The day before I arrived in China, I was so excited that I could not sleep. Professor Ling Luo is guiding us for this program. Our group has nine students and a professor. It was a long flight to Beijing, and it was not a direct flight. We made a transfer in Guangzhou and then flew to Beijing. It took us 21 hours of flying to arrive in Beijing. I really wanted to visit Guangzhou, but we did not have to visit due to the time of pressure.
When we arrived in Beijing, my professor contacted a tour guide to pick us from the airport. His name was Jimmy. We thought Jimmy only speak Mandarin, but he was guiding us in English because we have a poor level skill of Mandarin. We were so tired after we arrived in Beijing, but Jimmy took us to visit the Lama Temple.
He told us that 4 days is short and we should take the time to visit and learn more about the culture of Beijing. In the Lama Temple, I could see many people praying inside with the incense, so I got the incense and followed what the people did. Also, I saw the biggest wooden Buddha in the world. Jimmy told me that the Buddha was made with a piece of wood, and it was a unique big tree in the world.
The next day we went to Tiananmen Square. I saw the chairman Maoโs portrait. He is the founder of the People’s Republic of China. Jimmy told me that when the former Chinese Government was governing China, Beijing was not the capital. Mao set Beijing as the capital of China after they won the civil war in 1949. Then we got into the Forbidden City. The infrastructure looked new, and they were similar. I wanted to go to the second floor of those building, but they did not allow us. It was a long way to get into the last part of the city. After finishing the trip, we went to eat in a local Chinese restaurant.
The next stop was Mutianyu Great Wall. I could see the wall very high on the mountain. There were two choices to get into the Great Wall, one is by cable car, and another way is by hiking. I did it by hiking, and I never thought that I could challenge myself to climb the Great Wall. It took me 30 minutes to climb to the Great Wall. When I was walking on the Great Wall, I could see the mountains around, and I could not believe some places in the Great Wall has wifi. After finished to climb the Great Wall, we took a cable car down because Jimmy was waiting for us for lunch.
We stayed four days in Beijing, but I wish I could stay longer because there still many places that I want to visit specially the Beijing National Stadium and the Beijingโs UFO glass platform. The transportation in Beijing is very convenient and cheap. The subway is much better than New York because the subway station has platform screen doors that prevent people falling into the tracks and it has air conditioner.