Beijing

It has taken me a good hour to go through all of the pictures we took in Beijing. I have included many of them because we went to a lot of historical sites while in China. The first place we went to was the silk factory.


These two pictures show how they unravel the silk from the cocoons.



This lady has been working on this run for 3 months. It was amazing to see the detail.





Dr. Money was our director. Here he is trying on a silk jacket. This is where we bought Katelyn a silk dress. After the silk factory tour we went to Tianamen Square and the Forbidden City. The square was very large and had thousands of people. The Chinese military definitely had a presence there. We went through metal detectors and military personnel were walking around. It might be because we were there a week before the 20th anniversary of the Tianamen Square student riots.







We were touring with some taller guys so everywhere we went these guys had people taking pictures of them. Below is a picture taken from the Deliotte tower looking toward the Forbidden City.





Our only injury happen while we were touring the Forbidden City. One of the guys in the group tried to jump onto a ledge and missed it. He had quite the gash and needed medical attention. After our tour of the Forbidden City the director and this guy went to the hospital.



It seems like the Forbidden City went on for miles. These were living quarters for all of the concubines, wives and children.



Everything was brightly painted.



Crazy architecture.


This is looking out of the Forbidden City across the street. As we walked to our bus we were hounded by street vendors who wanted to sell you something. The goal was to stay in the middle of the group and to not make eye contact with anyone. If you failed you had someone tugging on your arm and walking with you until you got on the bus.



This is walking out of the Forbidden City looking back.



This was us about board a boat to get closer to the Summer Palace.


The boat.

The Summer Palace.

We went to the Olympic Square. The tallest structure is where the torch was lit during the Olympics.
Here is the bird's nest where the opening and closing ceremonies took place.


Here is the water cube where Michael Phelps made history winning 8 gold medals.

Mckay posing with some Chinese girls that wanted to take his picture.

This is the Great Wall map!


We took the chair lift up to the Great Wall.


The Great Wall was really steep. It was quite a hike up and down the wall.





Part of the wall has been overtaken by weeds and people are not able to walk on that section.







To get down the mountain we took an alpine slide. Ryan was behind me taking pictures as we were going down and we came up to this guy who yelled in his megaphone thst we were not suppose to take pictures. But that didn't stop Ryan.

"No photo!"

This is a picture of one of the vendors selling produce along the way back to our bus.

Ryan and I at the Temple of Heaven. This was one of the places we liked the most. It has many symbols that can be related to the church and the atmosphere was incredible. Many Chinese adults gather at the Temple of Heaven to exercise and play games. We saw people dancing.

Playing games.

and singing. This guy was our favorite. He had a karoke machine with the sound at the very loudest. He was singing at the top of his lungs. It was classic.

There were a lot of people playing instruments.

We of course had a peking duck dinner. I guess it is a tradition to cut the duck into 124 pieces. We had great Chinese food in China.

We had a great time in China. It was a different feeling there though and I think it was because the church is not actively proselyting in China. We attended church in a Beijing ward. The Branch President cautioned us not to discuss the church with anyone. The Branch was awesome, the spirit was so strong.