Although Beijing was very different from Shanghai, the experience was just as enriching! Beijing is about the same distance from Shanghai as Chicago is from Houston, so there were many cultural differences between the cities.
We traveled the distance to Beijing on land in under 5 hours via bullet train. The trains travel at constant speeds of over 150 mph. Upon arriving in Beijing, I experienced the same culture shocked as when I first set foot in the streets of Shanghai. The most noticeable was how much more spread out everything was. Later in the day we made a trip to Beijing’s Dong Hua Men market. It was there that I felt the furthest from home… At the market I indulged in in food items such as fried scorpion, fried starfish, fried seahorses, and fried mangos for desert. I was also able to engage in more bartering at the market. Later on we ate at arguably the worlds most famous place for peaking duck. Needless to say, it was the best thing I tasted in China, although those fried seahorses were a close second.
The next day was spent vising Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Both of which featured many impressive feats of architecture and were rich in history. Outside of the Forbidden City we were met by dozens of elders engaging in activities such as dancing, wrestling, and as strange hacky sack type game called shuttlecock. A good portion of our time in the Forbidden City was spent playing shuttle cock with the elders. They were much better at it than we were…
The highlight of Beijing for me was the Great Wall. After arriving at the village closest to the wall, we spent a tiring couple of minutes walking up a slanted hill only to be met by over 1,100 steps that led to the wall itself. We decided against taking the local ski lift to the top which in hindsight was probably a poor decision. However, the top of the wall was majestic. It quite literally stretched as far as the eye could see. After a couple hours walking and a couple hundred pictures on the wall we all decided to take the toboggan ride down. You would think that the toboggans would have some kind of speed/safety restraints on them, but that was hardly the case. If you consider yourself an adrenaline junky, the climb up is certainly worth the ride down.
Although I did not gather much information for the sake of my project in Shanghai, I had one of the greatest times of my life in the city. The unique beauty of the Forbidden City, the vastness of the Great Wall, the deliciousness of the peaking duck skin, and the crunchiness of the fried scorpions will remain engraved in my mind forever.