Welcome to Beijing
We went on a tour of Tsinghua campus, helped out by our guides from Tsinghua who had done this program with Georgia Tech before. The campus is rather large, and therefore necessitated most of us buying a bicycle that day.
Some people rented bikes, but I just bought one for the equivalent of around $25. It ain’t much, tends to break down easily, but it gets me around. I’ll probably go the taxi route anytime I go into the city or the nearby Wudaokou district.
Wudaoku is a cool Korean area with may cool restaurants and the nearest subway station. After getting to see most of the campus (pictures courtesy of David Scwartz), which is very nice, we headed to Yuan Ming Yuan, the old imperial summer palace with beautiful gardens. It was a lot of walking, but we were able to see a lot of cool stuff. That night, a lot of us went to go eat some Chinese hotpot in Wudaokou, which is a fun, family-style meal where they bring you out raw ingredients and you boil them in flavored broth right at the table. about 20 of us at the restaurant. Generally we can point to things on the menu and hope for the best. Some of us also went to go check out some nearby bars later, and found that there are a lot of cool places to hang out, even some that cater specifically to Westerners.
The next day we had a plant tour of the Mercedes and Chrysler manufacturing facilities. Seeing the cars was pretty cool, but overall the day was BORING. I refuse to ever be a factory engineer.
The day after was a little more fun, as the whole class travelled by subway to the famous Tiananmen Square. We also went in to go see Mao’s memorial; his preserved body looked totally fake by the way. Still no sun to be had, but at least it was cool outside. Many of us then went to the Silk Market, which is basically an indoor mall combined with the street-vendor style. Each stall sold different fake items, but there were many which sold the exact same things. I got some good deals on some fake Polos, a nice pair of jeans (which needs to be hemmed a little on the length. Our Singaporean friend Peng..might have to wait until I get back), and a wallet. I want to go back sometime to get more cool stuff, but I’m apt to keep spending if I do. I was very impressed with the quality of the fake items though. Definitely the best fakes in the world!
Saturday was nothing short of awesome. The whole group chartered a bus to go see the Great Wall. It was a little early getting up, especially after a late night at a club, but I got to sleep on the bus. We decided to take the longer trip to a more remote part of the wall which would not be crowded with tourists. This part of Great Wall was called Mutianyu Great Wall.
Great wall! the place was beautiful, and we soon found out why it wasn’t such a popular spot. This section of Great Wall was in a more mountainous area and the climbs up and down were pretty steep with hundreds of steps connecting each tower. It was the most exercise I have had this whole trip, but becoming worn out was definitely worth it. I climbed as far as we were allowed to go in one direction, after climbing thousands of steps and walking who probably a few kilometers. After walking back down near where we started, there was a zip line which flew across a lake down to the main entrace area! So a few of us got strapped in and zipped down from the side of a mountain over a lake back to the beginning. It only lasted about 30 seconds, but what thrill! The Great Wall of China and one of the Seven wonders of the World: Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
