name of the school in what I believed to be Korean. He looked very puzzled at first, but after a few 're-dos' on my part, he understood where I wanted to go.

Their school was pretty unbelievable - very similar to a college campus, but a place where Korean children go for extended periods of time (weeks or months) to learn English:

I was directed to the area where David and Kyle were teaching their summer school 8 year olds with a bunch of other teachers, and I helped out for a couple hours. First, we all had an ice cream break, which I didn't complain about. Then we did a spelling/writing game where about 80 kids broke up into groups of 10 or so. Next was dodgeball, again I wasn't going to argue! Overall, the time I spent there was a lot of fun, and if anyone reading this is looking for a fun job for a year, I would most certainly recommend looking into becoming an English teacher at Incheon English Village - they pay for you to fly to Korea, cover your apartment costs, some meals, and you get paid on top of that. Plus you're in a new and exciting place with a great group of fun people. It seemed like Kyle and David really enjoyed what they were doing there.

After school ended at 5pm, we took the school bus to the apartments, and then headed for some drinks at a place around the corner from Kyle's building. A bit later, Mike, John, Kyle, David, Mark, and I went to dinner at an authentic Korean restaurant. The food was amazing - they give you the meat and you cook it right there at your table, I'm pretty sure we had some kind of beef and some kimchi (Korean cabbage...not a huge fan). The older gentlemen next to us kept encouraging more and more drinking, so we partook. That's when the Korean lessons started. I will admit that Korean seems to be a much easier language to learn than Chinese is, but my brain has barely grasped much Chinese vocabulary and grammar, so learning Korean was just screwing with what I've been taught the past 3 months ;-) It felt very odd being in Korea. I was just beginning to feel pretty comfortable using my Chinese regularly in China, and then I got thrown into an entirely new language where I once again feel like a total foreigner...it comes with the territory of traveling I guess! Overall, learning different aspects of Korean culture and language was a lot of fun. They taught me that the oldest person at the table always pours the drinks, and when your drink is being poured, you always hold the glass with two hands. One Korean man next to us ended up giving me a bracelet for good luck in my travels because I was new to Korea, which was very nice of him! (but the bracelet was pink...not exactly my 1st color of choice)

^Kyle, David, and I^

From there, we made our way to some bars for the night and I slept most of the next day ;-) I did wake up with time to explore some of Incheon, though. I just walked for about 4 hours taking in all that I could...it was a pretty great area. It seemed that Incheon and Seoul were much more 'green' than both Shanghai and Beijing. Lots of trees everywhere, parks on almost every corner, and the sun was shining very often, which was a nice change.

Once the evening came around, I arrived back at Kyle's apartment just in time when the bus dropped him off from work, and we started getting ready for the night. His boss was taking everyone out for dinner as like a 'get to know you' with the new Korean interns that they recently hired. But I got to tag along for the meal/evening adventures as well! We ate some great Korean food again, hung out and played lots of games at the restaurant. We had the entire upstairs to ourselves (although we took our shoes off and sat indian-style on the ground next to a 1 foot tall table - quite uncomfortable in my opinion, I'm more of a chair and tall table kind of guy).

^David, Mike, Kyle, Me, and Mark^

So dinner was a lot of fun, and then we headed off to do a couple hours of Karaoke. Karaoke in Asia is much different than it is in the U.S. On this side of the world, you have your own room with a big screen and some couches, where you hang out with just your group of friends singing songs until your voice is horse. In my opinion, the open restaurant/bar singing on stage is much more exciting, but this was still a lot of fun.

My personal performances were some Jimmy Buffett, Coldplay, and Olivia Newton John ;-)

The next morning, I woke up pretty early to head over to Seoul to visit Gi Bum (G.B.), a good friend who I met over here in Shanghai. He came through NSC to intern in China as well, and we lived in the same building until he went back to Korea a couple weeks ago.

So, I hopped on a bus that cost me $1.50 to get to Seoul from Incheon, and about 50 minutes into the ride we got a flat tire...I have had zero luck with buses taking me places lately:

Surprisingly, another bus came relatively quickly, so we all jumped on and kept going. 20 minutes later, I had arrived. Then I took a taxi to GB's place, and met him and his family. He has 2 sisters and a brother. His parents were unbelievably nice. They showered me with food as soon as I walked in the door. The amount of food that they kept putting in front of me actually ended up getting pretty ridiculous and I had to tell his mom that I didn't want any more ;-)

After lunch, GB showed me around the city. It was great because he has a car (a nice black, 4-door, lexus), and so it was incredibly easy to get around Seoul. The weather wasn't exactly in our favor once the afternoon came, as it started raining a ton, but we toured almost every part of the city by driving by in the car ;-) It was nice. Seoul is a great city filled with some wonderful history and a very youthful atmosphere. It's broken up into a north side and a south side, divided by the Han River. GB lives on the south side, which has recently grown to hold a lot of large companies and new bars/clubs/restaurants/etc. Many parts of the city reminded me of San Francisco - lots of hills, very unlike the flatness of Shanghai - and lots of small streets with tons of bars and restaurants. I've never seen so many coffee shops. There was a Starbucks, Tom N Toms Coffee, Coffee Bean, or Coffee Smith probably every 2 stores...I couldn't believe it.

We saw as much as we could before it got dark, then grabbed some coffee, then drove up to the top of the mountain on the north side of the river for a bit (saw some cool views of the city down below), and then we met up with Miss Korea. Miss Korea as in Miss USA, but in Korea ;-) Apparently GB is friends with her. So we picked her up and went to dinner together.

She was a lot of fun. A very smart and driven girl. She wants to get into Korean politics, and it seems that she's on the right path so far! GB is trying to date her ;-) hopefully he gets somewhere!!

At dinner, we ate some delicious deep-fried peppers stuffed with beef, and spicy Korean fried chicken. Another A+ Korean meal in my book.

From dinner, we met up with on of GB's buddies down at the river and had some drinks together. Fireworks randomly starting going off across the water, so that was pretty cool. Then we headed off to the bars! I caught a cab back to Incheon at about 3am and met Kyle at a local bar right before he was getting ready to head back to his apartment, so that was lucky. We called it a night and then I woke up a couple hours later to jump on the subway for the airport!

I slept almost the entire plane ride back to Shanghai, and actually, a stewardess woke me up by poking me in the arm and saying "Sir, you should probably get up." I opened my eyes and noticed that there was not a single passenger on the plain except for the 8 or so crew members. I looked around and said to her, "Why yes, you're correct, I guess I probably should get up!" They laughed at me, so I laughed back ;-) At least I got to sleep!

Now, I'm back in Shanghai safely and I'm preparing things to head back to the U.S. This journey to Asia has been one great adventure, that's for sure!!

--

PMM

Koreaaaaaa!

I leave tomorrow morning, bright and early, for Korea!!

I have to catch the subway at 530am to get to the airport by 7am for my 9am flight. Then I'll arrive in Incheon at Noon (Korea time is one hour ahead of China, 13 hours ahead of almost everyone back home). From there, my plan is to hop on the subway and head to Kyle and Dave's school...Incheon English Village. Then they'll show me as much of the city in one evening/night as they can!

Friday morning, I'm heading into Seoul to meet my friend Gi Bum (G.B. is what we call him). He lives right in the city, and he said he'll show me a good time ;-)

Other than that, I don't have too many plans. It'll be a nice REAL vacation. No work. Just hanging out with good people and enjoying a fun new country! Hopefully I'll be able to soak up as much of South Korea as I can in just 4 days.

I come back to Shanghai on Sunday morning. Another early 9am flight :-)

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In other news, I recently met with my boss for our last 'business' meeting. She said I've done a great job for her, and my work has been a nice asset to all of her ventures. So that was nice to hear. My last real work day is Monday, I've got some things to finish up before heading back home. Basically, I'm just wrapping up my projects and creating a 'hand over package' for her so that she can use everything I've been doing to further her own projects. She's taking me out to dinner on Monday to a nice place on the Bund (a very beautiful and popular part of town, right on the river across from the downtown Pudong area), a couple other managers from the brewery are coming as well. It should be a nice last meal in Shanghai!

Recently, I've been doing some marketing projects for a big event that my boss is co-hosting this weekend. Frexh Shanghai 2010 (www.frexh.com) - It's two-day showcase of talent from fashion, cuisine, music, and art experts both local and foreign. Unfortunately I cannot attend the event that I've been putting quite a bit of time into, as I'll be on the other side of the Yellow Sea. That's really a bummer, because I'm sure it'll be great...hopefully it's a success!

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I should be able to find some time to post on here from Korea, but who knows! I'll definitely be back posting on Sunday.

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PMM

Beijing - Day Four ...and Five

Monday was GREAT WALL day for us...

We decided that it was best to go along with a tour group, as it's the most inexpensive way to get to the wall, if you want to go to the good parts. We chose to head for the Jin Shan Ling part of the Great Wall, because it is the furthest from Beijing, it has a lot of history, and there are barely any tourists hiking that area. The closest section of the wall to the city is called Ba Da Ling, and it's where almost every tourist goes. You can barely move along the wall because so many people are there, and that was not what we wanted to do. So we chose Jin Shan Ling, and it turned out to be better than we'd hoped for...

We woke up at 5am to shower and prep for the day. We needed to pack lunches to eat mid-day, and we needed a TON of water to take with us.

Our tour van picked us up at about 630am, and we drove around Beijing a bit to pick up the rest of our tour group. We were 15 in total, plus a driver and a tour guide (Judy). I fell asleep almost immediately once we were in the van, as did Paul:

After about 2 hours of driving, our driver got lost. We pulled over to ask where to go a few times, and then he seemed to be on the right path. Then we came to the worst traffic jam imaginable. A two-way, two-lane street turned into one lane, and the front cars of each side of traffic were head to head stuck in the middle of it all. The only way to move all of the cars was to have each line begin backing up and turning around, but cars just kept coming and they were piling on, so the jam seemed impossible to relieve. Our driver somehow managed to get us out (driving over a barrier and a few construction cones), and he opted to find his own path around the traffic. He searched and searched, and eventually drove into some kind of manufacturing pit. Apparently, he thought that if we drove through this area (where there were zero roads visible), we would end up on the correct street which would lead us to our destination. Ohh was that an adventure...

First, the driver told us that we should all get out, leave our stuff in the van, and start walking to the other side of the pit, because the ground was too uneven for the van to hold any passengers. Paul, Ibbi, and I looked at each other and said, "Okay, this is where he takes off with all of our stuff and leaves us here in the middle of nowhere to fend for ourselves." :-) ...

You can see here that I was a bit concerned about the situation:

Our driver wandered for a while, got out of the van a couple times, perused the area as best he could, and then decided that his only option was to shoot the van down a 15-foot declined slope that would put us in a position to leave the pit area. We all disagreed, and tried to explain to him that there was a better option, but he was set on getting his van down there. And, what happened?

I know you're in disbelief, but yes Paul, the van is stuck right there on the sloping land:

We all thought, "Ohh isn't this wonderful...we'll never get to the Great Wall!"...

We pushed, and we jumped on bumpers, and rocked that van as much as we could, but it was pivoting on the chassis and we couldn't get any tires to catch the ground!

While Judy went to find a bulldozer to help pull us out of this mess, Mr. Genius Driver Man decided that his best way out was to clear way the ground from beneath his van where the vehicle was sitting. That way, the tires would eventually sit on the ground, and we could drive away...

His plan actually ended up working, and while he destroyed his back bumper getting down the declined land, he did get down it! His fussing with our stuck van gave us ample time to explore the pit and find an easy way out that the driver couldn't mess up. Once he removed the van from it's seemingly cemented position, we got in and drove right out and up on to the road. THANK GOD!

Once out of the pit, the Great Wall was just an hour away. So, 4.5 hours after getting picked up in Beijing, we arrived at Jin Shan Ling, ready to hike. First we ate lunch, then we hiked.

Judy may have been the worst tour guide ever, as she turned out to know barely anything about the history of the wall, but it was alright, we found other ways to learn all about it. Paul, Ibbi, and I realized that Judy and the rest of the group would only hold us back from accomplishing as much hiking along the Wall as we could, so we left them and we headed up...

(Paul and I, once again, rocking the sweat towels...so handy)

About ten minutes into our hike up the mountain, we stumbled upon this climbing area, and we immediately became 5 year old boys...

That lasted 15 minutes or so, and then we got back to business...

Not far from there, we ran into an old man selling Chinese hats for incredible prices, so I had to get one ;-)

Our hike continued, until we made it to the actual wall, then we had to figure out a way up and into the top of the wall...

That's when the sweat just starting flowing like niagra falls...

Eventually, we made it up and physically onto the Wall, and the view was incredible (a bit foggy, but nonetheless awesome):

We ended up meeting three very nice Mongolian ladies, who were souvenir vendors. They had some good quality Chinese fans that they waved in our faces to cool us off...clearly they wanted something from us. After a while, we offered money to them, but they wouldn't take it. They said they just wanted us to buy a few souvenirs after we were done hiking. They kindly taught us all they knew about the Great Wall, and even showed us a short cut for the way down the mountain to meet back up with our tour group! In the end, we just purchased some small trinkets from them and off they went. They were much better guides than Judy was, and I don't think Paul would have made it as far as he did along the wall if they were not there to comfort him :-) These ladies were amazing - a couple were 70 years old and they were hiking like professionals. Paul fell behind to them quite often ;-)

This part of the Great Wall had a watch tower every 100 or 200 meters. Some parts of the wall were newly renovated, but nearly every hiking area was not. We were hiking on stones and bricks that were hundreds of years old. In many areas, the Wall was deteriorating a lot, but overall it was pretty well preserved and provided us with some great photographic moments...

We were amazed how so few people were visiting the Wall. We saw maybe 40 other visitors.

Here, you can see the immense amount of sweat from the heat of the day. Paul and I basically gave up on the sweat towels after a while:

I took my Albion College and Sigma Chi Fraternity flags with me on the trip, in hopes that I could get some nice pictures promoting two organizations that have given me many great opportunities to partake in some very cool adventures...

16 watch towers, and 3 hours of hiking later, we headed down the mountain to catch the van back to Beijing...

By the end of our journey, we were very tired but very happy with how the day went. Our visit to the Great Wall was incredible. We ended up really enjoying ourselves and we had a great time exploring the Jin Shan Ling Great Wall. A wonderful experience to say the least.

Ohh yea, we swung by a restaurant on the way back to our hostel and they had DOG MEAT on the menu...

...We didn't order it, too expensive and too weird!

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That basically wraps up our journey to Beijing. The next morning, Ibbi and I got up at 430am to head to Tienanmen Square for the National Flag Raising Ceremony. We were amazed at the number of people awake to see an event that early in the morning. For us, it wasn't incredibly spectacular. Some guards put the flag on the pole, they played the national anthem very loud, and they raised it up. I'd say the whole thing was about 5 minutes, I guess what can you expect with a flag raising!? Then we went back to the hostel for more sleep.

Tuesday, we just relaxed and met some other travelers at the hostel. It was nice to have a day of rest! Then we jumped on our Train for Shanghai at 10pm, and we arrived back home at 8am Wednesday morning.

Overall, a very fun and exciting trip to Beijing!

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PMM

Beijing - Day Three

Sunday in Beijing was a busy and tiring day for us.

We woke up at 7am to get to Tienanmen Square early before Chairman Mao's Mausoleum closed at noon. If you're unsure about what a mausoleum is, it's a building dedicated to being the burial chamber of a deceased famous person, often visited by tourists to pay their respects to this person.

In China, Chairman Mao is most commonly seen as a heroic figure in the building of what is now the People's Republic of China. He used the Chinese Communist Party to do a lot of great things for the country. He also did some inhumane things, and a lot of those are hidden to the people of China. Chinese history books portray him as a great man, and his face is printed on all national currency. Therefore, it is considered an honor to have a chance to visit Chairman Mao's burial site. Many Chinese citizens consider it something that they have to do before their life is over.

For us, it wasn't so much a big thing, but we thought it was very interesting. Personally, it was nice to see the man that I recently learned so much about. Last year at school, I took a very quality Chinese History class, and had a chance to learn quite a bit about Chairman Mao and his Party's doings. They don't let you take cameras into the mausoleum. They say that 'there is no reason to take Chairman Mao's picture because his face is on the money, so everyone already has many pictures of him.' Alright, I can respect that. Chinese people get to Tienanmen Square every morning before 5 am to line up to enter Mao's Mausoleum - it seems to be quite a big deal. Check out the lines leading into the building...

They wrapped around Tienanmen square like no lines I've ever seen at any amusement parks:

People have umbrellas out to block the heat, not to protect them from rain. Once again, it was an incredibly hot day in China.

The security guards actually made us get out of line after we waited for about 20 minutes (these lines move fast, you're never stopped waiting, everyone maintains a constant pace and they almost push people through seeing Chairman Mao inside of the mausoleum). We got out because I had a backpack on me, and no bags are allowed in the building, so we had to go across the street and check it. The security guard told us we could get back to our spot that we left, which was nice.

Once back to our place in line, it took us maybe 10 more minutes and we were in the mausoleum. People brought in flowers (I've never seen anyone receive so many flowers). It's like Chairman Mao has his own wake/funeral every single day of the year. I read that some 20,000 + people visit Mao every single day. He's got to be the most visited person of all time. :-) ...As we approached his resting place, people became very quiet and respectful, some cried, some smiled, it seemed to be a very emotional experience for many visitors. For me, Chairman Mao looked somewhat 'doll-like' and very well preserved, but it was nonetheless a very cool visit.

From there, we headed across the square to the Forbidden City (ohh look, a nice big portrait of Chairman Mao, right there on the front building leading into the Forbidden City)...

So what is the Forbidden City? Well, it was built in the early 1400s, it's full of almost 1,000 buildings with classic Chinese architecture, it was the home of emperors for hundreds of years, and was used as the center of governmental business as well. It is magnificently large, the buildings are beautiful, you walk a ton, and people are everywhere.

About halfway through our journey within the Forbidden City, Ibbi found a closed door that seemed to be unlocked, and he poked it open. Turned out there was a nice restaurant behind the door, and no one was there. Air-conditioning at last!! It was magical. We purchased a few waters, and sat down to play some Chinese Checkers. Paul and Ibbi had never played before, I remembered a few things about the game from playing it a while back, but we asked the waiters how to play correctly and they taught us. We probably sat there for an hour and a half drinking water and playing Chinese Checkers. It ended up being a lot of fun!...

After a while, we made it to the end of the Forbidden City, and headed for a short hike up to the top of Jingshan Hill inside of Jingshan Park, where there sat a few halls overlooking the sites below. Tiring...

Before making it to the top, a man sold us some pretty flashy Chinese hats. Yes, they do have fake black hair attached to them... :-)

Once atop the hill, we had a great view of the Forbidden City...

After Jingshan Park, we headed back to the hostel for dinner and we crashed. We had to be up the next morning at 5am to prepare for our trip to the Great Wall on Monday!

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PMM