Chinese ready the Forbidden City for 2008 Olympics

Started with an American/Western breakfast at the hotel--eggs, hashbrowns, omelettes, ham, sausage, pastries. Left hotel at 8:15am. First stop was Tianamen Square. Largest public plaza in China, and there were LOTS of people taking photos. Our tour guide didn't mention past events in the Square (protesters/uprising). We then walked through the Forbidden City for a couple hours. Fascinating architecture that's been preserved for so long. They are renovating many of the buildings for 2008 when they host the Olympics. People ar equite produ fo Chairman Mao and 1949. I learned "photo" in Mandarin and have taken several photos of the Chinese people--old men playing checkers, a girl with butterfly wings sliding down steps for a makeshift slide and people playing musical instruments. "Day-bu-chee" is a close phonetic approximation to "pardon me" in Chinese. It was a bit strange to see all the modern architecture high rises peeking out behind the perimeter of the walled area. All the roofs are designed so that water will quickly run off the roof. Saw the emperor's room, as well as the empress'. Apparently, the emperor also had 3,000 concubines (mistresses) that lived there also.

Had lunch at a fine restaurant. It's interesting how they separate foreigners from other Chinese in the restaurants. I don't if it's that foreigners are loud, or that we would provide much amusement to the local Chinese. Lunch includeed sweet & sour pork, kung pao chicken, duck, noodles, beef---relatively familiar Chinese fare served around a lazy Susan.

Then, we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is now a very large park. It used to be wehre the emperor went to reflect. This is the tower-like structure with three circles. There's a replica at Epcot Center in Disney World, I believe. All Chinese architecture seems every detailed and intricate. Lots of large open spaces here for public gatherings.

After that, we went to a freshwater pearl factory. The freshwater oysters can have 25-30 pearls whereas saltwater oysters have only one. We saw a demonstration of a pearl harvest and then had shopping time. The girls in our group particularly liked this tour stop. At 5pm, we went to a Kung Fu show--it was awesome and was somewhat combined with acrobatics. It was mostly guys but there were a couple girls in the performances. Some crazy things like balancing your whole body weight on your navel or laying on three blades with a bed of nails on your chest while three other guys stack on top of you, and a piece of concrete is then smashed with a sledge hammer on the top guy's stomach. The guy below escaped unscathed.

We had "surprise" Chinese food for dinner, meaning we didn't know what it was. It was good and I'm getting better with chopsticks. I sometimes wonder if Chinese have very diverse meals. Then, itw as back to the hotel because everyone was exhausted and still a bit out of it after the time change. Went through the mall next to the hotel for some "buyer behavior" observations of the locals.