Dec. 10 - Beijing (Cheryl)

What a stupendous day we had! We met our guide and driver and boarded the bus again at 8:30am, and spent the morning at the Summer Palace. It is on Kunming Lake, and has the largest covered corridor (outside, along the lake shore) in the world. Every inch of the rafters and inside of the roof and beams is covered with beautiful paintings.

We then visited a pearl factory and learned about how pearls are raised, and had our first experience with haggling, a major sport in China! We drove back into Beijing and climbed into pedicabs (two of us in each cab) and toured the hutong (alley) area near the drum tower. We had lunch in a private residence in a hutong house, which are designed around a center courtyard that 3 or 4 families share. Mrs. Chen and Mr. Liu were wonderful hosts - Mrs. Chen took us all into the kitchen where she demonstrated dumpling making, and then we each rolled and filled and shaped a dumpling of our own.

Lunch was delicious - the best meal we've had so far. Their son is a chef at a 5 star hotel in Beijing, and they served rose petals that he had candied that were out of this world. Mr. Liu "chirped" a lot as he served us the food dishes, and we finally asked him what the noise was. It turns out he raises and fights crickets, and the chirping were cricket gourds with these huge (3" long) crickets in them. He carries them inside his shirt so that he can enjoy their music all day. He showed us all his cricket care implements and their cages and feeding dishes, and described how cricket fighting is carried on. It was awesome!

Then we got back into the pedicabs for more barreling down narrow alleys and darting in front of buses (at one point on our video Laurie and I are laughing hysterically and Laurie says "and this is where your mother was killed by a bus, Kaeli!"). We visited a kindergarten and the two-year-olds sang to us - we were all in tears by the time we left. Then back into the pedi-cab/death on wheels machines and we toured the Drum Tower, which was used long ago to ring out every two hours to keep time for the citizens of Beijing.

We had dinner at a local restaurant (another great meal, with spicy shrimp we had to use gloves to peel), then to a theater to watch an acrobatic show. At one point the bus driver did a u-turn from the far right lane across 8 lanes of traffic into the far left lane - this impressed Todd and David who want to try this at home. Their wives (and Laurie and I!) were NOT impressed however!