Nov. 30, 2016
1:30 am
Beijing, China
Okay, I’m a little late getting this up. I didn’t realize how late it had actually gotten. Oops.
Have you ever gone on a tour? Like a real tour with a tour guide who tells you information about the place you’re visiting? As a traveller, I have been on many tours across the world, but, no matter how many I take, I still love them. It’s just so much fun to see the historic areas of a city and hear the stories that once occurred there. Imagining what life must have been like entices me to keep learning more.
After reading that, I’m sure you’ll never guess what I did today. Wow, that’s right, I did go on a tour! How did you know? You’re amazing! You must be psychic! Around 4:45 this afternoon, I met up with Ashlee on the train and we headed up to the city center for an EF-sponsored tour. Every month, EF sponsors events that teachers can join for free. You have to send in a quick and simple application page and then you are notified on which events you got accepted into. This was my first one and it was as cool as it sounded. We walked around the Hutong (historic neighborhoods) in the Imperial City. The Imperial City is the part of Beijing surrounding the Forbidden City and is where the old government officials used to live, especially during the early 1900s. The architecture there is so beautiful and interesting. Unfortunately the tour was at night, so I didn’t get great pictures.
The tour itself was interesting. The tour guide is a funny guy. He is a great storyteller and the stories he shared were told in exciting detail. He knew a lot of information about the area we went to and enjoyed sharing it with us. I love it when you can see that people really love their jobs. All of the buildings we went to once housed historical figures that were extremely pertinent to China’s history. Many of the warlords whose homes we visit became either president of China or another high ranking individual. We did run into a few glitches, though. Many of the buildings, although still kept looking historical, are now residential buildings or located in residential areas. As such, they are not open to the public. In some cases we weren’t even supposed to be able to get in to see it. The tour guide continued to ignore “keep out” signs and took us in anyway. His philosophy was, “China is a place where it’s better not to ask for permission… And it’s often not worth begging for forgiveness, either.”
The night was a bit cold and the tour went from 7pm to 9pm, so by 8:15 many of us were starting to get too cold. We started the tour out with about 17 people. By the time we finished we had less than ten. Although I enjoyed the tour and learning about China’s history, I will say that I was happy when we finally finished. Then Ashlee and I hopped onto the train and started the hour or so long ride back to our apartments.
After a long night, I wound down by FaceTiming my wonderful mother and getting to talk to Baby Boy (a young cousin she babysits) for a little while. He’s so big now. I can’t believe he’s almost 5 months. Anyway, I’m exhausted. Time for bed. Talk to you all soon.
Goodnight and Bless,
Kristen
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