Beijing Day 2 June 15th, 2016

We started the day with an amazing breakfast in our hotel. They don't serve a breakfast buffet like this at the Hampton Inn. Then we were off to the Lama Temple, a Tibetan temple complex in downtown Beijing. The highlight of this temple complex of 5 courtyards was the 55 feet tall Buddha that is carved out of one single piece of sandlewood in the last building. It was amazing to be in a functioning Buddhist temple. Lots of incense. We couldn't take pictures inside the buildings where the Buddha's where, but they were pretty impressive.

Lama Temple

Next we went to the Confucian Academy. This was originally built in 1302 but is not really functioning today. As you walk in, there are stone stele' switch the names of all the Confucian scholars that have studied there over the years and passed the imperial exams. Confucianism declined under Mao and the communist regime, but is making a bit of a come back in the new more capitalist China.

Confucian Academy

We took a rickshaw ride to the Hutong district. This is an area where families still live in the courtyard style houses. Extended families may all live in one compound and share a courtyard. We went to lunch at a house in the district. Once the city discovered that tourists wanted to see what a "real" Chinese family lived like, they offered to have families open up their homes and make meals for tourists. It was a very small space, but the food that came out of that kitchen was amazing.

Rickshaw Ride

Our Rickshaw Driver

Finally, we toured the New Summer Place where during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) this was the summer imperial retreat for the Emperor and his family. It was constructed during the 1700's and includes a huge man-made lake and a mountain (made from the dirt from the lake), a long walking path with original artwork along the entire thing, a marble boat (that does not float of course) and of course the imperial residence's for the emperor, his empress and the dowager empress. This was destroyed twice, but has since been rebuilt. It was quite impressive but very crowded.

View of the man-made mountain at Imperial Summer Palace

Marble Boat

Dragon Boat we road ac across the lake

It was a long day of sightseeing, but my day wasn't over yet. We had to make dinner plans on our own so I went with Sonya and Ginger on an odyssey to find a Chinese brew pub called Green Leaf Brewing. We were going to take a cab, but the traffic was horrible, so we told the subway. Wow, they have an amazing system. It's amazing what a Communist government was accomplish. The first try at finding it we were unsuccessful so we gave up and went to dinner at a wonderful Hunan style restaurant called Dali Courtyard. Beautiful food and quite delicious. Lots of flavor, but a little spicy too! After dinner we attempted to find the brew pub again, but this time armed with the Chinese address of the place. We were successful after many queries of the locals, including police which are on every corner it seems. Of course when we finally got there, what did we find but a bunch of Europeans and American including three guys from Chicago. I guess others didn't have so much trouble finding this. Despite the long walk to find the place, we did get to see a slice of Beijing that we didn't see before. The back streets are just teeming with life, lots of scooters, rickshaws, small delivery trucks. It was amazing. Beijing seems like a pretty safe city and cleaner than I anticipated.

Taking the subway

Wow, what a day. Today we see the Forbidden City and Tiannamen Square and end the day with the Beijing Opera.