Bejing Days 1-3

This year, since BGSU was having talks with some of the Chinese Universities for some sort of exchange partnership all the students from BG were able to stay in Beijing for a week on a nearly-all-expense-paid vacation during Easter break. 

My Luggage!

We left on the 18th of April to fly out of the Hong Kong International Airport, an experience on it's own.  Austin spotted a Popeyes and couldn't resist, ultimately he would end up going through security clutching his bag of deliciously fried goodness.  We actually had our own AFTER we went through security, but we all enjoyed it together anyway.  The ride there and the connecting flight in Taiyuan came with minimal problems and we got to Hotel Beijing without much trouble either.  Although the taxi I was in charged us 180 RMB while the other taxi only paid half of that. We did all arrive to the hotel safely though, some of us had to sacrifice some credit so we could get into our rooms, since our teacher hadn't arrived yet.  We walked into our rooms, threw everything on the beds and met back up in the lobby to explore.

We had a supremo location.  The Beijing Hotel is right in the middle of it all.  To the left of us was a giant shopping plaza complete with markets, food stalls, and designer outlets, as well as a McDonalds.  We went out into the night and turned down the first interesting/busy/dangerous alley we could find. Unbelievably we ran into some friends we knew from HKBU eating at one of the tiny restaurants, we decided to sit down and join them for some noodles.  Luckily we had a mandarin translator present with us.  After dinner we walked around for a little bit, but soon I hit a wall and got very sleepy and so did everybody else.  So we headed back to the hotel and fell asleep, since we had to be up early tomorrow.

The 19th was a Tuesday and that day we met with some US Embassy officials and were able to have a fairly informal conversation with them.  Even though we were dressed to impress.  The conversation was very interesting, unfortunately a bit short.  I apologize but I'm not allowed to publish any thing we talked about during the dialogue, confidential stuff.



Outside the Forbidden City

 

BGSU does Beijing

After the Embassy our teacher took us to a great little place that served mounds of dumplings for a super cheap price and we definitely had our fill.  Once we were satisfied we found our way to parts of the Forbidden City, the unpaid area anyway, and got a quick view of Tienanmen square.  We also went to a nice little park and walked around there for a while.  This day was full of a lot of walking and we were getting tired again so we trekked it back to the hotel. I'm pretty sure alot of us passed out but we had plans for dinner around 7 pm.  All the students gathered together to go hit up the food stalls down the street.  Seriously, the food in Beijing might have been the best part for me, although some people say the opposite. There is just so much to choose from, Chinese hamburgers, snake, squid, feet, starfish, bugs, worms, fruit, mmmmmm.  I usually stuck with the normal things, although the snake was decent, as well as the squid.  But the winner definitely went to these sugar coated fruits on a stick.  Probably the best thing I've ever tasted.  Be careful when you are at the food stalls though, one because the vendors are pretty aggressive and you should strike a deal before handing them any money, and also because you could spend alot of money without noticing, since items usually cost around 10 RMB.  It is certainly worth a try though.


Cobra Whiskey. Hardcore.





Wednesday 20th, we had a few of our plans fall through, including Mcdonalds breakfast. Sadface.  But we did have a nice long lunch at a Subway in one of the malls near our hotel.  We sat and talked for a fairly long time about things happening at our University, it is always nice to get some inside information.  Since we couldn't get into contact with anybody, we all took a trip to Beihai Park, which was a brilliant place mostly reserved for emperors to take walks and just chill.  The park was like an island in a pond so we were able to walk around it pretty quickly, and then we went up the hill to get a good view of the city.  The park had a lot of great buildings and arches painted with detailed, vivid, colors and designs.  I noticed a sign pointing towards "Ancient Jade Caves" so naturally I convinced everybody to come check it out.  We had to pay 5 RMB, but I'm a sucker for novelty trips so we took the chance.  It couldn't have been better.  There were like 60 small warrior figurines all hidden throughout the cave, also they had fake vines hanging on the ceilings, it completed the full affect pretty well.  It took us about 10 minutes to explore the whole thing.  We found an exit that spit us out behind a restaurant?  But we had to peace out since we were getting dinner with the Dean of our college.

 We met up with the Dean at his, incredible hotel, The Grand Hyatt, and started for the restaurant.  The place was pretty nice, and ordering was just as much fun as it usually is.  We had a very good meal though, and it was free, so it was even better.  Then for dessert the Dean treated us to Dairy Queen which was amazing.  I haven't had that sort of ice cream in such a long time, I savored every second of it.  Then we walked with the Dean back to his hotel and said our thank you's and goodbye's.  We had other plans, which included a hot tub, and some HBO.  We sat in the hot tub for a while, digesting not only our meals, but our experience as a whole.  We were doing things so fast, it was necessary to relax and process it all, but tomorrow was another early, walking intensive day, so we retired to our rooms and beds.