Traveling with Rhona: 3 days in Beijing, China

Rotary Friendship trip to China: 27 members. 17 Rotarians/10 Spouses and friends. Here we are at Tianeman Square.

Getting to China was about a 48 hour event when you consider that I have to leave Gulu for Kampala the day before I fly out. I caught a 1:00 bus to Kampala and arrived about 6pm. I stayed at the same guesthouse that I did when I was getting my China Visa. They have a wonderful dinner buffet with a lot of green vegetables. Green vegetables are hard to find in Gulu.

We ate lots of duck in China :)

Umm, I didnt eat this, but saw lots of stuff like this....

To get to the airport, I rode a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to the taxi station in Kampala, then a taxi minivan to Entebbe, then hired a private car to the airport. At one point when I was on the boda, I found us stuck between two buses that were angling toward each other. The motor cycle handle bars were almost touching the sides of both buses! It was a bit nerve racking, but I survived. I flew from Entebbe to Dubai, and then to Beijing on Emirates Airbus 380. It was huge! I watched about 6 movies on my two 7.5 hour flights.

This is our awesome group at the Great Wall of China!

I landed in terminal 3 about an hour ahead of the Seattle group. Two hours later, when I had not seen anyone that I recognized, I figured out that I was in a different terminal than they were. Yes, I caught up with the group and made it to the hotel with everyone. Finally!

This is the side I climbed as far as possible. It was steep! My legs hurt for days!

This is a group of 27 people. Everyone, except me, is from Seattle, Washington. Seventeen of us are Rotarians and the rest are spouses or friends. This Rotary International Friendship trip to China was organized by Rotarian Jesse Tam. We are visiting the only two Rotary clubs in all of China; Beijing and Shanghai. We are also touring 7 cities.

Me in front of the Temple of Heaven

Day #1: Every day is packed from morning to night with sites and visits. We have had very little rest. It has been an amazing experience. Our guide in Beijing is Jo Jo. She is very knowledgeable about the area and is very personable; her stories and history lessons are endless. Our first stop of the day is the Forbidden City. It is called that because it was forbidden for common people to enter, and forbidden for the royal family within to leave the walls. It was a private city of luxury, concubines, food and riches. We walked from the Forbidden City to Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world. We had lunch at the famous Peking Roast Duck Restaurant. After lunch, we toured the Temple of Heaven. It was a full day and we were all still very jet lagged. Our hotel in Beijing is the Changan Grand Hotel. I am collecting all of the extra toiletries and hotel toothbrushes from everyone to take back to St Jude’s Orphanage.

OK, now I am sweaty and hot! It was a big climb!

Day #2: This is the day I have dreamed about for years. Today I walked on the Great Wall of China!!! It is one of the “seven wonders of the world”, and the second one I have been to this year (Machu Picchu was in Feb). Wow, I climbed up to the very top of the steep Western side as far as we were permitted to go. I went too far, too fast, and too hard, but that is usually the way I do things. My legs were shaking when I got to the bottom, and my knee was weak. I knew I would be paying with sore muscles for a few days, and I sure did. After sitting on the bus, my legs will get sore and cramped and I can hardly go down steps now. I take hot leg baths, massage the muscles, walk, stretch my legs, use muscle cream, etc; anything to alleviate the pain and soreness! But WOW! The Great Wall of China! I can’t even describe how joyful it was to be on the wall. Words just won’t do justice to what my heart was feeling! Again, it was a dream come true for me.

Being on the Great Wall of China was a dream come true for me :)!

After the Great Wall, we went to a Cloisonné Factory, and the Ming Tombs. We also drove past the Olympic rings and the birds nest and water cube (Olympic buildings). We are fed three big meals every day and we have the best assorted Chinese food ever! It’s just too much! I have learned that in China, it is the year of the rabbit, and I am born in the year of the rabbit. It is my year. Good things will come my way this whole year, and it has! It is my year!

A beautiful vase at the Cloisonné Factory.

One of the Olympic Buildings called the "Birds Nest"

Day #3: Our first stop of the day is the Summer Palace of the Emperor, which was very beautiful. Then we had a tour of a silk carpet factory. The carpets are very difficult to make by hand and are very, very expensive. It was not originally in our schedule, but was added by the government of China for their foreign visitors. We then went to our lunch meeting with the Rotary Club of Beijing. There are only two Rotary Clubs in all of China, and we came to give support and exchange ideas and fellowship. Rotary in China is not open to any holder of a Chinese passport, so it is a club of ex-patriots and foreigners living in Beijing. The Beijing Club is not officially chartered, but it is very active in service and they showed us a video of some of their projects. Some of us exchanged Club banners with them. I now have a beautiful Beijing Rotary Club banner for my home club, Kapolei Rotary Club. Our day was not yet finished. We still had a Hu Tong visit. A Hu-Tong is the name of an older residential living area. We also had a rickshaw ride and climbed a tower (yes, more painful steps) to see a drum ceremony which is the way they kept time in ancient days. After our home visit, we went to a Chinese Acrobat show and had another great dinner before our flight left at 10pm for Xian. This day was the longest yet. We didn’t get to our hotel in Xian until about 1:30 in the morning. We are staying at the Grand Noble Hotel in Xian for two nights.