We went to Guilin and Yangshuo - It was very beautiful - I posted the pics - it is known for it mountains. Gulin is a smaller town - its quaint no pollution it is along the Li river - We climbed a peak and took some great pics of the city. We also took a tour through a cave. Its funny here in china we went through the cave and it was nothing like my tour of Crystal cave in Sequoias.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Guilin and Yangshuo
Posted by Christy at 8:04 AM 2 comments
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Xian
We arrived in Xian around Lunch time. I thought we were going to a smaller city (8 million or so) that the air would be clearer. Although I have to say the smog didnt bother me in Beijing it is noticeable. When we drove from the airport to the downtown area, we passed this really huge coal factory with 4 large smoke stack things. Again my expectation was way off. Air quality is very very bad here, when you blow your nose black comes out. The entire city seemed old, run down and dirty when we first arrived. The tour buss drove us to a bell tower from the ancient times, it is in the center of the down town area next to a mall and lost of shopping from Very i end to tiny shops. Another example modern right next to the ancient ones. the bell tower was for keeping time, they rand it in the morning - a little bit further was a drum tower that they rang at dusk - but we only walked past that we didn't go in. After word was the highlight of our meals and entertainment. They took us (along with 20 million other tour busses) to a wonderful dumpling dinner and a traditional chinese folk type show. The food was Excellent thay had all kinds of different dumplings that they molded into shapes of the thing it was for example - the Dunk dumpling looked like a duck - i took a pic of that one. others were port , cabbage, walnut(my fav) and many more. All of us loved the food. The Show was also Great - albeit a little long. some songs, some intruments, some dances, it was all entertaining, beautiful, graceful, and occasionally funny.
Posted by Christy at 3:22 PM 0 comments
Monday, March 17, 2008
Impressions of the Great Wall & Beijing
We took a bus out to the Great wall today. On the way we stopped at a Jade Factory. They showed us people carving and Polishing Jade. Based on the amount of tour buses in the parking lot it is one of those places they take you to shop and make commission, who knows. At any rate there was a lot of interesting jade pieces, they told us about soft jade and hard jade. Anyway - there was some beautiful things as well of things that are not my taste ( sculpture of a cabbage, or and Any Animal you can thing of.) I did buy a few things, However my favorite things there were the Beautiful Furniture with Jade inlaid in it - I took a pic of a table, that was incredible. every piece was different and beautiful. didn't even bother to look at the price.
Posted by Christy at 6:55 AM 2 comments
first few days o far
Hello all. I haven't had much free time. here goes a quicky update.
Posted by Christy at 2:29 AM 0 comments
Saturday, March 15, 2008
day 1 in beijing
I posted pics in the os day one at the Forbidden City - Please check them out
Posted by Christy at 5:16 PM 1 comments