Pictures of Tianjin

Right! Exciting weekend for moi ^^ Not only did I actually manage to get on FB thanks to Blackberry's gorgeous encrypted connection <3 but entry to the Forbidden City was also gained! *impressive* Not that it's really forbidden anymore, the place is swarming with peasants and communists (Emperor Kangxi would die again).

Friday night I ended up taking Connor (the Brit) to the Goubuli restaurant Sabrina took me to a week ago. It's a really good nom, and the Brit seemed to enjoy it, later on we also ended up in the hotel bar, drinking Tequila (that was just me) - twas a good time. Basically it was good to have someone to chat to on my level, well, more on my level than the Chinese

Saturday ended in film time ^^ Sabrina and I went to see Wang Leehom's new film "Love in Disguise" (恋爱通告. Apparently today is Chinese Valentine's Day, which means, by the Lunar Calendar, today is the 7th day of the 7th month. It also means there's a plethora of lovey-dovey films hitting the market. HOWEVER. This one was quite hilarious and the sense of humour was good, a useless side-kick makes for comedy in any language. There's was also quite a bit of English in it because Leehom was playing an international popstar (ho-ho-ho), so they kept shouting English phrases - Impressively, they also said them really naturally, not like most other films where they're trying desperately to look cool and come out with crazy crazy things like "Gler hee mai boyfriend" instead of "This is my boyfriend" <- actually speaking the language really kills your patience for bad expression, I sympathise with the Chinese for my pronunciation

On Sunday I got up really early *dies* to try out this new-fangled Tianjin <-> Beijing train that takes only HALF AN HOUR to travel between the two places :o The Maglev in Shanghai is famed for reaching 268 mph, this one is on wheels and reaches 205 mph *dies* It's way faster than any car journey and is incredibly efficient in its bureacracy (shock for China)~ We then navigated the Beijing metro, which ahs had so much money poured in to it to make it extremely hi-tech that the journey was easy-peesy - after depositing then retrieving the Brit from his hotel, we went to Qianmen, the station that leads straight in to Tiananmen Square. In reality, Tiananmen looks exactly like it does on the tv. Very bare, very exposed, very hot. The only exciting bit was seeing the Hall of the People at the edge of the square and the plinth where the students scrawled their demands to the government before they were declared "Anti-Revolutionary". My camera decided to give out in the morning, so I stole the Brit's Blackberry (once more) to take many photos! All of which are probably better quality than my camera (-_-) and need to be sent to me before I can post them~

After Tiananmen we headed for Mao's face on the front of the Forbidden City 故宫博物馆. The Chinese name literally means: Ancient Palace Museum. Which seems to be a total attempt to wipe the Emperors' authority from the place. The building is huge, the ticket offices are busy as hell and exposed in the hope that a few tourists will give up and go away - the entrance is over 3 bridges and through long arc/tunnels. The ticket office is then in the main entrance which is a GINORMOUS courtyard, the walls are completely bare, except for dark red paint and they tower over you. To add to this there are watch-towers on the top of these walls, which are really cool to look at. The entire image is "You are worthless compared to the Emperor". The city itself also gets quite boring after a while. All buildings are uniform colours and styles. All courtyards are square, all buildings are square, and passageways inbetween deviate drastically by being rectangular. The most exciting point is the throne room. Well, there are 2, but one's bigger than the other and they both have stupid names about heavenly peace and fortitude (you can tell I'm a real spiritualist.). The thrones are really impressive, you can also still see the original detail in the door carvings and the hinges are engraved with miniature dragons. What nearly killed me was how all the tourists were touching EVERYTHING. Kids were clambering over the ledges, one was scraping his way up a wall. The dragons on the thronw room hinges were being mercilessly fondled by thousands of tourists - you know what? This happens every day. I know the communists sacked the place (I'm even more aware that most of the communist leaders took up residence in imperial palaces), why does the fact that they overthrew their Emperor give them the write to destroy a historic site! The palace's vibrant colours are all the work of paint, which gives the place a slightly fake, impermanent feel, but it's made worse by everyone's lack of respect for the effort that'll eventually have to go in to restoring the place. The archaeologist in me dies a thousand deahts at this atrocity.

At least in Britain over-throwing your ruler is considered a sign of a healthy populace.

Anyway, I walked so much I thought my legs were going to fall off. We managed to find a cafe (not in any way because I was moaning I was hungry ) where we completely failed on the ordering front and ended up wih soooo much food -__- I got a really tasty butternut squash (w/ sauce of some animal), tres yummy <3

Today has also been a bit stressful. At lunchtime I went to post various packages. My Chinese is admittedly getting better, so I made myself understood, but the packaging fee was ridiculous *frustration* I have sent heavier packages to China for half the price *fist shake* In traditional Chinese style, they probably saw I was western and added 50% on >_<

ANYWAY! Pictures below, finally~ Some are from my hotel window, tres high up~ Others are of the Hot pot 火锅 I had with Sabrina on Saturday. Tres yummy, tres filling, half of the pot was normal and the other half spicy aswell - we didn't eat much of the spicy one... The little yellow bell hat thing was from the waiter for some reason. He kept chatting to us, sometimes speaking English and telling us about Qingdao, apparently it's faster to walk than get public transport and everyone wanders around in swimming costumes There's ba,boo root, sweet potato and peanuts in the picture.
The bridge is the neon cradle that I think was built for the olympics~