First full day in Beijing

Monday October 7, 2013
Our flight from Washington leaving at 12:20 Saturday afternoon actually landed in Beijing at 2:20 Sunday afternoon due to the time change of 12 hours ahead added to the 14 hour flight.
On Monday morning, our  busload of 24 plus 2 guides first went to the Temple of Heaven where the emperor went to humble himself in prayer to guarantee a good harvest.

 There is a huge square at the entrance and lots of parkland. These people were using the space to dance while others were doing tai chi or other exercises or practising their calligraphy on the pavement using big brushes and water. As we saw throughout southeast Asia, in China people really use the parks and are not embarrassed to be seen doing things that would be unusual in Canadian parks. Everyone lives in apartments so this is their open space

 In China, squares or rectangles, like the shape of the park, represent the earth and circles represent the heavens. Here is Anita on the central circle reaching up to heaven.

Another part of the Temple of Heaven.
Every day for lunch we were taken on the bus to a nice, big restaurant with round tables. Each table had a huge lazy susan turntable where at least 10 different dishes were placed. We all got green tea and one glass of beer per meal. Each table was marked with a flag for the different groups. We were always Table 12. The 8 of us would spin the turntable and take whatever food we wanted. We were taught that the Chinese version of "Cheers" was pronounced "Gambay" which we somehow immediately mangled to "Rambo" (I think Anita had a hand in this). At every meal we cheered "Rambo" for the next 3 weeks.
Right near the Temple of Heaven is Tiananmen Square, the Hall of the People (like Parliament), and Mao's tomb. Tiananmen Square leads to the Forbidden City just across the street.

Photo-op in front of the Temple of Heaven.

 In Tiananmen Square we are in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier and the Hall of the People. Our guide said that he would answer any political questions when we were in the privacy of the bus but not to ask him political questions in public. He had a real and very rational fear of being arrested if he was ever critical of the government in public. Around public places in Beijing, especially Tiananmen Square, there are lots of closed circuit tv surveillance cameras. The Chinese government is very serious about repression of dissent. The Chinese public know less about arrested dissidents than we learn about them in Canada. There are no human rights or free speech in China.

 Photo op in the Forbidden City, the former home of the emperor where he lived with his family, concubines and eunuch servants. The Forbidden City is massive. It took quite a bit of the hot, sunny afternoon to walk through it.

After dinner we went to the Peking Opera, a traditional Chinese opera. Before the show, an assistant dressed one of the main characters on stage to show us the elaborate costume. We were all really tired from our day in the hot sun and from jet lag, to the point where many of us were nodding off in our seats. However, the screeching operatic so-called singing woke us up. Many of us got a little giddy but tried to be respectful and not laugh. Unfortunately that led to a lot of snorting and giggling that we couldn't stop for awhile. We couldn't wait for the main character to commit suicide, as promised, so the performance would end. We can't recommend going to a Chinese opera. It's excruciating.

Off to China October 5 2013

Not long into our recent trip to China, we discovered that blogspot, as well as facebook and other sites, is blocked in China. Therefore, we're going to catch up on our blog now that we're home and can still remember at least some of what happened.
We had never gone on an organized tour before, but we had heard good things about Sinorama and thought that the price was very reasonable for a 23 day tour of China. Also, we were a little intimidated by the logistics of travel in China so after we returned from southeast Asia last spring, we booked this trip.
October 4th, 2013
We hadn't got our flight schedule and visas from Sinorama until a couple of weeks before the trip so we had no idea whether everyone who booked for the same tour as us would be on the same flight. As it turned out, we were among the few who didn't get the best flight schedule. However, on Friday October 4th, I picked up Anita at a supply teaching job in Killaloe at noon and off we drove to Ottawa. We stayed at the Days Inn overnight, left our car there, and took the shuttle to the airport at 4 am. We didn't get much sleep. Our flight to Washington Dulles on UA left at 6 am. It was only 1 hour 40 minutes and then we had a 4 hour and 40 minute hangover until our flight left Dulles for Beijing. At least Anita had time  to grant President Obama a photo op. Naturally on our next flight, we flew over southern Ontario on the way so we were just going back the way we had already come.

Fourteen hours from Washington to Beijing is the longest single flight we had ever taken. Neither of us slept much but we watched a lot of movies. Due to the 12 hour time change, we arrived in Beijing only 2 hours after we left, at 2:20 pm. This was the beginning of jet lag.
This was also the beginning of our discovery that a lot of the infrastructure in China, for example the Beijing airport, is new, very modern and very large. Every airport or high speed train station we went through on our trip was big and beautiful. There have been 80,000 km of expressways built over the last 30 years. China has definitely been on the move, much more so than we would have ever guessed.
Our "national guide", who took the English name of "Mark", met us outside the arrivals area right after we picked up our luggage. He was with us for the whole 23 days while "local guides" also led us in each location after Beijing. Mark was great, very patient, organized and cheerful.
Sinorama is apparently owned by a Chinese Canadian person and is a big company, sending many Canadian tourists to China each year. It seems that they can offer such good prices by volume buying. We had already been assigned to Bus 4 and Table 12. Whether it was on a bus, train, plane, or boat, we traveled with the same group of 24 people for the whole trip. Sinorama had 10 such groups arriving in Beijing at the same time. We'd see and chat with the other groups in big restaurants or in the hotel lobbies or at tourist sites, but we never had any organized interaction with them.
For each meal, the group of 24 was divided into 3 groups of 8 so we ate with the same group of 8 for every organized meal. Breakfast was always a buffet so we could eat at any table but otherwise all the tables were marked with our group number. Having always traveled before on our own, we were hesitant about this arrangement but it worked out just fine. Our group of 24 was always punctual and cheerful, with a couple of notable exceptions, and our dinner companions were great. Frank & Kathy, Kevin and Mary, and Ram and Nazeera were very amiable and lots of fun. We're glad we met them. In the end, we chose to eat breakfast with them too whenever we could, even when it wasn't required. Most of the people in our group of 24 were about our age and retired or close to it.
Over the course of the trip, we learned that, as we had suspected, there are pros and cons to this type of travel. We would never have seen so much at such a low price with so little effort on our part if we hadn't gone on a group tour. However, there was also never any real need to interact with the local people to find hotels, restaurants, sites of interest or to figure out how to get around the country. We spoke mostly with the tour guides and the others in the group, not with local people. We had no need to mangle the language and do weird pantomimes to get where we wanted to go. It's a bit more like going to the zoo and a bit less like traveling through the wilderness. As part of a group, you are always on the group schedule and not on your own. If you want more or less time at any site, or want to leave the hotel earlier or later, it's not happening. The walking pace is also much slower than our normal rate, since all levels of health and fitness have to be accommodated.
However, it worked out great and gave us as much of a taste of China as we wanted. We may do a group tour again, but only when it's the best option. For example, this might be the way to tour the pyramids of Egypt or the wilderness of Africa, but we would never go this way to Europe or Australia.
Anyway, Mark got us all on the bus and away we went to the Beijing Lijingwan Hotel for a welcome dinner and some sleep. All of our hotels were 5 star and were some of the best hotels we've ever stayed in. We could never have afforded these hotels if travelling on our own.
Although everyone was way overtired, I think we all had trouble sleeping for quite a few days due to the time difference. Jet lag is a bitch.