December 2006

December 14th, 2006 We have just returned from the Peoples Republic of China. It all started when Nancy was cruising the internet and turned to Jim and said, "Do you want to go to China?" Well, visas in hand and about two weeks later, we fly over the North Pole, Russia, Mongolia and finally land in Beijing. What a wonderful city. It is the highest population city in the world and is filled with some the greatest people we have met. The city is also the cleanest city we have ever seen. Not one piece of trash can be seen on the sidewalks and street gutters. They have small street sweepers constantly working along with a huge workforce of individual sweepers constantly cleaning. There is a lot of construction going on in the city. Not just the above normal building for a progressive city but also in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Along with the Olympic Village and Stadiums, it seems that all public places are getting a face lift in preparation for the international onslaught the comes with the games. Well, what did we do? The highlight of our trip was climbing the Great Wall of China. Neither of us would have ever imagined being on the Great Wall. It took our breath away, literally and physically. Its a very tough climb up the steep walks on the wall.

We climbed past 4 of the towers before calling it quits. Down hill was just as bad. In some of the areas we had to hang on the handrail because it was so steep our feet would slip out from underneath us. Our next treat was Tian An Men Square and going through the Gate of Heavenly Peace

into the Forbidden City, now called the Palace Museum. The Forbidden city is large. It is said that if a baby were born and slept in a different room every night, the baby would be 27 years old before every room was used. What astonished us about the Forbidden City was how large it was and now ornate the building were.

This last picture shows the animals on the roofs of the buildings. The greater number of animals indicates the importance of the building with 9 animals being the highest. We have a lot of pictures and visited a lot of different places but it would take an evening of home movies to show it all. Our last treat was a dinner of Peking Duck. Our last day there we got into a taxi and went to the Northeast side of Beijing and went to the Aquarium, shopped and had the Duck. What a wonderful dinning experience. It would take to much to describe the dining delight. We are back home now and just can't believe the wonderful experience we had.