Gu Gong, Jing Shan, Bei Hai

Time is certainly flying by here in Beijing. Today's semester exam marks the halfway point of PiB. Entering the much-hyped long weekend (3 days), I now have time to fully catch up on all of my adventures.

Cheezing it up with Mao

天安门广场

Long live the unity of the great people of the world

The Saturday before last, a couple Yalies and I traveled to Tiananmen Square and Gu Gong (The Palace Museum). 漂亮得不得了! Simply beautiful. The light rain, while persistent, did not dampen our spirits (the hawkers in Tiananmen Square trying to sell us umbrellas did slow us down a bit). Tiananmen Square's walls were grand and imposing; I felt a tad intimidated. We visited a bunch of places within the palace, but my favorite site by far was the Imperial Garden, which contained elaborately crafted faux 100 ft tall "mountains" and a wide variety of flora.

Imperial Garden

Gu Gong

After visiting Tiananmen and Gu Gong, we went across the street to Jingshan Park, which is famous for its artificial mountain (45.7m high). Built for favorable feng shui (supposedly protected the palace from the northern winds) using earth from Gu Gong's moats and surrounding canals (took from wikipedia, not going to lie...), Jingshan Park's artificial mountain offers spectacular view of the Imperial Palace.

Jing Shan Park

The view from JingShan (looks better in person or on wikipedia)

After Jingshan, we took a short walk over to the renowned Bei Hai Park. All Yale Chinese L1/L2 students know the Bei Hai Chant (see the video). Turns out the professors fudged the description of the park a bit; 左右两边没有竹子 (the left and right sides of the park are not bamboo). 白塔 (the white dagoba) was spectacular, but we missed out on paddleboating when the rain began to pick up.

Overall, the trip into the heart of Beijing was a successful one despite the rain. I think I'm starting to think in Chinese, so my English 水平 has 下降了.

I almost forgot to mention that I had dinner with Master Pitti, Kelly McLaughlin(Light Fellowship Coordinator), and a few other Stilesians! The restaurant was a little hard to find, but the food as good as the company.

Fantastic dinner.

Dumpling count: 129