Temple, Silk, and Scorpion
Seeing as I was super exhausted when I went to bed last night, I thought for sure I would sleep the night through, but no that darn jet lag got me. I was up at 11:30p.m. and again at 2:00a.m. Unfortunately when I woke up at 2:00 I wasn’t able to fall back asleep, so when it was time to get up at 4:00a.m. for a sunrise run to Tienanmen Square to watch the raising of the flag I was ready to go.
A group of about 20 of us met and jogged/walked (mostly because of other people on the sidewalk or waiting to cross streets) to Tienanmen Square. It was in the 60’s and perfect running weather. The square was really only two long Chinese blocks away from the hotel (about a 10 minute walk), so we really didn’t break a sweat getting there. It was crazy how many people were up and about at 4:45a.m. Our tour guide was on a mission to lead us to the perfect spot to watch, but many of the paths that might have been open to pass through yesterday, were closed today. After the flag was raised to the playing of the Chinese National Anthem we continued our jog. It was an adventure just trying to find which tunnels were open to cross under the streets. We jogged, stopped, took pictures, kept jogging, stopped to find our way, kept jogging, so and so forth. When it was all said and done we were gone for about 50 minutes and went 3.64 miles. It felt good to be out and moving after sitting on a plane all day yesterday.
After getting showered we headed down for a buffet breakfast in the hotel where we tried many types of non-typical breakfast items like fried dumplings, stewed herbed mushrooms, and pork pasties. Everything was very good.
At 8:30 we boarded our tour bus and headed to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is where emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties would worship the heaven and pray for bumper crops. The architecture of the buildings that make up the Temple of Heaven was quite impressive as they are almost 600 years old.
After the tour of the Temple of Heaven we headed to lunch where we were seated at round tables of 9. Waiters and waitress brought platter after platter (served family style) of various beef, chicken, shrimp, duck, fish, and pork dishes along with soup and salad. Once again, just about everything I tried I enjoyed, but I especially enjoyed the duck and pork.
After lunch we headed to a silk factory where we learned how silk is harvested and made into thread and padding for quilts. The tour and demonstration was probably about a 1/2 hour long, but was interesting. After leaving the silk factory we headed back to the hotel to have a couple of hours to ourselves before our welcome happy hour.
Leah and I decided to wander back towards Tienanmen Square to browse some stores and Tom chose to take a power nap. We didn’t find much to buy, but Leah did buy some Chinese candy and I bought us some ice cream cones. I wanted to try to find a geocache, but there were no geocaches within a couple of miles of our hotel. When we got back to the hotel we had about an hour left and I got on the computer and started typing these blog posts.
At the happy hour we received our race packets, shirts, and bib numbers. We talked with one of the tour companies employees (Lysette) who has run the race before what we can expect. I was thinking I might be able to finish the half in 3 hours, but she told me her average half-marathon time is about what I just finished a half in two weeks ago, and she finished the Great Wall Half in more like 4 hours. Yikes, I guess I’ll find out on Saturday what my body can do. Leah also mentioned to her that she wanted to eat some weird stuff like bugs and stuff while here. Lysette said she knew a place we could walk to that had those types of vendors and would be happy to take us there this evening.
At 7:15p.m. a small group of us met up and walked to Wangfujing Street. The street was incredibly packed with people and vendors selling all kinds of interesting fried items on a stick. You could pick from scorpion, starfish, seahorse, snake, lizard, etc. Leah said that she wanted to eat a scorpion and we came upon them right away. They have living ones moving around on sticks and ones that have been fried ready to eat. Leah gave it a go and after giving it a thumbs for being a deep fried crunchy thing, about 7 other people followed in her footsteps. She had to talk me into it, but I did it and after an initial reaction of disgust, I realized it really wasn’t that bad. Tom tried it too and though it just tasted like a Funyun. We walked all the way down the street looking for other things to eat, but the smells weren’t all that pleasing and although we had fun looking, we didn’t try anything else. There was McDonald’s across the street and although I don’t like to make it a habit, I do always like to go to a foreign McDonald’s at least once on a trip. The Chinese McDonald’s had a few different choices then an American McDonald’s like a pork green burger, big chicken cutlet rice bowl, and chicken patty rice bowl. Tom and I opted for a cheeseburger happy meal. Weak I know, but after the scorpion I wasn’t really feeling like trying anything else new this evening. We had a nice stroll back to the hotel and spent the evening figuring out the internet and writing this blog post.
