Explore the great cities of the world!
Welcome to Day 7, the day I fell and hurt my back. I was afraid the rest of my trip could be in jeopardy. It was also the day I paid an emperor’s ransom for some goofy pictures of me. Despite some mishaps, it [Read more…]
Here are some fun (fascinating, actually) facts about China and Chinese.
Ever heard of China referred to as “the Middle Kingdom”? I had heard this but didn’t really understand what it meant. It turns out, the explanation is surprisingly simple. As I started to understand as I was planning my trip, the [Read more…]
15 years after winning the First Opium War, the British were growing antsy. They wanted even more favorable trade conditions, including the definitive legalization of the opium trade, as well as the regulation of the coolie trade. (Coolies were Chinese indentured servants—in effect, legal slaves—shipped off by the British to outlying spots of the British Empire and to Latin America.) The British also believed that the Chinese were not keeping up with the [Read more…]
In the early afternoon, I left the Forbidden City through the northern Gate of Divine Prowess knowing that it would be incredibly hard to top that experience. Nonetheless, I still had a whole lot of Beijing to [Read more…]
Before I left the hotel for my first day out in Beijing, I had a banana from the fruit bowl that had greeted me in my room when I arrived the night before. On the frozen tundra that was Tiananmen Square, I was dying for something hot. Surprisingly, there were no food vendors on the square. So I did without. In the Forbidden City, I got what turned out to be a very popular treat at Beijing attractions–a (bunless) hot dog on a stick. It was a little funny to see the locals chowing down on these. Later in the afternoon, I went to a Chinese fast food restaurant and happily got an order of “Golden Nuggets”. I’m certainly not going to go to McDonald’s in China. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy some nuggets! I washed them down with a Mirinda. I looked this up to find that it’s an orange soda originally from Spain but now produced by Pepsi.
