Day 2 – Beijing
Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Hutong Rickshaw tour & home lunch, Hutong artist home visit.
Tonight I am writing to you from Beijing China. Sophie and I spent our first full day here in China, and she is having a great time with the other adopted girls.
We started the day at the Tiananmen Square and then Forbidden City. Like so many other great tourist destinations around the world, security has tightened and there are less viewing options available than in the past. I have been here 4 times over many decades, and it was a different experience this time. Tiananmen square is fenced off and you need to go in with a tour group with a reserved time. You are not allowed to go up and look at the Throne Room up close now, which is sad, but they say it is to protect the integrity of the site.
We asked our guide for a bathroom break, and he directed us to a “2 Star” bathroom that didn’t seem to have any Western (sit down) toilets, only the ‘squatty potties’ which is a tiled hole in the floor. I suggested that since there are bathrooms at the Forbidden City with Western toilets, it would be helpful for him to take us to those restrooms. Generally there is no toilet paper in restrooms here, so we carry small packets of Kleenex for when we visit restrooms. The restrooms are often dirty from the previous user. So one might use extra Kleenex wiping up after the previous user.
Some people say the Golden Age of Tourism is over. I am not sure if I agree, but I will say that so many popular tourist sites are overrun with busloads and shiploads of people, and if they are unappreciative day-trippers, the site is worse the wear. I am thinking of Venice as I say this, for instance. I like to go to Paris and Venice in the off-season if I can, for this reason.
We had a rickshaw ride through the adjacent Hutong neighborhood, and had lunch in a private home. Then we visited the traditional Hutong home of an artist, and I snapped this photo of his “office” (studio) which was a small room, a table facing a window, and a collection of brushes. I added another photo of a woman dressed in her native indigenous dress, while we were at the Forbidden City…lots of luscious embroidery.
We visited the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) which has moved to a new building. We saw the Matching Room, which is now done in a room with office cubicles and lots of file cabinets. The old matching room has children’s files and photos on the walls, and each day they would bring in a stack of family files, to match with the kids on the walls. It is no longer done manually on the wall. So the romantic image we had of the matching room no longer matches the reality.
After a brief tour of the 13th and 14th floor of the CCCWA building, the kids went to the conference room on the 17th floor, and were given a lesson in Traditional Chinese Painting, using an inkstone and bamboo brush.
Our evening dinner was at a Peking duck restaurant, served family style at big round tables. There was a great variety of foods, so something for everyone.
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