Hello, Tianjin! part ll

In the afternoon, we went to the concessions of Tianjin but I couldn’t tell which one was which country. I just could show you the area is really full of exotic atmosphere. Interestingly, in the area, the houses people lived in were listed in country’s ancient buildings.









We took a lot of pictures there, and when I took picture with one of the ancient buildings, I said that “The house is really like Resident Evil.” Unfortunately, the man who lived in the building had heard what I had said. Wow, it was really embarrassed.
By the way, in the area, they established many interesting bronze statues. I was excited to find different statues around the corners and took pictures with them.








Obviously, Tianjin developed slower than Beijing because when I got there, the train station, tall buildings, and so on were still constructing. But I could the government tried a lot to catch up Beijing’s development. The place was really interesting because it melted both Chinese traditional culture and exotic atmosphere.

Hello, Tianjin! part l

Today we were going to visit Tianjin!


The high speed train is really convenient and it only takes us 45 minutes from Beijing to Tianjin. The station is really new and luxury. When I got there, I thought it was not a train station but an airport! The waiting place settled a lot of comfortable arm chairs and it even had special seats for VIPs. They also had a piano in the waiting place.



VIPs seats


for VIPs piano


in the high speed train



The first spot was Guwenhua Jie or you could call it “津門故里.” The street was burn in 1912, but the government rebuild it in 1986 and gave it the new name. Now, there are about 200 stores to sell traditional stuffs including instruments, handicrafts, and souvenirs. I had seen an elder draw beautiful words and it was really interesting and worth buying.



tlanted elder



We went to Go Believe (狗不理包子) for lunch. Well, here we had another funny story with the taxi driver. The driver asked as where were we going and we answered him we wanted to go to the Go Believe. He laughed and said “來天津不吃狗不理會遺憾，吃了更遺憾。” After listening to him, we really didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Go Believe was also another expensive restaurant we had visited when we were in our trip. Actually, I still couldn’t believe that the little one cost at least 60 NT dollars. We also ordered some traditional Chinese food. In the case of the flavor, you have to try it by yourselves that you’ll understand.

The Forbidden City

Where were we going next station?
Let’s go to the Forbidden City. Actually, it has a long name that I have found on Wikipedia “Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing and Shenyang.”



We had a little story here but it was a little bit silly that we had thought to visit the Forbidden City when we first got Beijing. However, we didn’t do a lot of homework because I thought we had a professional tour guide who had studied there for two to three years. The story was that we couldn’t found how to get into the Forbidden City but we had visited the Tian An Men (天安門) for three times. Finally, we found out that the entrance was just next to the Tian An Men.

Before getting into the Forbidden City, we had to walk a long path to buy tickets. The tickets were not cheap actually, but I thought it was worth because of the history. Here, I sincerely gave you a tip that you definitely had to bring a hat and wore warm when you got there. In the winter, it would become much colder than outside because the huge wide place. Your head will be hard to endure the cold weather especially when the temperature was only -15 to -18 degrees.



Here, I introduce you three special walls. The first one is Meridian Gate. (午門) It is shaped the word “凹”, and only the middle gate (中門) open for the emperor but it was available once a year for the number one, two, and three scholars (狀元、榜眼、探花) in the imperial examination and the queen married to the emperor.↓


The next one is Gate of Divine Might which is northern gate of the Forbidden City. (神午門) Actually, I thought you guys were familiar with the gate because it usually appeared in some operas. It was settled a big bell that it would ring in the morning and afternoon totally 108 rings a day. It was also the path that girls who had been selected into the palace for serving the emperor.↓



The last one I wanted to show you was the Tian An Men which was the front gate of the palace. The gate now is hanged on Mo’s pictures and it is not allow to come closer outside the Forbidden City. If you really want to visit it, then you can go to buy a ticket and you can get into the gate.↓







Corner towers were used to protect the whole building around the corner. Although the original meaning was to defend others, the scenery is really beautiful.↓






Actually, the Forbidden City is too big to introduce to you in detail, but if you visit Beijing someday, you must have to visit there. You can google it if you are really interesting in those ancient buildings and history.

New Sightseeing Spot

After 2008 summer Olympics, Beijing has a new spot for visitors to sightseeing: Beijing National Stadium and Beijing National Aquatics Center.





We had heard that these two places were too crowded to go, so we decided to visit there at night and we could also enjoy the night scenes. However, because of the vast place without a lot of buildings, the whole place was really cold. Before we entered in the plaza, we had to let our bags scan by the machine to make sure we didn’t bring something dangerous, including ourselves had to pass the scan. Both of them were special designed, and received many people’s attention. After the Summer Olympics, Beijing Government opened the plaza for visitors and used it as a muti-function stadium.







To our surprising, we had seen a special scene that there were a place full of white stuff. After understanding, we knew that they were trying to make snow for an outside skating place.

Duck Emperor

If you come to Beijing, but you never taste Quanjude(全聚德), don’t tell me you have been to Beijing. Quanjude is one of the most famous Chinese restaurants for Peking Roast Duck. It was established in 1864 during the Qing Dynasty and has operated over 200 years. There are so many roasted ducks restaurants all over the world, but why Quanjude is so famous? The reason is about the special technique how they roasted their ducks. First, they have to choose good ducks which have to be over 5 kilograms and not older than 100 days. Second, they hang these ducks over the stoves which are made of fruit woods such as pear wood or jujube wood to make the ducks have fruit’s sweet smell on them. The technique has been listed into Intangible Cultural Heritage.


Let’s see what we had eaten.


First, we also ordered half of the famous Peking Roast Duck because it is pretty expensive, actually. The waiter would trolley our duck to our table and cut it right beside you.



Moreover, the waitress would ask that do you need example to show how you to eat or not. Then she would help you to wrap the first one friendly.

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They not only offer Peking Roast Duck, but also other famous Chinese dishes. We also ordered a duck dish.





To me, I felt the Peking Roast Duck is oiler than Taiwan’s and it’s much more expensive. However, even though some of you may think it not worth eating, you should try it first and then you can give the comment after eating. The criticism will be much fairer. Anyway, it is a new experience for me and it is really interesting.

Welcome to Summer Palace!!--part ll

頤和園的長廊

Now, we keep visiting the spectacular palace. The next spot was the Long Corridor(長廊) whose length is 728 meters. It also had four pavilions during the whole way. The four pavilions named Liu Jia(留佳),retaining the goodness, Ji Lan (寄瀾), living with the ripples, Qiu Shui (秋水), autumn water, Qing Yao (清遙),clear and far means four seasons. The Long Corridor is not only famous for the length but also the artwork more than ten thousand. It was richly decorated with paintings on the columns and ceilings including famous plots and characters in books such as The Tale of Peach-Blossom Land (桃花源記), Five Tiger Generals (五虎將), beautiful sceneries, ancient poetry, Chinese mythologies, and so on.


清宴舫(石舫)

Next we went to the Marble Boat, also known as the name: Qing Yan Fang (清宴舫). The Marble Boat symbolized the stable of country politic and hoped the emperor rule the whole country peacefully. Actually, the Marble Boat was another pavilion in the Summer Palace.


從昆明湖遠眺前山建築

The last one was the 南湖island which located in the southern of the 昆明lake and had a fake mountain on the island. I thought the seventeen-arch bridge was interesting because it had 544 stoned-lions with different vividly looks. It also had temple on the island named 龍王廟 which was used to pray for raining.


昆明湖結冰的湖面上


東堤的文昌閣

Actually, I couldn’t introduce you all spot in the Summer Palace because we had to pay extra money if we wanted to go into some famous spots such as 德合園大戲樓 and the Temple of Buddhist Virtue (佛香閣). After visiting the Summer Palace, I could image ancient emperors and his family living style. In fact, I thought they were luxury and they used a lot of ways to pray for good luck and peace. For example, they preferred to decorate the roof with bats because bat-sound was near “福” in Chinese or they arranged many vases inside the house for the sound “平安”.
According to above examples, I felt that they lived actually without the sense of security because they worried a lot about losing the position of ruling people. Although the structures were really amazing and admired, I thought lived in these buildings were cold because the palace had changed so many times that made the atmosphere indifferent.

Welcome to Summer Palace!!--part l

It was a really cold day that my friends and I decided to have a memorable adventure by ourselves who had been to Summer Palace first time. First, we chose the subway to be our transportation. It was convenient to find the signpost of Summer Palace when you walked out the station. Walking about ten to fifteen minutes, we found the entrance.


出發去冒險囉


從地鐵出來之後沿著這條路走15分鐘就會到頤和園


We found a tour guide to help me understand better about the Summer Palace because it is too big for us to walk around by ourselves. I thought we might get lost in it easily. It was easy to find a tour guide who always got together around the entrance to ask you needing a tour guide or not.


頤和園外牌坊

The Summer Palace is famous for the Kunming Lake(昆明湖) and the mountain(萬壽山). There too many palaces in the Summer Palace to introduce all of them to you, so I choose some famous and interesting to you. Here I have to say sorry to you that it’s not easy for me to find out the English name of these buildings and locations in the Summer Palace, so I will use Chinese to show the names.

The first one is 仁壽殿 that the emperor handled the politics, but Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧太后) usually listen to the court here in the Qing Dynasty.


仁壽殿外的仁壽門


仁壽殿外的麒麟

The second one is Could-Dispelling Hall(排雲殿) which is used as a place for celebrating Empress Dowager Cixi ‘s birthday or holding some ceremonies. The whole place including the buildings is extremely luxury because it was build with a lot of jades and precious stones. The main hall of the Could-Dispelling Hall is the highest place of the Summer Palace.


排雲殿

Next we were going to the center of the mountain- the Temple of Buddhist Virtue (佛香閣). It is the biggest building in the palace and it had an octangle construction which was decorated with green edges and yellow Lazurites. Empress Dowager Cixi went here for worshiping Buddhist monthly.


佛香閣外的圍牆

佛香閣

TO be continue...

Tiananmen Square

After visiting The Great Wall of China, today we are going to Tiananmen Square.(天安門廣場) We all know one of the most famous incident in Chinese history-Tiananmen Square protests of 1989(天安門事變).



Tiananmen Square is the biggest square in the whole world and it is located in the center of Beijing city. Also, it is famous of the location of the southern of the Imperial Palace. The Square is really big and there are many visitors taking pictures or visiting the Imperial Palace. Actually, my friends and I were so stupid that we didn’t know the Imperial Palace is inside of the Tiananmen, so we had been visited there four times because we couldn’t find the Imperial Palace. As a result, we didn’t go inside of the Tiananmen, but we took a walk around this area.

Because Tiananmen Square is in the center of Beijing and there are many important ancient places around it, the control is very strict by the police. We saw the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong(毛主席紀念堂) where were always full of guards which made us nervous when we passed by. Zheng Yang Men(正陽門) is also astonished us even though we couldn’t go into it, but it was spectacular when we saw it.










In fact, we were surprising to find the shopping area of the Zhenyangmen because we were just getting lost. At the time we couldn’t find the right way to the subway, we found it. It is an interesting place that although it is full of international trends and stores, the structures are classical. For example, we saw Starbucks but not in a fashion or average building; it is decorated in Chinese style which made me feel weird. Stores including local or international are all the same decorations as Starbuck in the whole area. They even had some traditional performances in some buildings to catch customers’ attention.





The area is really interesting because it is typical combination of west and east. If you are free after having dinner, come to visit here with family or friends, you will have fun here no matter shopping or taking a walk.