Sunday in Beijing

Sunday was spent with my 3 Google US colleagues hitting the rest of they key Beijing tourism attractions.  We started the day at Tiananmen Square.  The square is obviously most well known for the tragedy of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.  The wikipedia entry offers a lot of info in regards to the Square and the incidents that have occurred there.  What I find interesting about Tiananmen Square is that it's basically famous for being a gathering place...and little more as far as I can tell.  The government reporting that 241 people died that day.  Some other reports soar to near 10,000 dead.  It seems most likely that somewhere near 1000 died.  It's amazing to think that this happened in 1989.  A lot has changed in the last 20 years and my sense is that the Chinese people are happier and that the government is much more "reasonable" now than it was then.  The Square is massive and is fairly well guarded today.  They have metal detectors at the entrances, guards (both uniformed and undercover) and LOTS of cameras all over.  I believe Tiananmen Square may even one up Vegas in regards to eyes in the sky.

Directly across the street from T Square in the Forbidden City.  This area is where the Imperials lived for a long time.  It's named Forbidden City as normal Chinese people were forbidden from entering during the time when the Imperials lived there.  It's a massive area (nearly 1000 buildings) but nearly all of it is closed to tourists.  So, we basically spent an hour + walking through the giant courtyards and checking out a few small exhibits of Imperial Jewels, etc.  Overall didn't find it all that interesting though the architecture was certainly noteworthy.

After checking out the Imperial City, we had some lunch in a local Hutong and then walked around for a while.  The Hutongs are full of restaurants, bars and shopping.  Great way to kill some time.

We wrapped up the day at Silk Street which is the big shopping "mall" in China.  It's actually not really a mall but more like a flea market that is indoors.  It's stall after stall of clothing, accessories, sporting goods, toys and basically any other type of crap you can imagine.  It's pretty well understood that everything they sell is fake and it's all about negotiating.  The women who work there are incredibly aggressive shouting "Hello! Hello!" and "Sir, you need shoes?", etc.  Some would even grab your arm in hopes of dragging you into the 5x8 "store".  I pretty much hated the entire hour I spent here but some of my colleagues did buy some pearls (they say their real) and a few other small items.

That's how we wrapped up the weekend!  Next entry will be about Houhai and my last night in Beijing.