Last Day in Beijing June 30th (Day 10)

Today was a long day. We first went to Tiananmen Square, which is the largest public square in the world. It is said that it can contain 1 million people. Unfortunately soon after commenting on how much cooler the weather was today, the rain began. On the outside of one of the museums at the Square is a large electronic countdown clock for the Beijing Olympic Games. We walked across Tiananmen Square towards the First Gate of the Forbidden City, which has the large painting of Mao Zedong the leader of the Communist Party that gained power in 1949. It just so happens that tomorrow July 1st is considered the birth of the Communist Party.

We then entered the Forbidden City which was amazing. It sounds cliche, but words simply can't describe how vast. The Forbidden City is the Chinese Imperial Palace which consists of 800 buildings and 8,886 rooms. It was begun in 1406 and took 14 years to build during the Ming Dynasty. The last Emperor of China when the Imperial Age ended was in 1912. All of the buildings have gold roofs which could only be used by the emperors. Since we were on a quick tour, we were only walking through each of the gates and squares, then out through the Imperial Gardens rather than going through the museum as well. Unfortunately we encountered periods of thunderstorms with heavy down pours.

We were glad to be back on the bus heading towards lunch. The 45 minute bus ride was a great opportunity to begin to know the other adoption families better. We arrived at the Great Wall. Although there was light rain, the good news was that we were able to see the Wall along the mountain ridges and it was not very crowded. The Great Wall was built, rebuilt and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese empire. It is the longest human made structure and is 6,400 km (4000 miles long). It is visible from space. We went to the scenic Juyongguan Pass, one of the tree greatest passes. This pass has two viewing areas, the very popular Badaling and the southern Nan Pass, which is where we went. Melanie is very sick with a bad cold, so she climbed to the second tower and I went further up on the Great Wall.