May 1st Holiday Visits

Here's a list of what I did this past week for Labor Holiday:

1.Prince Gong's Garden Mansion and Beijing Hutongs
(Click on the picture for more views)


After a long and rather stuffy bus ride, we finally arrived at the Prince Gong's Garden Mansion. For an admission fee of 60 yuan, you could watch a show from the palace theatre house (which was only for the emperor's entertainment in the past) and have tea. There were MANY rock formations and ponds. One was like the shape of a mother and baby. And many gestures and things to feel (more rocks) to give you good luck! The show at the end was a rip-off. It was 6 minutes and we barely had time to drink any tea! :(

We decided to do a hutong tour since it was around the area. It was interesting to see the ancient housing that were well over 400 years old...yet well preserved. You could tell the ranking of the person who lived in one of these houses by what you saw in their front door (the width/depth, the amount of stairs, the statues and even the doorknobs!). We also did a walking tour which included a hutong shopping alley (I want to go back!), the bell and drum towers and a nice stop for some coffee! Haha.

2. The Pizza Company and Walmart
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3. Tokugawa Japanese restaurant and Tianyi (shopping), Yonghe Dou jiang and Beijing World Art Museum
(Click on the picture for more views)


We went to Tokugawa Japanese Restaurant and ate and ate for two hours. You have A, B, C, and D choice options, the cheapest being Choice A at 68 yuan per person. And you can order all the "A" items on the menu that you want! I was SO full that I just ate oil bread sticks (you tiao) and soy milk (doujiang) for dinner at a famous resturant called "Yonghe Dou jiang!" It was fun...and so was my cracked bottle of tea that leaked everywhere! We went to Tianyi to go shopping afterwards.

The World Art Museum was fun! There was an ancient civillizations section (Egypt, India, Americas-Mayan, Rome, Greece) and one on POMPEII. There were a lot of jewelry exhibits in the POMPEII exhibition. Perhaps the city of Pompeii is a museum in itself. There were some casts of people who were found in Pompeii...a family, a dog and man waiting for his destiny. A little disturbing. We couldn't take any pictures inside the museum! :( So we took funny ones outside.

Julius, Meer, Lear and Roy came over the next day to do some cooking. Roy made eggplant, Julius made this 4 color chicken rice dish and I made chicken burgers. That same evening, Matthew made homemade pizzas! I brought some garlic powder (Thanks Christina!), chicken, mushrooms and bell peppers over. After dinner, we went to play some badminton using a tennis net! Matthew won all the games against Lin and I! Haha. Oh well. I need more practice.
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I should start working on my cultural presentation....