Day 6 – Today we went to the summer palace, it was so far my favorite day. The palace was magnificent and glorious. We walked through the long corridor of the summer palace and there were beautiful hand painted pictures (all different) on along the ceiling. The summer palace was remade due to the cultural relic destroying from Chairman Mao. It would have been really neat to see the original. We walked and climbed up a lot of stairs to get to the top where there was a Buddha. There was a sign telling people not to take pictures. Vivien told us that the Chinese believe if you take a picture the spirit will come with you and bad things can happen. Once we made it to the top we had a beautiful view of the lake. This lake was man made and so was the mountain that we had just climbed. It took thousands of slaves to construct this for one man, the emperor. The lake is in the shape of a peach (signifying a long life). There was one point when there was an empress of China. She had a double-decker marble boat built.
We went to another section of the summer palace and we went shopping in a southern Chinese style area. There were very narrow sidewalks and I thought I was going to fall into the water. There were so many souvenirs to buy and look. There was a scroll with a painting of the great wall that I was willing to pay 48 rmb but another student got it down to 30 rmb for me. I hope I will get better at bargaining in the near future.
After the summer palace we went to lunch/dinner in mall area. At this place we cooked our own food in boiling water. We had greens, mushrooms, crab, beef, potatoes, dumplings, carrots, tofu. There was a dark tofu with ducks blood (tasted like blood. Not one of my favorite new foods on this trip) and other food. It was delicious. I really like the idea of cooking my own food. It makes it a fun experience. Afterwards, I bought birthday cake oreos from the grocery store and mountain dew. The Oreos chocolate tasted different from the oreos I had at home. On our way back to the hotel, I realized that I had forgotten my rain jacket on my chair. I went back and tried to communicate to ask for my jacked, I think they understood, but didn’t have my jacket. Fortunately for me, another student had picked it up and I got my jacket back.
fawcettplus3china2012 