Mar 20th-Beijing, China

   I've missed getting to our blog sooner...China doesn't make internet access easy, but at the same time I'm glad we had some days to digest all the experiences of our "off-ship" 4-day adventures. George & I both agree that we felt overwhelmingly awed. It is said if you want ancient Chinese history, go to X'ian (pronounced she-an, home of the Terracotta Warriors 221 BC), if you want recent Chinese history go to Beijing (1368 AD-present), and if you want China's future go to Shanghai.
   Lily, our guide in Beijing, was an upbeat, knowledgeable 27-year old. She commutes an hour and a half to get back home to her parents house because she makes an average salary of about 1,000 Yuan a month ($700US). A 2 bedroom apartment anywhere in the city is beyond thinkable(1-2 million Yuan for starters) and they are building these 40 story apartment buildings every 800 yards, so I guess increase in investment won't come any time soon. Lily actually got George's humor (which isn't easy to do even if you're a native speaker). We sensed her immediate pride in how far China has come from the days of the emperors, and the tremendous progress that has been made toward freedom of thought that is tolerated, even from the days of Mao and forward.

    The Forbidden City took hours to cover...Tianemin Square is even bigger than you can imagine from the views we have in TV clips. The significance of shapes and numbers figure highly in Chinese architecture. There are auspicious numbers "9" in particular,which is associated with the emperor and other numbers that are entirely skipped like "4" because they signify death...we therefore didn't give a second thought when our Beijing hotel room was number...I'm not kidding....1313! Emperor Zhou Di (pronounced Judy) third Ming dynasty emperor, was responsible for the building of the Forbidden City and his tomb outside the city is a national shrine.  We visited the Emperor's Tea House in the Imperial Garden of the Forbidden City for a tea ceremony which was very welcome as we were freezing...none of these public buildings are heated and the sun has a way of being severely filtered through the highly polluted smog. I hope we have space to pack all the tea we brought back!

Our guide Lily at the Imperial Tea House