Day 99. Kyle and Leanne joint blog.

Up early again for Grace. We’ve had to shift the Temple of Heaven to this morning on top of the scheduled activities making for a China “Big Sauce” day even though John didn’t plan it.  After witnessing our slower than desired, discombobulated pace yesterday, Grace has us meeting in the lobby even earlier than yesterday.  “Don’t oversleep and be late,” she warns us with a wagging finger as we head to the elevator. Granted  we ran about 30 minutes late for our yesterday morning start time as we were trying to get over our jet lag.  Apparently Grace doesn’t think we’ll take her parting words seriously enough so unbeknownst to us, she goes to the front desk and puts in wake-up calls for all our rooms for 6:30am.  If there was a betting line on us being early, on-time or late, Grace would bet the house, farm and her life savings on us being late.  Then again, we probably would too.   

We are up and down to breakfast seven minutes before we are supposed to leave.  Grace has arrived early just in case her surprise hotel wake-up calls plan didn’t work.  We can see her checking her watch as we attempt to set a Guinness Book of World Records for a family of seven inhaling an entire breakfast buffet down without chewing in under seven minutes. 

First up, UNESCO World Heritage Site, Temple of Heaven.  Score as we beat several tour groups. This is a daily competition we have on this trip because if we lag behind too many of them, it messes up our day’s timing and best photo opportunities. The group guides are fully aware of this unspoken globally-consistent competition.  

The Temple of Heaven built for the Emperor to pray for the people and harvests. We’re oversimplifying here, but it’s UNESCO so you know it has to be good. It has a great museum explaining China’s various dynasties and the formal rituals that the Emperor would commence. The Temple was only used once or twice a year and only the Emperor and a select few of his servants were allowed to enter inside the Temple.  

We then go to a nearby silk factory.  The stop is marketed as witness and learn how silk is made. Our “tourist-trap-o-meter” is firing off the charts.  We can already guess that it’s a couple minutes of silk making steps and then they take you into the back gigantic storeroom and try get you to buy all sorts of silk products.  We can’t really say no so we politely file into the Silk store, um we mean, factory. We learn about the process of making silk from silkworms and how this essentially was the fundamental product that changed the world through the Silk Road. 

The demonstration woman show us her team of workers demonstrating the silk process. We are led into a showroom store with silk, silk, silk everywhere and now, not surprisingly to us, the demonstration woman turns into Sweet Silk Saleswoman before our very eyes. Another hook line and sinker that we fall for. We leave with a new silk bedroom set having shipped it home. Fingers crossed it actually gets there.  

We ponder how even though we knew full well it was a tourist trap, we still fell victim for the second time, no less.  We have noticed that Grace is consistently moving us along, telling us to hurry up, waving her hand in a frantic pick up the pace motion at bathroom breaks, meals and all the tourist stops but when we get to a tourist trap store, she becomes suspiciously quiet letting us take as long as we want without nary a comment or frantic gesture. “Yet another coincidence?” you ask again. And once again, we think not. Rather this smells to us like a “kick-back”, umm…we mean “sales commission”, going from the Store to the guide for whatever we buy.  In fact, it would not surprise us if Grace was an investor in the company “Tourist-Traps-R-Us” along with all these stores.

Next stop is the Yonghe Lama Temple (“The Palace of Peace & Harmony) which is a Tibetan Buddhist Temple dating back to the late 1600’s that was built by one of the past Chinese Emperors to improve relations with Tibet. We didn’t know a lot about Buddhism before this trip but we are getting immersed.  We try to grasp the differences between Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism but realize it’s not going to happen in a one-hour visit to this temple.

Next up, some fun items mixed in on the itinerary.  We take a rickshaw ride through the Hutong district to Old Beijing.  We actually it is four rickshaw rides as we’re pretty sure they haven’t invented a rickshaw that could fit our family plus the guide without requiring a team of 10 bicycle riders working in unison. The ride takes us to the home of a local woman who teaches us how to make dumplings. 

The scene from Crazy Rich Asians is still fresh in our heads and we are convinced we have the teens beat on this one.  How hard can it be to make a dumpling? Apparently, harder than it looks as the kids surpass us in the dumpling making competition with Kyle looking at his dumpling which looks more like a pancake than a dumpling. The woman then feeds us a great lunch of authentic Chinese food in her home. We are thrilled with our non-tourist experience that won’t be easily forgotten. 

After lunch, we head to Beihai Park which is a high point where we can take in views of the vast city of Beijing as we cross our 10,000 step mark. At the Mountain Temple at the top, we get a view of the tops of the massive 9,000 room Forbidden City where the Chinese Emperors lived for centuries.  Unfortunately, the Forbidden City was unexpected closed “in preparation for the 70thanniversary celebration” the day before we arrived. This one is worse than getting Big Ben’d. At least we can see the massive Palace from the outside. As we are exiting the park, Kyle stops to take a picture of a beautiful tree and gardens and Grace points out that this tree was where one Emperor hung himself before he could be captured during a peasant uprising.  We could have done without that visual as Kyle notes that picture now likely won’t make the blog post.

Still going, we have one more stop for the day, The Emperor’s Summer Palace. We enter into the gardens but because we are behind schedule (shocker!), we have to fast pace this UNESCO site. There’s a great story how it was built for the Emperor’s mother using materials that were originally meant for military purposes. The large lake we guide over on the ornamental tour boat was dug out by hand.  And there’s a covered walkway so the Emperor could take a long stroll anytime and in any weather. 

The enormity and grandeur of the Emperor’s Palace (Forbidden City), Summer Palace and Temple remind us of the phrase “it’s good to be the King,” and how being the Emperors first, true-born son is the equivalent to winning one of those crazy 9 figure, multi-state, mega Power Ball lotteries all by yourself.

Next on the schedule is a visit to a Scout troop at the International School of Beijing (ISB).  Justin and Corey are continuing their quest for meeting international Scouting troops across the world.  The boys found on ISB’s website that there was a Court of Honor today at 6:30pm.  Despite several e-mail attempts, they haven’t heard back with an official invitation but the website encourages that all visitors are welcome to attend.  We arrive at the school earlier and find a guard booth.  The guard is very nice but says he can’t let them in without permission of one of the Scout leaders. So Justin & Corey stand outside the guard station to see if they can see any Scouts entering through the gate who could help them out. 

After about ten minutes of scoping incoming cars, one of the adult Scout Leaders drives in wearing the familiar BSA Scouting shirt.  The scouts ask him if they can join the Court of Honor tonight.  Turns out the Scoutmaster is an American Air Force Officer who actually once lived in our town back home. What are the chances of that?  Our first time in China, 1.4 billion people, and we run into someone from our hometown of 10,000 people.  Kyle says maybe we should be the one buying the Power Ball ticket. Meant to be. The two scouts — Corey and Justin — head in while the rest of us go to a mall about 1.5 miles away. 

 We have about two hours of free time. Since free time is rare and precious, we opt for hair cutting appointments while John and the girls shop in this ex-pat friendly mall.  Leanne needs her grey hairs concealed, so at one point five Chinese men are over her discussing her hair.  They are serious about hair in this salon! For most of the time, 2 to 3 men are brushing, coloring and wrapping her hair.  They offer her a beer and fresh fruit.  Her highlights are done in half the time she invests back at home and they are perfect.   It brings new meaning to the phrase “many hands make light work.”

 When we pick up Justin and Corey, they are beaming having met some great scouts, learned all about their troop and exchanged neckerchiefs and patches with the Beijing Troop. Scouting is banned in China with the exception of international schools like this one so this was a rare opportunity. Justin said it was one of his top highlights of the trip so far. Good luck on this one. 

Back at the hotel, we order pizzas for the scouts and play pool one last time at the Penta Hotel. Tomorrow, we leave Beijing for Xi’an via fast train.  Must pack now.