We met in the JC Mandarin Hotel lobby at 6:30am to go to the airport on to Beijing. We got to Beijing around 10:30am and met our tour guide Cindy. Our first stop was lunch outside the Emperor’s Summer Palace and we went off to the Pearl Market which was right next door. This was my first realization that pearls are very cheap in China because they are grown there.
Afterwards we went across the street to the Emperor’s Summer Palace. It was a vast property with a huge lake, a magnificent bridge, and an enormous castle on the mountain in the center. The one downfall was that it was really foggy and polluted so the view was not that great.
Every time we would stop during our tour the Chinese people around us would stare at us and/or take our picture. I found out later that some of the time they say negative things about us in general but a lot of the SAS students didn’t realize this. There were also many Chinese hawkers trying to sell their goods to us (pictures, books, tea sets, etc.). Let me just say, they were so persistent by following you around like crazy, and they don’t stop unless you buy something.
After the Palace we headed to out hotel and then in the evening went to dinner at Hepingmen Quanjade Hotel that is famous for Peking Duck. It was inside this sketchy looking hotel but as soon as we went inside it was beautiful. The restaurant looked very “presidential” and had photos of many world leaders who had eaten there.
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