The Jacksons in China: Day Two, Beijing

Posters note: Please forgive me everyone for posting all the pictures backwards. They are not in chronological order due to my overall lack of fancy blogging knowledge. I assure you, I will try harder tomorrow!

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Here are today's adventure snapshots:

We bought some chicken-and-seaweed flavored crackers.

- Jen, riding alongside me in a rickshaw around the Forbidden City, got two other rickshaw drivers to join in singing a children's friendship song.

- We hung out inside a traditional Chinese Hu Tong quadrangle house, that is more than five centuries old.

- Jen, trying to tell our rickshaw driver that he was very polite, instead told him that he is very pretty. This was the cause of much guffawing when he inevitably told the other rickshaw drivers.

- We bought some white silk for Jen to make Eleanor's temple dress.

- The Forbidden City is, like, really, really freakin' huge and old and stuff.

- I discovered that I know enough Mandarin to help some very frustrated German ladies order food in a restaurant.

- We discovered the magical wonders of Dim Sum for breakfast, and chocolate steam buns from the 7-11 where we buy our drinking water.

I have to start off this post by mentioning that I have the most amazing wife to go on adventures with. We were both talking today about how comfortable we are with being in a completely strange city, having but a tiny passing familiarity with the language, and just setting out from our hotel to try to find exciting things to see, do or eat. It's something I've come to love about Jen the more we find ourselves away from home.

Okay, that mushy bit out of the way, day two in Beijing was amazing!

One quick bit of preface: one thing we absolutely love about our adoption agency is that they firmly believe that everyone adopting from China should spend some time immersing themselves in the culture of China. Hence while our daughter is in Zhengzhou, we spend three days in Beijing to take in as much as we can of the China experience.

As it turns out, our hotel is about two blocks from the Forbidden City. Our first order of business was to pile into a bus which took us to a long row of two-seater rickshaws and cruise around one of the oldest neighborhoods in Beijing. We visited a man who is the latest in a line to own one of the traditional houses that have a central courtyard with rooms off to each point of the compass. The man spoke to us about the history of the house which is three times as old as my entire country.

Jen quickly became friendly with the rickshaw drivers. Ours was nice and impressed that Jen could read two of the three characters in his name. Jen got some of the drivers to sing along with a children's song about friendship, then slipped and told the driver he was pretty when she meant to tell him he was polite, which was utterly hilarious on all fronts.

Our next stop was at a silk house. Our guide explained that they don't want to turn us loose in the regular markets to buy a bunch of cheap crap that will fall apart in a year, so CCAI (our agency) meets once a year in China to find a couple of places to take us where we will find some quality goods to purchase. Our bus took us to Yuan Hou Silk where we watched them spin thread from raw silk and make quilts from the threads, which of course were for sale. There was a huge clothing store full of exquisitely detailed and traditional silk shirts, ties, dresses, and bolts of beautiful silk fabric. We picked up a couple of yards of the most exquisite white silk with traditional Chinese patterns in it... this will be the dress that Eleanor will wear when we are sealed together.

We had lunch at an apparently famous duck restaurant which was enormous and had pretty good food. We mostly got accosted by some extremely aggressive nick-knack souvenir sales people who would put flags into little girl's hands then demand money. We had some time to sit and chat with the other families in our group.

Our last bit of tour for the day was our tour through Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City. Cindy is extremely knowledgeable about nearly every aspect of the history of the place. Tiananmen square is absolutely immense and houses ancient towers, Chairman Mao's mausoleum, two fifty-foot long screens showing scenes from around China.

Across the street is the famous Forbidden City, with the giant picture of Chairman Mao at the outside. Forbidden City was ancient palaces within ancient palaces within ancient palaces, and is too giant to take in all at once with a history longer than my brain can process. It was a long walk from end to end and we were exhausted by the time we got back on the bus.

It's been an awesome day, one of my favorites, just getting the chance to spend some time with Jen and soak up some of the culture that will very soon bring our daughter to us.