Summer Vacation: Month 1, Part 2

The majority of my time in Beijing was spent with family but I managed to set aside one day to visit one of my favorite places in the city: the Forbidden City.  I'm a dork, I know.  I think I have pictures of me running around the place as a three-year-old but with close to 9000 rooms, I feel like I see and learn something new each time I'm there.  I could write a whole paragraph on each picture but I'll spare you the history lesson and keep the commentary to a minimum :)  Part 2: The Touristy Stuff.


The Forbidden City:
 

(Like my bag??!  LOL, I bought it for 25rmb (about $3.60).)

 

(The old opera house - in all my visits to the palace, I had never known this structure even existed.  Kinda cool but also a little creepy...)

(A stray kitty just chillin' in the yard.)

(A forgotten courtyard of some sort...again, a little creepy.)

Qian Men (front gates to the Forbidden City) and remnants of old Beijing:

(This area is where old Beijing used to be.  Some of Beijing's oldest and most famous establishments are still in this area but of course most have been recently renovated.)

(Before China became king in the land of mass production, people came here to buy silk cloths for their clothes.)

(Gou Bu Li Bao Zi - Actually a Tianjin delicacy but anyhoo, this place is famous for their steamed buns and the name which literally translates into "Dogs ignore (Steamed Buns)".  The founder's nickname was Dog (makes more sense in Chinese...) and people used to say when he worked on his steamed buns, he would ignore everything and everyone around him and so yea, a catchy name was born.)

(As much as China has modernized itself in the past 20 years, you still do see areas in need of some major beautification.)

(This lady got pissed when she realized I was taking her picture and asked what I was doing.  I walked away pretending not to hear/understand her.  Whoops.)

 

 

(You see that little girl off to the left with the paper bag??!  There was a bunny inside the bag and the girl kept on picking the bunny up by its ears and then dropping the poor thing back into the bag.  Over and over again.  Seriously uncool.) 


Liulichang (area in Beijing dedicated to art galleries and antiques):

($5 to the first person who can tell me what this figurine is depicting.)

SHOPPING!!!!!!!!

Dont go to China if you want to shop for brand name luxury goods.  Go to Europe for that.  Go to China if you want to shop for cute, random, useless trinkets at street vendors.  As a lover of cute, random, useless trinkets, I was in heaven (yes, I will be posting my cute, random, useless loot a bit later in the week).  Heres a tip: always offer the vendor 50% of their asking price.  If they refuse, walk away.  Walking away is your way of telling the vendor youre serious about your offer price.  Most of the time when they see you walk away, they will immediately tell you they accept your offer price.  If they dont stop you, keep walking and just remember, there is no such thing as one of a kind when it comes to shopping at street vendors in China.  You WILL find that same item again, probably just a few vendors down and you WILL be able to buy at your offer price.  And dont worry, these vendors get everything at a wholesale market so at the end of the day, they will still be making profit.  One last thing...if you're buying something with a brand name attached to it from a street vendor, you are not buying the real thing at a incredibly cheap price.  I dont care how real it looks, what the vendor tells you, or if the vendor had to go to the back to get you the "real stuff"...its fake.

Summer Vacation: Month 1, Part 1

In the words of Ron Artest: "I want to thank err'body in ma hood!!!"  HAH, sorry, I got a wee bit distracted by the game (YAY LAKERS!!!).  Anyhoo, time flies and the first month of my summer vacation is already over.  I have a million and one pictures documenting the first month but after extensive editing, I've managed to cut it down to 170 pictures.  I didn't want to overwhelm you with one ginormous post so I decided to break the pictures down into three parts.  Part 1: The Personal Stuff..sorta.  

Changan Street right before my grandparents' house:

(Its been six years since I last visited Beijing.  Just so happens to be the six years when the city was working overtime for the 2008 Olympics.  It took me a good minute to get used to all the new buildings that were just empty plots of land during my last visit.)


Ours dogs (Bobo, Doudou, Coco, and Mei Mei):

(Bobo is a scaredy cat and hates men - basically Olivia as a dog.)

(DouDou means "beans" in Chinese...my mom got him and his sister from her friend and she decided to name  them Coco and Doudou or "coco beans".  Cute, right?  LOL)

(Coco is in desperate need of a haircut but is my favorite out of the bunch.  I was ready to stuff her in my suitcase but I realized she would probably annoy Libby to death so decided against it at the last minute.)

(Mei Mei is old and grouchy but is still adorable, esp when he gets all protective of Coco.)


First thing my dad bought me when we landed in Beijing:

(He knows me so well ^.^  My absolute favorite treat of all time.  No idea what these berries are called in English but they're dipped in sugar and oh-so-delicious.  These used to be available only during the winter but thanks to genetic engineering, they're now available all year-round!  My mouth is watering as I type...)


My cousin's wedding:

(Chinese weddings are completely different from American weddings - the reception and ceremony are combined into one big lunch shindig, the bride and groom receive only monetary gifts, and the groom and his side of the family have to go "steal" the bride from her parents' house before they can arrive together at the reception.  Hence the pic of my cousin running out of the building with his wife in his arms...and my big, fat, cheesy smile cus I think that was right before we were about to break the doors down at the bride's parents' place.  Not literally..more like monetary bribes and maybe just a little pushing.)

(He was our punching bag growing up...whenever my cousins and I got into trouble as kids, we would always pin the blame on him.  Poor kid.  Needless to say, I got a little weepy during the ceremony.)


Louboutins by the harbor:

(Yes, Loubs are all I ever think about...even when I'm on the other side of the world.)



Saving the world, one kitty at a time:

(Long story short: Some irresponsible retard left this poor kitten with a street vendor and asked the lady to do what she will with it.  Fast forward to 9pm, I'm walking home with my cousin and I see this little cutie popping her head out of the paper bag so of course I stop to ooohhh and awww over it.  The street vendor told me if she couldn't find a home for the kitten by the end of the night, she would probably have to abandon her as well.  After about an hour of calling everyone we knew to see if they would be willing to take the kitten in, I resorted to begging strangers passing by.  I was finally able to convince a teenager that cats are easy to take care of PLUS he could score lots of chicks with this cutie or he could give the kitten to his gf as a gift ^.^    When he agreed, I wanted to smother him with hugs and kisses but I decided against it cus I didn't want to scare the poor kid away.  Hope the boy and kitten are doing well!!)

This post took waaaaaaaaaaay longer than expected so I'll have to upload the other pics tomorrow :P