Beijing China

This past week I got to spend a few days in Beijing China.  Beijing city has a population of 20 million and is at an elevation of 44 meters (143 feet) above sea level.  The city itself is defined by having 5 rings of  highways around the city.  It is a fairly new city with lots of building still going on.  From talking to the locals they said the city can’t grow out anymore so now it is growing up.  They are tearing down 3 and 4 story building and putting up 20 and 30 story buildings in its place.  The streets are crowded like rush hour travel all day and late into the evening every day.  They told me that only one in four people in Beijing owns a car and you can only get one by getting in a lottery and hope they draw your name for the year. At the end of the day it took us about 30 minutes just to get a cab to get back to the hotel and there are a lot of cabs on the road they were just all full. 

 This pictures is of the new China Central Television Headquarters building which they also call the pants building because it looks like pants.

Most of the time I was working but I did get to do a few things.  One was that I got to go out and have a dinner of Peking duck.  Peking Duck is a famous duck dish from Beijing that has been prepared since the imperial era, and is now considered one of China's national foods.

The dish is prized for the thin, crisp skin, with authentic versions of the dish serving mostly the skin and little meat, sliced in front of the diners by the cook. Ducks bred specially for the dish are slaughtered after 65 days and seasoned before being roasted in a closed or hung oven. The meat is eaten with pancakes, spring onions, and hoisin sauce or sweet bean sauce.  It was very good and highly recommended.

The center of the city is where the ancient site of the Forbidden City is.  The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government. Built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings.  Unfortunately my camera wasn’t working well and I wasn’t able to take many pictures.  While there I did get to see the great grandson of one of the emperors who is now a professor at a Beijing University but volunteers his time to do art work at the palace to help raise money for restorations.

The great wall of China was about 50 miles out of town in the hills. The site was called Balaling and is one of the most visited section of the Great Wall of China.  The portion of the wall running through the site was built during the Ming Dynasty, along with a military outpost reflecting the location's strategic importance. The highest point of Badaling approximately 1,015 meters (3,330 ft) above sea level and I climbed to the top of it.  From the starting point it was at least a couple thousand steps to get to the top.  It took me about an hour and a half to get to the top and I took quite a few breaks to enjoy the views (ok to catch my breath).