For my Chuseok Holiday (the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving), I flew to Beijing for a five day trip. I traveled with some friends I met at orientation and ran into a girl I had met before on the flight and she ended up joining our group.
The trip was interesting from the very beginning, as we unknowingly had chosen to travel to Beijing during a huge Chinese holiday, National Day. We found out our flights had been delayed as no flights were allowed to enter Beijing that morning and our hostel had to cancel or reservation for the first night because of its location near Tienanmen Square. No foreigners were allowed within a certain distance of the celebration and I heard of a fellow traveler who was arrested for getting too close.
As we were waiting for our flight to take off, I was talking with someone on the plane and mentioning that I went to school in Northeast Missouri. Someone else on the flight called to me saying, "I'm so sorry to eavesdrop, but did you just say Northeast Missouri?" Me: "Yes, I went to Truman in Kirksville." Leticia: "I was born and raised in Kirksville!" We started talking for a while about what a small world it is, and how Leticia and her husband both went to Mizzou. I said I was from St. Louis and her husband said "Everyone from St. Louis always wants to know what high school you went to... you're not a Marker are you?" I about fell over at the randomness of the situation, and that someone on a flight from Seoul to Beijing guessed my high school. It really shows what a small world it is!
The next few days were full of so much activity, I'll try to keep the post from getting too long and uninteresting. We stayed with my second cousin Sawyer the first night (who I didn't really know but generously offered us a place to stay when our hostel canceled our reservation) and got to enjoy a bit of the nightlife Beijing has to offer.
Our first full day we went to the Forbidden City, climbed up Jinshan Hill to get a view of all of the Forbidden City, and went to Tienanmen Square. The highlight of the day was probably when we were at the top of Jinshan Hill. There was a tacky tourist attraction where you could try on traditional Chinese emperor or empress clothing and pose in a throne. Obviously I jumped at this opportunity and quickly rushed our group to sign up. They dressed us in the outfits and started taking massive amounts of photos of us. It became even more interesting, when other people started coming over to shoot pictures of us as well. Throughout our trip, we found ourselves being asked numerous times to pose for pictures with people. This was probably the most paparazzi-like moment. At one point I think 10-15 people were standing taking pictures with us, then sending their children up to pose with us as well.
After the excitment died down, we sat down to watch the sunset. It was absolutely beautiful and probably one of the calmest points of our action packed trip.
After the sunset, we went over to Tiananmen Square. We weren't quite ready for what we saw. As the holiday was not yet over, the Square was PACKED with people. Huge screens were showing the festivities from the night before, and the floats from the parade were on display.
After the Square, we had reservations to eat Beijing Duck. It took us over an hour and a half to find the restaurant, but once we did it was definitely worth the wait. It was delicious! We went to bed early that night, as a bus was picking us up at 6am to head to the Great Wall.
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