Beijing Pt. 1 Forbidden city, Silk market

The adventure continues when we train into Beijing. A 32 hour Ride. We had to take three separate taxis to get to our hostel because there were so many of us, so we had the leader and two others in one, four other girls in another and us three and Dan in the third one. Since we don’t speak much Chinese at all we just show the taxi driver where we are going and then he will nod yes or no if he knows where he is going. But since they were just going to follow each other they didn’t really look at the directions just followed the car in front. Well the car with the leader and the directions was in the front.. very far in front, so when a light turned green that’s when you were on your own. The car with the four girls turned someone on the way and they weren’t following us either, all three cars were separated and two of the drivers had no idea where they were going. We were the only car out of the two lost with a phone number, funny that we didn’t have a cell phone, the four girl car didn’t have anything. Luckily Dan could speak a good amount of Chinese and started yelling to the driver that he lost our friends and that he was lost, the driver started getting angry back and kept driving stating the car was still in front of us and we weren’t lost. When we were stopped Dan got out and looked around and they were no where to be found! The driver gave up pulled over and started calling for directions, we tried the hostel phone number but it was a dud and didn’t work. Haha. So we went to Tiananmen Square because we were planning on going there later in the day. When we got there we decided that there was no way we were going to pay the driver the full amount because he got us lost. Lost in the city of Beijing, we hardly spoke any Chinese, we didn’t know the name of our hostel, we knew nothing! We hoped out of the car, threw the driver 15 Yuan (3 USD) and started walking off he grabbed Brit’s bag and wouldn’t let it go and Dan shoved the guy and threw up his hands and started yelling at him in Chinese!! Haha! It was the funniest thing we had ever seen! So here’s a shout out to Dan! We decided to wait in a hotel while Brit and Dan went to look for help, after about an hour we went to go find a knife to dig into our breakfast, and apple. We went to KFC, keep in mind that its about 7 o clock in the morning and people are having KFC for breakfast! Fries and chicken sandwiches. We brushed our teeth in the sinks and found a knife and waited some more for Dan, finally he found some people that magically the phone number worked and it happened to be that our hostel was about three minutes walking distance from where we were. They went to go check it out and Nat and Lexxy stayed behind to hold the fort. We were sitting by the window and no joke in the midst of the huge crowd of Chinese people passing every which way we saw two Americas walking probably a football field away and we stood up and just started and then the Americans saw us and started running to us! It was our leader and Dan’s sister! We ran out with a great hug to greet them. It was so weird how we saw each other through glass and yards away. You really do stick out in China. Once settled in our hostel we went to the Forbidden City Kingdom, its where back in the day you couldn’t enter or leave it once you were in and its where the Emperors lived. There is so much symbolism there, for example, most buildings are square at the bottom which represents earth and then Circular on top to represent heaven. Even the trees they grow are special and how many doors there are and where the doors are and bridges and such. Some rooms you couldn’t even go into because it was so sacred. Oh must we not forget to mention that General Mao’s body is frozen there. So you can see him all frozen and weird but it was closed that day because of the big holiday. Now the excitement really begins for us on this vacation simply because we had been waiting for this day since we found out we really were going to go through with this whole China buis. Shopping for the incredibly priced brands Beijing has to offer! We expected the Silk and pearl shop to be not much then very old people selling you cheap silk and fake pearls, boy we were wrong! We walked in and were greeted with real leather and fur and diamonds and we could go on forever!! The down side of it was we only had but a wee wad of spending cash. You can bargain like crazy and if they won’t go any lower then you can go to their neighbor and get it much cheaper. We ended splitting up most the time because we had different interests in mind, the only page we were on the same was the first floor (there were six floors in all) and that was the purse floor. We wish we could only describe this to you! It was like a mile long and half a mile wide, a bit of exaggeration but seriously! This place was HUGE! In order to bargain and get what you want is to make friends with them first, Lexxy and Brit found the perfect way to do such. (Nat was usually running around like a chicken with her head cut off.) Lexxy and Brit are known for the singing couple, you will see that they love to take couple pictures and sing duets. So that’s how they made friends is to sing and dance for the Chinese people when they wanted a price, it’s called the 80 Yuan dance. It worked every time! First you will hear the starting song note from Lexxy, “Do I hear an eighty Yuan?” (In tune to one of the Phantom of the Opera songs) Then Brit Chimes in, “I thought I just heard you say eighty Yuan, dear friend be kind for we are poor.” Something like that. We continue to sing and start to dance, way cool dance by the way. They usually laugh, ask for a picture and give us what we want sometimes cheaper. This one time though Brit and Lexxy were singing and dancing for a Juicy purse and it was around closing time so everyone was closing up and when we started to dance all the Chinese people stopped what they were doing and soon enough we had a crowd the size of the Olympics watching and surrounding us, taking pictures and recording videos. Nat happened to walk up right at that moment and was caught up in everyone cheering and yelling for the three Americans to keep dancing and singing. When it was time to leave we danced our way out of the circle and they just kept saying, “You guys are so cool, can we be friends, you should be professional dancers, (haha which is hysterical because we really are terrible) will you come back, America is so awesome.” We will be honest, we were exhausted! We loved the silk shop so much we went back three times! Every time we went back, after that dance episode, we couldn’t buy something without them saying you’re the dancing Americans! Dance and take picture with me and you can have it for your price. Didn’t even matter what floor you were on. It started to get old after a while but hey, we all had our families Christmas! All in all we had like 10 pea coats and jackets, pants, shoes, jewels, make up, and about 18 purses between us three. It was really fun! That’s only the first part of Beijing! Next up, the Great wall, Temple of Heaven, and Bird Nest….