For a sense of history, a few days in Beijing is a must. There are few things the first time visitor MUST do, to say that you have really been to China. Shanghai is rich in activities and things to see and do, but a some of those MUST DO attractions are in Beijing. I had been wanting to go to Beijing since coming to China and now seemed like the right time. It helped that Margaret had a business meeting to attend there at the same time. My mother and sister had done their homework on culture and history and really wanted to walk through the Forbidden City, stand on the Great Wall, and walk along the lake at the Summer Palace. We took 4 days to visit the capital city of China and do all the things.

My mom and sister came to Shanghai for a visit. I was excited at the opportunity to share this experience with my family first hand. It was both of their first times to China. There was so much I wanted to show them. Any trip to China for the first time, the question is - how much and what do I see in the short 2 or 3 week stay? Trying to see everything you have ever heard about in China is impossible. China is a big country. In her study, my mom read that trying to see all that there is to see is like trying to examine a beautiful flower from the back of a galloping horse. Just trying to write about 4 days in Beijing is a task.

Beijing is a large, dusty city and growing. It has about 13 million people like Shanghai, and also has a building boom going on. We took a short, pleasant one and a half hour flight from Shanghai. We took a taxi in from the airport and noticed some immediate differences. There was the normal dust and pollution and traffic that big cities have. Beijing, though, was very dry compared to Shanghai and the traffic once we got into the city seemed to be in permanent state of slowness.

We stayed at the Tian Lun Dynasty hotel in downtown Beijing. It was a great hotel. The rooms were clean, comfortable, and every detail made available right down to the toothpaste. They had a wonderful garden atrium where we could sit and discuss the plans and sites of the day. They had a few good restaurants that were reasonable and a deluxe buffet for every meal. First class and inexpensive by comparison with what would you would find the the US for similar accommodations. The tour that serviced the hotel was reasonable - about RMB 320 for a day, including lunch and tickets to everything and promised to take us to all the sites we wanted to see. So, for the next couple days while Margaret was in her workshops, we went to see the sights of Beijing.

The tour guide was there to greet us bright and early. We got on the small bus with a dozen other foreigners. Charlie, our guide for the day, was a comedian at heart and spoke good English. He was the stoutest Chinese I have seen. We were off to the Forbidden City. We meandered through the Forbidden City on a beautiful clear sunny and very windy day. There were hundreds of other sightseers there. We were walking through a significant piece of Chinese history here, listening to Charlie tell stories about the life of the Emperor and the imperial family. Pictures do not quite do it justice, but you can see a few in our gallery. We spent most of the morning walking through the courtyards and looking into a few of the 999 rooms in the palace. Being there, it was easy to imagine the life they lead inside those walls. We finished the morning in the Imperial garden, walking through the gates to our waiting bus.

We took a short side trip to an art gallery to view some Chinese brush painting. Huge panels of several striking brush paintings graced the gymnasium-sized room. They were beautiful and not that expensive. I thought to myself, I would need a mansion just to be able to hang one. Fortunately, there was a very significant gift arcade upstairs that the guide proudly steered us to. While the selection there was amazing in terms of art, silk, herbs, gifts and all the things that China was famous for, we were warned by our brother-in-law and Shanghai guide, George, to do the souvenir shopping in the Friendship store. The Friendship Store is a state-run store with supposedly very reasonable prices. Not like the tourist traps that dotted all the places we visited. So we passed the pitch at this shop except for some postcards.

Our next stop was lunch on the way to the Summer Palace. We went to a restaurant/gift shop that obviously catered to busloads of foreigners. The lunch was abundant, if not especially tasty, standard Chinese fare for Westerners. Kind of like what you might get in a low budget Chinese restaurant in the States. The gift shop featured pearls, but we knew we had a trip scheduled to Suzhou when we got back to Shanghai so we held off. Back onto the bus and we were off to the Summer Palace.

In many ways, I liked the Summer Palace more than the Forbidden City. It is a beautiful complex of ancient Chinese architecture perched on huge man made lake. It was windy and sunny and we walked a long time through rock gardens and groves of trees along the lake. It was a stark contrast to expansive walls and plazas of the Forbidden City. It was here the Empress Dowager built her cement boat, which became a symbol of all that was wrong with Imperial rule. Off in the distance, pointed spires of other imperial buildings and temples poked up from the trees. There was much more to see, but we were on the whirlwind tour and there was not time or inclination to climb the very steep flights of stairs up to the some of the other palace buildings looking down on the lake from above. We passed the cement ship, took our pictures and walked out the back gate through a mob of vendors. There were 20 or 30 selling every souvenir and trinket you could imagine. Charlie cautioned us to keep walking and not to say anything because if you show any interest at all, they just do not give up. Also, the guide would not get his cut of these sales.

It was a long drive back to the center of town through creeping traffic. We had a lot to reflect on. We were tired and full of thoughts of this ancient land. Even Charlie was quiet as we made our way through traffic. We then stopped at the Temple of Heaven, where the priests and the emperor used to pray for rain. It reminded me a bit of a circular altar for contacting the gods. A couple of the other members of our group really wanted to see Tiananmen Square and since we got back into the city with a little time to spare, Charlie obliged.

The Tiananmen Square we visited gave no clue to protest or unrest. It was just a big plaza with stately buildings all around. There were few police and more than a few vendors approaching Westerners with their wares and other locals using the windy day to loft their kites. The sun was starting to set and it was the end to very full day. My sister decided to take the offensive against the approaching vendors by introducing herself and not letting them get a word in edgeways. It was funny to watch. Mom was tired and we made our way back to bus for the trip back to the hotel, only 5 minutes away.

Back at the hotel we relaxed in the atrium garden over drinks and snacks. It was good to just sit back and chat and reflect on all the history we had paced through during the day. We had seen so much. We met Margaret who heard the reports of our adventures and agreed on a time for dinner. Beijing, like Shanghai, is full of great restaurants. We had been eating mostly Chinese and really wanted to go to something a little different, so we went to a nice Indian restaurant. Food was first class, and even in Beijing with drinks ran us less than US $15 a person. We were ready to call it a night early, because the next day we had to be ready for the Great Wall.

The tour picked us up again after breakfast and we were off. First to the Ming Tombs and then to the Mu Tian section of the Great Wall all about an hour out of Beijing. Our guide, a girl named Gao Fei, or Barbara to Westerners, lead us on the day. Her English was good. It was just us three and 2 other nice folks who lived in Hong Kong. The bus hummed along the highway and Gao Fei asked us about ourselves. Our first stop at the Ming Tombs was mildly interesting for me. There was a few more artifacts on display than at the Forbidden City ( probably because so much had been looted from the Forbidden on the political storms of the past century). It was a very peaceful place. It was worth the visit, but these places were all starting to blend together.

We had a stop at another trap, the Chinese Medicine Institute, which was obviously, after we thought about it a bit, a way to separate the Western tourists from their money. We had short presentation by an official looking lady in a white coast in what appeared to be a conference room in a very clinical setting. There were framed testimonies on that wall from other Westerners. We had a brief pointless demonstration of qi gong by two teenage looking boys in white coats who lit up light bulbs while plugged into the wall socket. Then we had an opportunity to get a "free" health reading by a "real Chinese doctor." The Docs came in in white coats and proceeded to take the pulses of anyone who wanted a reading, and then proceeded to say what what wrong with each of us and "prescribed" the Institute's herbal pills - only $50 US a bottle - Visa and Mastercard accepted. They recommended at least 4 different bottles to anyone who had a reading. We bought some, they had created the perfect space for the sale. I regretted it immediately on the bus as we left.

Upon closer inspection back at the hotel of the ingredients listed on the label in Chinese, they were probably authentic herbal recipes. My wife told us later, however, the last time she went to a doctor she got the diagnoses and prescription for about $7.00. We mailed the bottles back ( having my wife call them to get their mailing address) and decided to dispute the charges if they did not refund it.

We left for lunch at another place that catered to the busloads of tourists that called itself a Friendship Store, but as we later found, had prices double and sometimes triple the real Friendship Store in Beijing. Lunch was tasty and gave us enough to eat. They even accommodated my sisters vegetarian preferences easily. We got out of the store only buying a few gifts. We were off to the Great Wall

Things I notice about Great Wall at Mu Tian are, first it is built on top of a very steep ridge. Even after parking in the lot and making your way uphill through a persistent gauntlet of vendors, there is another steep ridge of what appears several hundred steps to climb. They say in China that you are not a hero until you have climbed to the Great Wall. Staring up the steep path to the top, I can believe that. Fortunately, technology makes heroes of us all. At this site, they have installed a cable car that will effortlessly whisk you to the top for only 50 RMB. Not bad. My mom, sister, and I choose this route. Our guide waited patiently at the bottom.

On the wall, the wind blew hard, vendors were perched selling momentums of this great occasion, and on one small flat area a few steps down from the wall, Intel was having a party of some kind. For miles north and south, the wall ran like a dragon over the tops of ridges and mountains. No wonder it kept the invaders out. We basked in the sun and wind atop the Great Wall for a while. Kathleen got an "official" certificate from one of the vendors - compete with chop.

Coming down is always easier. We made our way through street merchant gauntlet who, each one, swore they knew me and remembered me and had just what I wanted. Someone knew what Westerners wanted, though. She had ice cold bottled spring water - ice - way out here. We piled into the bus and headed back to the city and relaxation and reflection.