Forbidden City

Tuesday we got to sleep in a little because we didn’t have class, so we didn’t have to be at the bus until 9:30am (which was definitely needed after the late night). Unfortunately I woke up with a really bad stomach ache and couldn’t eat anything for breakfast. I thought it might have just been from some drinking the night before but it lasted for the next two days so it must have been some sort of food poisoning. For most of the day Tuesday I felt fine, and just had a mild stomach ache so I still had a good time at all the activities.

At school in the morning we had a session to meet with Peking U students and just talked with them and asked questions back and forth about school life, etc. Let’s just say I’m glad I’m not a Chinese kid. Then we went on a tour of the campus. It was really beautiful and they have a cool lake in the middle with a path around it and a lot of greenery for being in the middle of such a smoggy industrial city. After the tour we ate lunch at the cafeteria again and I ate two bites of rice and then felt awful so I didn’t eat any more. After lunch we went back to the hotel for 10 min for people to change if they wanted to and all I did was throw up the rice that I had for lunch. I still felt fine at this point though so I left with the group to head to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is near the city center of Beijing and is such an interesting historical point in the middle of the city. First of all, it is HUGE. We were following our tour guide and keep walking in the same direction (from the North gate to the South gate) and it seemed to be never ending. First were all the living quarters for the females then the males and Emperor. Then we looked at more of the concubine living quarters and learned some interesting facts about how the emperor would have 3,000 13-17 year old girls running around as his sex toys! Then we moved on to the palaces for working and business and there were several pavilions and squares for official government business. After about 3 hours in the Forbidden City we made it to the South gate which is the main gate with the portrait of Mao facing Tiananmen Square.

After the Forbidden City we walked under the roadway and went to Tiananmen Square. It is bordered by giant impressive looking buildings – Chinese government building, Chinese modern history museum, Mao’s tomb/memorial, and the Forbidden City. It is definitely a cool sight to see and they have a giant Chinese flag in the middle with a guard who stands watch at all times. They have all kinds of special police around in the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square who are apparently trained in kung fu and are pretty scary. There isn’t really anything to do in the square but it is cool to see.

By then it was around 5:00pm and we headed to the restaurant famous for Peking duck for dinner. I really wanted to try it and everyone said it was really good, but I wasn’t feeling very well so I didn’t even try to eat. After the dinner we were headed to the Peking opera but after all the walking around I started to feel really sick. I think it was just from having such a full day and not being able to eat at all so I tried to push through but I ended up talking to our teacher and he took me back to the hotel in a cab where I immediately went to my room and just passed out at like 8:00pm.