{"id":1532,"date":"2014-06-22T07:47:33","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T00:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=1532"},"modified":"2014-06-22T07:47:33","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T00:47:33","slug":"around-the-town-day-2-61914","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/?p=1532","title":{"rendered":"Around the town, Day 2, 6\/19\/14"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 2 begins with a trip to Jingshan Park in the center of Beijing.\u00a0 <\/span>The park includes a large hill with temples at the top.\u00a0 <\/span>On a clear day, all of Beijing can be seen, in every direction.\u00a0 <\/span>It wasn\u2019t clear today, a combination of mist (there have been hints of rain and clouds), and pollution.\u00a0 <\/span>There are several areas where people are dancing, and enjoying the comfortable morning air.\u00a0 <\/span>We also found an area with about 40 singers, a keyboard player, and a conductor, singing folk songs.\u00a0 <\/span>We\u2019ve heard impromptu singing groups around town like this before, but none were quite this good.<\/p>\n

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The view from the top of Jingshan Park, looking at the back of the Forbidden City.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Some of the dancers in Jingshan Park behind us.<\/p><\/div>\n

Our next stop is the \u201cDisappearing Hutongs\u201d tour.\u00a0 <\/span>This is a specialty of Stretch-a-Leg Travel, and the reason they were featured on CBS Sunday Morning in May 2013.\u00a0 <\/span>The brief (4 minutes) feature can be found at their website:\u00a0 <\/span>www.stretchaleg.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Jonathan walks us through some narrow back streets, discussing what used to be courtyard style homes, built for one family.\u00a0 <\/span>Since 1949 and Mao\u2019s rule, the courtyards now have has many as 50 families, crowded into small rooms constructed inside the original structure, most with no running water.\u00a0 <\/span>Besides describing the evolution of the hutongs, Jonathan shows us some places where the original buildings walls and roofs are still in place.<\/p>\n

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Jonathan, giving us some of the history of this particular hutong. Judy is obviously thinking through how she might reorganize the area.<\/p><\/div>\n

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One of the walkways in the hutong area.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A propaganda wall painting, describing the the “good soldier”, and people doing good deeds, inspired by him.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0Lunchtime is at \u201cLost Heaven\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>They specialize in Yunnan style cooking.\u00a0 <\/span>We\u2019re getting a visual, as well as \u201cfoodie\u201d tour of Beijing.\u00a0 <\/span>The fruit plate at the end of the meal is really creative.\u00a0 <\/span>The building is in the Legation Quarter, at the site of the old US Embassy.<\/p>\n

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After lunch, we tour the Lama Temple, the largest active Buddhist temple in Beijing.\u00a0 <\/span>It contains a huge Buddha, and many small temples offering worship and incense burning sites.\u00a0 <\/span>A few blocks away, we walk through the Confucius Temple, another important site for the Chinese emperors hundreds of years ago.\u00a0 <\/span>Our last tour stop is the Drum Tower (of course, with Brad and Glenda along).\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a tall tower, centrally located in Beijing, with huge drums used to signal different times of the day.<\/p>\n

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The Big Buddha from the Lama Temple<\/p><\/div>\n

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Confucius statue.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Drum Tower<\/p><\/div>\n

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Drum Tower stairs. It’s a serious climb<\/p><\/div>\n

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A performance in the Drum Tower. They weren’t performing today, so I posted a pix I took back in the fall.<\/p><\/div>\n

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We have the driver drop us at the apartment.\u00a0 <\/span>We tour the kids around, and then order pizza from Kro\u2019s Nest.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a relaxing evening catching up on activities back in DFW, and talking about Beijing, now that they\u2019ve seen it.<\/p>\n

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Day 2 begins with a trip to Jingshan Park in the center of Beijing.\u00a0 The park includes a large hill with temples at the top.\u00a0 On a clear day, all of Beijing can be seen, in every direction.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1533,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gordonandjudy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}