Monday, May 2, 2011

Back to Blogger.com / Family trip to Beijing


After my 6-7 months at ECPod, I have decided to move back to a more user-friendly blogger.com even though my chinese readers won't be able to read this unless they use a proxy. But given that a lot of chinese users do use proxies and VPNs, it shouldn't be that big of a problem.

My parents and sister were here in Beijing for the first time ever! I took them around town for the whole week last week, which left quite little time for me for work, but it was fun nevertheless. We did all the main attractions - great wall, forbidden city, walking outside the temple of heaven, bird's nest olympic stadium, and shopping at silk street market, yashow, and hongqiao pearl market. Heck they didn't even get enough shopping at those places that they had to go to Carrefour in Beijing to shop. haha

These are a few pictures from their entire trip here.

Taking the bus to the great wall - all dozing off the 1+ hour ride:



We finally arrived at the great wall, SOOOO MANY PEOPLE...coming to see a wall. I have 4 at my apartment. The dude on the far right, was standing at a point marked "hero of great wall" or something like that, because it was on a cliff:



Look at the amount of people:



Our personal tour guide, Wang Jing. She was super helpful throughout my family's trip, coming with us to the great wall and forbidden city and explaining the history behind it. She's going to Spain for her masters in Spanish so good luck to her!:



Me and my family at the background:


This shit is tiring:

Forbidden city with Mao's face at the back:




Who says blackberry's can't take artistic shots?


Bird's nest at the back:



The olympic torch:


The focus is not on my dad, but if you zoom into the kid at the background, the mom basically just spread the legs of the baby girl, and because in China, diapers are expensive, kids pants have a big hole at the bottom so that they can "unload" anytime. The baby girl was "spraying her fountain" just like that:




One of the crazy buildings next to the Olympic park, that's the top of the dragon head, and the following buildings behind them are like the body of the dragon (hidden). The building in front is the "water cube" - aquatic center for the Olympics:



Last friday night I took my sister out for the first time without my parents, so that she could experience the "young" life and not just the touristy stuff. We started off with this party somewhere in a industrial area. My friend was spinning at this "warehouse" there, they had free flow drinks and chuanr, and people were getting haircuts in the middle of the party:



Very artsy. Haha. After that we went to Punk at Sanlitun to show my sister the more upscale electro scene at Opposite House hotel. All in all, I think a very productive trip. I saw a lot of Beijing sights myself, but probably won't do it again. So friends coming to visit, I'll take you guys to stuff that the locals do, not what the tourists do.

Too tiring. haha



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