Day 3: Temple of Heaven and Food

Hello! This is my first time posting on our blog. :) 

On Thursday morning we visited the Temple of Heaven. This temple was visited by emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for prayer to Heaven for good harvest. The entire park totals 660 acres, about 4 times the area of the Forbidden City. In the center of the temple we visited the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, one of the most iconic buildings of Beijing. This circular hall is built entirely of wood, with no nails at all. We saw many elderly Chinese there practicing Tai Chi and dancing, as everyone over the age of 60-something gets a free pass into the park. It's pretty great to be old in China!

We also visited a pearl jewelry store, where a guide showed us the freshwater oysters and how they harvest the pearls. Most of the oysters had over 20 pearls inside! After that the kids were given the chance to make their own pearl bracelets, and the adults were shown how to tell if pearls are fake or real. Then the guide showed us to the store where we could buy pearl jewelry. Personally, I think the tour guides were paid by the pearl company to bring us there, since it seemed like the whole focus of the visit was to get us to buy pearls...

For lunch we had the famous Beijing noodles, which are still my favorite food of our trip so far. The restaurant gave us big bowls of long noodles, and there was a variety of toppings for us to choose from, such as pork and egg sauce, shredded carrots, cabbage, and edemame. Speaking of food, I ate something very interesting (on accident) during our hotel breakfast on day 2. My mom probably didn't mention this in her writing, but I had a couple forkfulls of omasum. It was actually quite good, like shredded potato noodles, so it was a good thing I found out what it was after I ate it. For those of you who don't know what omasum is, it's the third stomach of an animal like a cow, goat, etc. Yuck! Ignorance is bliss. 

After lunch we visited Olympic park, where the 2008 summer olympics were hosted. You can see in one picture the wavy hotel created specifically for the olympics, and the Bird's Nest stadium used for track and field events. It was very sunny and hot by then, but seeing the place where the biggest international sporting event was held was certainly a treat. 

Later that night we headed back to the hotel for a fancy tour group dinner before we left for Xi'an. Two main things about Chinese food have really stood out for me - the tendency for restaurants to give you way more food than you really need, and that watermelon is present at nearly every meal. Go figure. 

After our dinner we rode to the train station, where we boarded our sleeper train to Xi'an. After saying "Zàijiàn!" to our tour guides, we climbed aboard and found our... tiny... compartment. It was a real challenge trying to get everyone organized in such a small space, probably 6' wide by 8' deep and 8' tall. Our pillows were probably the firmest I've ever laid my head on, but we found that folding them in half worked nicely. Not long after we fell asleep, probably because of our sheer exhaustion...

- Luke