3.27.2008

Beijing Part 4! (And Hopefully the Last Part)

So the final full day we had in Beijing was very chill... We started out by heading to the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong (or Mao-soleum, as I like to call it) which is located in Tiananmen Square... Why? Well to make sure he's still dead of course!

I think we were the only Westerners in line to go through and see Mao's body... We had to check our bags and cameras before we could enter the Mao-soleum, so we weren't able to take any pics of good ol' Dongy (my pet name for him) but here's a frame from a Simpsons episode to give you a feel for what it's like...

Of course Mao-mo was behind various thicknesses of bulletproof glass and various degrees of waxy fake face material, but basically it's the same... Not sure if the hammer and sickle was there...

When we entered the actual building of the Mao-soleum, it was absolutely silent... And we were hurried through very quickly, with only about 30 seconds or so of actual look-a look-a time... And then, horrendously ironically, the room right after Mao's body was a huge Capitalist-esque gift shop where you could by all the Mao branded merch you could want! Mao commemorative plate? Sure! Mao lamp? Yeah! Mao silver medal thingy? Why not! I didn't have enough time to study Mao closely while we were hurried through the tomb, so I couldn't tell if he was in fact spinning in his grave...

After checking out Ol' Dongy, we headed to the Jingshan, which must be Chinese for "Big Hill Made Out Of the Rock Dug Up To Make The Moats Around The Forbidden City"... There's a couple cool shrines on top of it, and it offered us a bird's eye view of Beijing (if that bird had glaucoma) and of the Forbidden City...

After that we headed north to the HouHai area, which sounds naughty but in reality is just a bunch of restaurants and bars around a small lake... We had lunch at a really good restaurant, and even got to have authentic Chinese lettuce wraps (Take that P.F. Changs!)...

After lunch we headed around the lake and, between fending off rickshaw offers, were able to check out a local festival of some sort... Some guy rocking out with traditional Chinese instruments... Then we made our way back to the hotel, Emma and I took a nap, we got pizza again for dinner, and got price-gouged on some beers!

And so wrapped up our stay in Beijing... A nice place to visit and a covertly oppressive place to live! Our final day consisted of breakfast buffet, a ride to the airport with Shoe-Tran, and a flight back to Japan! Whoo!

So ends my blogging about Beijing... Which is good, because I'm running out of witty Communist and smog quips...

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