China is Huge!!!

Coming from the states, you’d think we’d be used to an expansive country.  But there aren’t too many countries bigger than the states, so usually, when we travel internationally we visit “smaller” countries and it seems like we can visit the whole country in a few weeks.  Not so in China.  As I’ve said before, China is HUGE!!!  Because of that, we were only able to visit the big cities of Beijing and Shanghai.  And those two cities are HUGE!!!  Like Los Angeles huge and probably even bigger. 

My initial impression of the two cities is that Beijing feels bigger and less personable even though Shanghai is technically bigger in size and population.  The feeling is probably due to the fact that Beijing has longer blocks and wider streets, while Shanghai had shorter blocks and streets that were only 2-4 lanes wide. Plus, it felt that the metro in Beijing was much more crowded, though it was probably more crowded because it only cost 2 Yuan (<30 cents) to ride it to most places in Beijing.

Tiananmen Square

Tiananmen Sqaure is the largest square in the world made famous by the Tiananmen Square protests back in 1989 and more widely remembered (for those old enough) for the iconic picture of a lone man standing in the way of 4 tanks.  No tanks on display though on the day we visited.  I guess the Chinese government probably doesn't want to romanticize that event, huh?  Though the square did seem rather large, I was more blown away by the number of people there were and these two massive screens.  The large number of people was due to the fact that the weekend we were in China happens to be the start of their Labor Day (or as Wikipedia informed me, was formerly Golden Week) holiday.  So I think our whole trip through Beijing and Shanghai was just overfilled w/ Chinese and boy did it feel that way.  As Darin had said, “I think I’ve seen like 1 billion of the 1.6 billion Chinese.” 

Then there were these two massive screens at one end of the square where they would show various sites around China.  It was rather impressive and showcased so many beautiful spots that it made you want to travel around China more.  So I snapped up pictures of the various scenes. 

Forbidden City

So after snapping away pictures in Tiananmen Sqaure, we were off to enter the Forbidden City.  It was probably bigger than we both originally imagined, so it left us quite tired, but it was pretty impressive inside. 

  

We also got to see some great ceramic jars dating millenniums back.  Darin and I noticed that some of the jars made 800 BCE looked better than the jars made in South America in 800 CE.  This jar below was made almost 700 years ago and look how magnificent it is. 

There was also some pretty jade carvings showcased in one of the buildings in the city.  

Sadly, we weren't able to find the Starbucks that supposedly was opened up within the Forbidden City Walls.  Perhaps some other time when there aren't large swarms of Chinese people getting in front of you every other second.