China Day 7

Today we woke up at the painful hour of 630am in order bathe and feed ourselves before our day. Breakfast, as hoped, included a wide variety of western and Chinese foods. I barely had time to eat, but I enjoyed some potato balls, lychee, tasteless watermelon, eggs, and some other stuff that escapes me now.
We were supposed to meet Jane at 8am, but no one was ready to go until 9 at least. I wasn't feeling well, but luckily for me I'm traveling with a bunch of nice people who are on their ways to being doctors and everyone had a little something to help me try and feel a little better.
Our first stop for the day was Tian'anmen Square. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I was surprised. It was just a big flat concrete area with some statues and buildings. Jane was explaining what all of the buildings were but since the famous political situation that happened here couldn't be discussed, the importance of this area was kind of lost on us.
The more interesting thing was that there were all these people coming up to us trying to sell us all kinds of crap! Kites, books, postcards (you know I bought some finally!), chopsticks, purses, scarves... I found that if I didn't even look at them and just kept walking they'd pretty much leave me alone. Not everyone was so lucky.
Once we'd crossed the square and slogged through the hoards of other tourists (Chinese and western alike - we even saw a polish group) we crossed a big street (Chang'an Jie?) to the entrance to the Forbidden City. I'm kicking myself now for not thinking to ask what's forbidden about it, but maybe I'll get another chance soon.
I couldn't believe how big that place is. It was unreal! We were there for hours and only saw a small piece of it where the tour led us. We were feeling bad for our tour leader because we all hate being led around like children and even worse, we're not big into being tourists. I drowned my sorrows in picture taking, and managed to top 200 (they're on the Flickr site)! It would have been even more fun if the sky hadn't been so cloudy and foggy (Carl says it's not all pollution), but what can you do.

One of the funniest things about the day was that a large number of our group bought the big Russian/Mao soldier hats on the way to Tian'anmen Square. It was SO funny walking around with a bunch of people dressed like that. They were pretty warm though and today was cold. It was great when Josh started trying to sell stuff back to the vendor people. It was crazy that you'd be wearing the hat they're trying to sell and they still try to sell it. These are the people that companies like Kirby should hire - don't take no for an answer!

I definitely got a good dose of Chinese architecture today and I loved every minute of it. My dream house definitely has multiple double pitched roofs and ornate (but not tacky) decorations (right Dave?).

We were all pretty hungry even before we were through the city, so we were pretty excited when lunch turned out to be Korean Yakiniku. Oh man that was sooooo good. I could have kept eating that stuff for hours.


Unfortunately for me, I was getting more and more sick as the day went on. The vitamins and herbs that Val, Christine, and Matt had given me made me feel pretty good until about 10am I'd say, and then is was all down hill from there. I was blowing my nose at every turn and slowly getting more and more exhausted, and it was only just after lunch! Everyone was worried about me, and happy that our first stop after lunch was to the national herbal pharmacy. Everyone was pretty excited about that. Now we were imagining that we'd get there and there would be herbs all over the place. Instead, we got a short lecture about what Chinese medicine is (good thing we don't know already) and then some doctors came in to give us all pulse diagnoses and recommend herbs for us. So we thought ok, afterwards we'll see the big buckets of herbs everywhere...

Slowly, it dawned on most of us that this place, while probably having legit pills and formulas was kind of a sham. Most of us ended up buying some of the expensive stuff that was prescribed to us, but no one felt it was worth the money. Everything was being sold in US $ and they were telling everyone that they needed a month supply. I bought 1 box of the stuff they thought I needed, cause hey, maybe it will be good stuff, but other people ended up spending multiple 100's of dollars. These were the few people that once we got back on the bus were pissed and one was yelling that we had to go back and all return our stuff because we'd been hustled. Yeah, maybe we had, but most of us figured it out while it was happening and decided to try the stuff out anyway. They said no returns - I'm sure they've had this problem before.


After that fiasco, Carl took me downstairs to the "real" pharmacy where things seemed to have normal prices and tried to help me pick out something for my cold. This ended up just confusing me though cause I thought I had one thing and then I had medicine for another thing. What should I take? Really all I wanted was to go to sleep, but we still had the Summer Palace to go to, an acrobatic show I was curious about, and a Peking Duck dinner where I was hoping they'd have a big bucket of soup for me.


The Summer Palace was ok. Maybe if it weren't such a long day of doing nothing but touristy crap we'd have been more receptive, but by now most of us were tired and ready to be done for the day. It was already 4pm, mostly dark, and getting pretty cold. Matt, Bowen, and Josh kept us smiling and we were all aware of the discomfort between us and Jane the tour guide. We tried to change our group name from U.S. Tours (name of the company which she called out over a loud speaker slung around her jacket every time we were supposed to move around) to Aloha tour. Everyone was much happier with this name, but a couple of people wouldn't let the poor girl alone abut her pronunciation. It was pretty embarrassing on in an already uncomfortable situation.

After the palace was the acrobatic show. It was pretty good (especially the guys doing the fancy fighting), but left me thinking about child worker rights and wondering why none of the performers smiled. The all looked pretty unhappy.

We moved on to the duck feast and lucky for me they brought out a nice sized bowl of ginger chicken soup. The broth was all I wanted and I didn't even try the duck. I had a pretty nasty headache by then and all I could think about was not wanting to be in China anymore and going home to go to bed (aww, sad face). I was definitely over tired, but at least I'd been fed.
About this time, I started thinking about the fact that I didn't think I could handle this schedule for another day. I needed to rest and tomorrow wasn't going to be any better. Unfortunately, this means that I'd be skipping the trip to the Great Wall - one of the things I am most excited about seeing. The more I think about it the worse of an idea it seems to knowingly subject myself to a day like that when what I need more than anything is sleep. Especially considering that we have to be at the airport day after tomorrow at 6am to catch our flight to Shanghai. Yuk. I'll see how I feel after sleeping.