The storms should be over for awhile and in between these hurricane watches I have been able to finish the China blog with all our excursions. I have many of the pictures in Shutterflys so it may take awhile to see them all.

To view the Shutterfly’s with my captions follow these directions:

Click on the blue title of Shutterfy. Once the page shows up, scroll down the page and click on View Album.  Then click on Play Slideshow. In the top right hand corner click on Options. Last, put a check in the boxes Show Titles and Show Captions. (you should only have to do this once!) When it is finished you can go back to the blog by clicking your back button on your browser menu.

A town of 10 million people was hard to vision before we arrived for our trip to China. From friends that had visited Beijing many years before, I thought I would be coming to a dirty, unincorporated town that had just experienced some modernization to prepare for millions of world-wide visitors to the Olympics. We were transported by bus our whole trip, and I am sure we were only allowed to travel on certain streets. So through the windows of our speeding coach I tried to capture some of the sites we were seeing as we traveled around these 5 days. I do apologize that some of the pictures are blurred, but under the traveling  were the best I could get. Here are a few slide shows for you to see.

The streets of Beijing that we saw were very wide, with many lanes. Some of the newer roads had lanes just for the bicycles, but the older one the bikes would weave in and out of the buses and cars. With so many people living in this area, most reside in apartments that are rented from the government. Prior to the new government, people lived in the apartments for free and worked for the government for very little money. Now, the citizens are encouraged to get out and make their own living and support themselves. What I found as we rode along the apartments were high rises, stacked one behind the other. Usually the one facing the street had a fresh coat of paint on it, and the ones behind did not to give the appearance of a clean, proud city. I have several pictures of apartments-look at them closely and you will see they are really old and run down except for that new coat of paint. I also caught shots of several businesses that you would not have expected. I did not get the pictures of the Wal-mart, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds, but we did see them.

Town of Beijing Shutterfly

Most of the streets that we traveled were very clean and had wonderful shrubs and flowers. Many of the decorations were centered around the Olympic theme. It would be interesting to go back in two years and see if they still have all these beautiful flowers, or was this just down for show for the millions of visitors for the games. I found out that the workers that prepared the gardens and painted the buildings were migrants brought in from Mainland China. They were housed in tents and shipped out until the majority of the visitors are gone. I was pleasantly surprised at the beauty of the town and really enjoyed our bus rides observing the Chinese people.

Landscape Shutterfly

We did travel outside the city for just a few miles and once again we found the fronts of the building all with the same color of fresh paint. We did see more rural types of bikes ridden by the locals and animals running loose on the streets. There were many cornfields along the roads, but we were only served a limited amount of this vegetable. So maybe, it is grown for animal food. I know we only traveled through the better places, but the pictures should give you an idea how some of the Chinese live outside the city.

Countryside Shutterfly

The Olympic Green covers an area of about 2,800 acres, which includes a forest park. There is 10 of the competition venues located in this area and will be the heart of the Olympic games. The stunning Bird’s Nest or the Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube or the National Swim Center are two of the most important buildings in the Green. The opening and closing ceremonies were held in the Olympic stadium which holds 91,000 people and it was fun seeing all the buildings and flowers in this area.

Olympic Green Shutterfly

The last day event we saw was some of the track and field events. It was extremely hot sitting in the stands this day while waited for the men’s 50k walk/run participants come to the finish line. They raced along a track outside the stadium and on the last lap they walked right in front of us. We also got to see the men’s discus, too. Below is a slide show of some of the pictures.

Track Shutterfly

The USA team was assembled with some of the best NBA players in the league, including New Orleans’s Hornet, Chris Paul. This collection of athletes were called the Redeem Team, because the last USA team did not win a gold medal. Tonight they were playing the Argentina team, which also had a few NBA players to help them try to win a medal at the Olympics. The basketball arena was full of people, music, performers and lots of media screens to watch the game up closer. The only down side of this venue was the size of the seats. The leg room was very narrow and for tall people their knees were jammed up into the chairs in front of them. As with any NBA game were was lots of entertainment during the time outs. I have put together a shutterfly of some of the pictures made at the game. This was a lot of fun to watch, but what was surprising to me, most of the people in the stands were not for the USA team. That did not matter-we won anyway. This was our last Olympic event to see athletes compete and we were looking forward to seeing the closing ceremonies.

Men’s Semi-final Basketball Game Shutterfly

We are back in our house with no damages and the electricity is on, so now it is time to share more of our pictures of our trip to China!

Panasonic took us to a new hotel late one night so we could spend two nights in this wonderful resort. The problem came in there was no time to enjoy and really see the grounds because we literally just slept there and ate breakfast before we boarded the buses again.

The Grand Epoch City’s city walls are real copies of the old Beijing City at its Ming and Qing dynasties. The hollow walls enveloping the property run 5 kilometers with 22 tower gates. The wonderful Yuan Mingyuan and Prince’s residence and courtyard houses display the essence of ancient Chinese culture and unique Chinese architecture.

As a grand modern international conference and exhibition center, Grand Epoch City hold the five different styles of star-class hotel, magnificent Golden Arts Hall, grandiose Buddhism Museum, charming Golf Garden, well-equipped grand health-keeping items, unique Indoor Water Park and abundant shopping places. The total numbers of guest rooms are 1,500 rooms with 3,000 people living. 6,680 persons can taste food in 16 specialty restaurants. The 80 conference houses can admit over 10,000 persons to meet. There are more than 36,400 square meters indoor space for holding varieties of exhibitions. There was badminton, volleyball and tennis courts, a bowling alley, swimming pool, golf course and much more that we did not get to enjoy.

Below is a shutterfly of just a few of the pictures I got of the grounds before we left for our next excursion. Enjoy this beautiful Chinese Architecture with emphasis in detail and color.

Grand Epoch Center Shutterfly

The blog will not be finished for awhile due to the fact that the hurricane evacuees are giving up the air condition, internet and electricity at my brother’s house in Memphis and returning home to Louisiana where there is no electricity. We know that we are going to a home that is not damaged by the storm, but with no power for 2 days we will have to throw away everything in the refrigerator and freezers. We have plenty of staples to hold us over till the power comes back on. For all those that had trouble eating the Chinese food-some of those delicacies might not  look too bad in a few days. When we get electricity and things are settled I will try to finish up our Chinese trip which seems a live time ago-instead of one week. More later.

We were given an opportunity to see go to a tea house and learn about Chinese teas. Below you can click on a shutterfly about this experience.

Teahouse Shutterfly

A Hutong is a narrow street in Beijing that has small courtyard homes. Many of them are slums that are being cleared for newer construction. We were able to see a small alley of homes that are being kept up and actually some are being renovated. We took a rickshaw drive to a hutong area in the Ho Hi district. Below is a shutterfly about this excursion.

Rickshaw Ride Shutterfly

On the first leg of our flights home from Beijing I sat next to a young photographer that had just done a documentary on hutongs for PBS. Here is his link to a slide show he created.

Hutong Slide Show

In the following shutterfly link you will find pictures of a Cloisonne Factory which we were able to watch the whole process of pieces being designed and fired for purchase.

Factory Shutterfly

Let’s try this-I have created a shutterfly to show some of our pictures. You can click on the link below. Once the page shows up scroll down the page and click on View Album. Then click on Play Slideshow. In the top right hand corner click on Options. Last, put a check in the boxes Show Titles and Show Captions. (you should only have to do this once!)

These pictures will be about us seeing beach volleyball, track and field, diving and women’s softball.

The Tour Begins Shutterfly

Be sure to click on Previous Entries below to view all the other events in this blog.