Back to the blogs again

I have not been able to access Internet for last one week. Today I travelled from Hong Kong to Taipei, Taiwan so I am trying to update everyone with as many pictures and posts as I can. I plan to finish whole week's updates by end of tomorrow which is June 1st 2007. On May 24th I travelled from Beijing to Xian. Xian is a very traditional city and had older history than Beijing. We got to Xian at about 12 noon and took some rest. We were all tired because even if the plane ride was 2 hours we had little bit of shaky landing and then almost 1.5 hours bus route to get to the hotel from the Xian airport. That night we saw similar Bell and Drum tower like any other cities. There was a restaurant which is specialized in dumplings. Dumplings has softer shell steamed flour (many times rice flour) with multiple types of stuffing in them. In china, mainly stuffing are made out of meat but the restaurant was kind enough to make a vegetarian dumpling for me. It is interesting that they bring baskets of different dumpling one by one in less than 15-20 minutes and expect us to eat them by chopsticks. Dumplings look very small to eat but trust me when you are expected to eat 10 of them in 15 minutes, you feel completely full after 4 or 5 of them. Please check the pictures, may be some day you will get to enjoy dumplings that are cooked by Chef Sachin. Enjoy these pictures from May 24th 2007, I will make more postings tomorrow. So many dumplings to serve, are you hungry? Don't they look cool? (They were served in many colors, shapes and sizes) Dipping sauce, made out of chili papers.....they look very hot and spicy but they aren't! A soup with very small dumplings in it, is served in this special heater/container. You never know how many dumplings you have in your bowl until you finish the soup. The no. of dumplings decide how your future (next year) is going to be. The Bell Tower in Xian, the bell and drum towers in Xian are oldest and most preserved.

2nd night in Xian but no blogs?

You all must be thinking that I haven't posted any blog for almost 48 hours. I am sorry, I just came to Xian yesterday and found out there was no Internet access. I have now got the Internet in my hotel room but I am very very tired. I will have a big blog soon (latest by Sunday night) which will include my trip from Beijing to Xian (May 24th), today's happenings and tomorrow's experiences. This will all include beautiful pictures and notes. Until then enjoy this. Bye Sachin (sachinpadhye@gmail.com )

Last day in Beijing- Tianamen square, forbidden city and business visit

Today, we went to Tienanmen square to see Ex-Chair Mao's memorial. It was a great experience, then we had a long walk through forbidden city.

Tienanmen square has huge gates and one of the famous gates that has Tao's picture is in the picture below. The Chinese characters on our left translate as Chinese people forever and the letters on the right side say peace and heaven for everyone in the world. I thought it was nice national and global thought blending together on one gate. Unfortunately due to renovation, we were not able to see Ex chair Mao's dead body which has been preserved and open to public for many years.

After this we went to Forbidden city. Last emperor who was ruling till almost 1950 wanted to give his dynasty to his son but the Son denied it. As a reflection of that the son was kicked out his palace. For many years this city which hold 9999 rooms, many gates and big Chinese style temples/halls was forbidden to public and now is open. That is why the whole area is called as Forbidden city. There is tremendous amount of art work, Fenshui- YingYang balance in this city and unbelievable hard work, with crazy history that goes along with this art. I am just amazed with this art. There were 9999 concubines that were living in this room and emperor used to choose one of them every night. If she was beautiful enough and worthy he will have a child with her but beyond all of this if he really like her she will get the status of Empress. There were many concubine who wouldn't even get a chance to meet with the emperor. They used to put a lot Jade(very expensive and precious stone) on their body so the higher officials hear them walking and feel that they are attractive. Then these officials would recommend one particular concubine's name to the artist who would design food on the plate for king's lunch/dinner. Artist/officials had maximum 9 plates like these every day because it is a lucky no. By looking at the food setup/design on the plate and hearing about a particular woman king would choose which woman he wants to be with that one particular night. So on and so forth.

There were thousands of women who tried this and majority of them never became empress but some did. This was a small trailer of the history of forbidden city, there many more crazy things.

By the end of the night, we finally went on the business visit as planned. I am very lucky to have this opportunity. We actually met with the editor in chief of Chinese Cosmopolitan magazine. She was generous enough to answer our questions for 5-10 minutes out of her busy schedule. A group named "Trendz" which has 15 magazines under their control is very successful group. I got to visit their office in Beijing. There are some pictures of that too.

Enjoy!

Tieananmen Square- finally made it there!

Biggest craving work in forbidden city. It is all one piece of stone more than 1000 workers carried it and worked craving for 3-4 months.

The emperor's chair in one the halls. He used to sit on this before he went to court every morning. There are 10-15 places like this where he used to sit. Every seat and building has a purpose!

I traded (International business and trading :) ) my hat with the Chinese lady for few minutes, she was so surprise and happy to take a picture with me!

Ceiling in one of the halls. I almost led down to take this picture(so give me some credit!), it is amazing that how much detailed and high class art work they did hundreds of years ago without any technology!Me in front of one of the small gates in the Forbidden city garden! A very cool and artistic set up of the office at Trendz building, it is a very posh place!

After our business meeting, on your left is Kathy (China) and on the right is Ana (Philippines)

Kathy helps me with the language a lot! End of the night, chilling at the restaurant!

2nd day in Beijing

Today was not very exciting, it rained all day long. We went on a trip in Old Beijing and also visited Bell-Drum towers which are more than 150 years old. It was really hard to walk through everywhere and due to that we didn't do many things as planned.

We visited a house of a old man who owned a million dollar house in the middle of old Beijing city. It was really interesting to talk to him and found many issues that occur in this culture. He mentioned 20 years ago they had money but government restrictions on how much you can buy per year. Even they had limit on buying peanuts. This changed a lot with market economy entering in China and now it is very Strong economic Capitalist. There were some negative things that he said about the changes too.

Particularly, my question was "While you see many p;positive changes in your economy (capitalism) and lifestyle, are you worried that the youth in China is losing their culture and traditions?"

He said,"I am very worried about it. It is sad that the Young Chinese are losing their morals and values. It takes few days or months to lose the morals and values but it takes long time to get these morals back". I am sure by long time he meant generations. I agree with him, many places like China and India are facing difficulties dealing with social aspects of free capitalist society. He also said "We have to teach our kids about morals from elementary school age which is very sad". My unanswered question is "Has this happened in the United States and where do we go from now?"

But enough for this serious cultural issues. There are some more picture below that include inside pictures of Drum tower. Before the invention of clock, Chinese emperor built Drum tower and Bell tower which had drums and bells in them respectively. Bells would be rang at interval of 2 hrs each stating at 5AM and drums at night starting at 7PM. These times were known by workers either by Sun's motion or a water based clock. I think this was just an amazing idea at that time to figure out hours wit this water flow.

One of the interesting things that comes up everyday: Water is sign of wealth/money and fish means more. All Chinese businesses have fishes in water tank or some type of water flow in front of their business. I really mean this. I have even seen water in glasses kept in glass cases right nest to rings in jewelery stores.

Enjoy the pictures, I will see you tomorrow.

Man rickshaw that we took to go through old Beijing

This man is very happy about economic changes but not so happy about loss of culture and values, I am sure there are many others.

The bell tower's picture from the top of the Drum tower

Water based clock, the water would run out after every 2 hours!

They found a new Buddha inside the drum tower today, I wish!

Walking down the 69 steps of the drum tower, they are very steep

Traditional tea ceremony in the Tea house, I got to try 3 different types of teas for free!

1st day in beijing

I got here last night at about 12:30 AM. It was a very tiring journey. I still have a jet lag may be just because I didn't get enough sleep last night. But it was a very fresh morning and I was up by 5:30 AM, after sleeping for 5 hrs only! This morning we started our trip at about 8AM and went around visiting many historic places in the city of Beijing. The city's population is about 15 million. It is just my first day but I am already amazed with the amount of energy people share here. Everyone has some principles and disciplined routines in their lives, they are following it without any doubt. At least that's how it looked like on my first day. I visited bunch of places in the city today but two main attractions were King Chang Ling's tomb which has the tallest pillars in any Chinese tomb and of course the great wall of China(Yes I made it to the top end)!! Enjoy the pictures and comments below, I will write in details with more pictures tomorrow night since I have to sleep as soon as possible!

Trying to get out of the traffic at the Beijing Airport

Tomb from outside, Tomb named as "Chang ling" means happy forever

Inside the tomb, one tree for every pillar was brought from Tibet and took 4 years to get here

That thing spins, so everyone can share food and self serve

Ready to go!

I made it finally!

And now, I own it (j.k.)

For celebration, I ate a hamburger at Chinese McDonald's.....once again j.k.

Enough for tonight, See you soon !!!

China

I will be there soon, can't wait to get there and upload more pictures in 80 Deg. F. ......haha....you enjoy Minnesota! Email me at sachinpadhye@gmail.com with inputs.

China is great