Our trip to Beijing was fantastic (we went June 18-21). We were only there 3 days and 3 nights which definitely is not long enough to see all there is to see in that city, but we got a good jist of it. The first night we went to an acrobatics show, Friday we went to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, Saturday we went to the Forbidden City and the Silk Market, and Sunday we went to the Temple of Heaven and Mao's Mausoleum. I know, a ton of stuff.

The Great Wall was the best. The Temple of Heaven was awesome in itself though. One of their alter's (the one you see if you were shown a picture of the Temple of Heaven) was built without any nails. And its huge! Pretty cool. Also cool was the "hall of abstinence" where the emperor would spend the last 24 hours of his fast before making sacrifices (or something like that, Becca and Vanessa took a lewd picture in front of it); the "center of the earth" where the emperor made his sacrifices (I stood on the center of the earth you could say); but best of all were the loads of senior citizens scattered amongst the park's many acres. We got there early Sunday morning but so did thousands of China's communist generation. And while we were strolling, they were tai chi-ing, playing some sort of raquetball without nets, playing hacky sack (no joke. which was really funny to me because hacky sack players in america are skater-Californian middle school boys), doing fan dances and sword dances, and chanting (as the video almost creepily portrays).

All in all, the park was a cultural experience.