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.