The past few days have been a whirlwind of tourism.
Friday we toured two major media venues in Beijing. The vice president at both places gave us a presentation on media in
China and how their businesses worked. I was surprised to find that many of them are pushing for more freedom for journalists. Our lecturer on the Media industry in China mentioned that US reporters got their facts mixed up on the issue in Tibet, and he said this could have been prevented had they been allowed the freedom to go on location and report. Interesting...

Saturday the university had set up a tour of some major attractions in Beijing, starting with Tiananmen Square. It was drizzling, but I decided that was better than 96 degrees... We saw the parliament building, Mao Zedong's tomb (where they kept his body for TEN MONTHS after he died for the public to pay respects), and a national museum. Tiananmen Square is located on the midline of Beijing, along with the Forbidden City, which we moved onto next. This was where all the emperors lived until 1911 when the Republic of China started.

I could bore you with all the historical facts about these places, but I'm sure you'd rather hear about the little cultural spectacles I noticed along the way. First, the toddlers don't wear diapers... they have the middle of their pants cut out and they just squat right where they are. The picture above isn't as cute now that you know what he is doing... haha! Also, I had heard that the bathrooms in China consisted of holes that you squat over, but I didn't think it was still that way- I was wrong. For the women, there is a urinal type thing on the floor that you go into and then flush. No toilet paper, no seat. It is true. I took a picture, but spared my blog audience! While we were at the Forbidden City suddenly a rush of Chinese guys came over to our professor and all wanted pictures with him. He's a tall, bald, middle aged, black man, whom they all believed was Michael Jordan!!! AHAHAHA All the Mizzou kids played along and the Asians loved it.

After these two attractions, we moved on to the Hutong Villiage where the Hutong families live. This is a huge extended family that has a rich heritage in Beijing. They were offered a large sum of money to sell their valuable, center city piece of land, but chose to retain their historical location. We were able to tour the traditional Chinese village and the shops near by in rickshas (carts pulled by men on bicycles).

After this we went to Prince Gong's Mansion, a garden and mansion preserved as a park for tourists. Here we attended a traditional Chinese tea. She prepared four types of tea for us and demonstrated the proper way for men and women to drink it. She had these neat cups that changed design when hot tea was added... I had to buy a couple for souvenirs. I'm not usually a tea drinker, but this stuff could work miracles!

Sunday was a free day, so Sam and I took a cab to a market in the city. This was the mecca of all markets! Five floors of knock off purses, bags, designer clothes, etc. Plus authentic souvenirs, wall decorations, and jewelry for cheap. By the time I got to the floor with all the silk items I was getting pretty good at bargaining... I was able to get several silk scarves for a ridiculous price! It kinda became a game to see how low we could go... good fun!

Today we had lecture on Chinese/Beijing History for 3 hours in the morning and then had the afternoon off. Sam, Regan, and I decided to check out the famous Beijing Zoo with the pandas. They're really trying to fix up the zoo and panda area for the Olympics, which was noticable, but the rest left a bad impression. There were all the standards- giraffs, lions, tigers, monkeys, etc, but their habitats were not up to Western standards. The animals' homes were not very similar to their environments, especially the lions/cheetahs/tigers. These poor fellas were in small cages. I really left the exhibit feeling pretty bad for them.

Have I mentioned how CHEAP everything is here? The zoo was 20 Yuan (about 3 US dollars) lunch is around 10 (so about $1.50) and so on! A great change from Sydney!

Tonight we have a formal dinner hosted by the university and may possibly meet the students volunteering from North Carolina. I know I'm repeating myself, but the Chinese people at the university have gone over and above to make us feel welcome! More later...