This blog post is much delayed but here it goes anyway. Before I get started, note all the changes. Lots of things are added to this here blog and as you can see, I'm preparing for München. Actually I only have a little over a week left...March 11th is the day. I'll get to all of that later but here is the China wrap-up. Very long overdue. Again, please keep your faith in me. I promise to update this more frequently than I did in China. Haha, thanks readers/friends. Oh and let me know if you have any suggestions of what I should add or what you would like to see in this space I have.
On the day before the end of the semester trip, some of my friends and I trekked across Beijing to find the Underground City built by Mao in the 60s/70s in case of a nuclear attack. Approximitely 40% of Beijingers were estimated to fit inside the Underground City upon its completion. Actually, underneath Beijing an exact replica of Tiananmen Square exists, but it was closed off to us as we later learned. After walking around the Hutongs (alleyways where most Beijingers traditionally live) and getting a bit lost we came upon the entrance to the Underground City which was faded and difficult to tell where the entrance was. After we paid the overpriced 25 kuai entrance fee. Man, 25 kuai is over 3 whole dollars! Ha, well, 25 kuai goes a long way in Zhongguo. So my first impression of the City was "this is a huge propoganda campaign". Plastered on the walls were tanks, RVs, fighter jets, past leaders, and more military portraits. However, all of these pictures were in terrible condition...blotches galore, faded corners, and even holes ripped through the center. THEN, we came upon what seemed to be wax manakins dressed up in revolutionary clothing. Let me tell you, we were scared for our lives! These were not just normal manakins, they appeared everywhere. In areas of the Underground City that were not lit, these manakins came out of nowhere. Other than the manakins, revolutionary pictures hanging in frames everywhere, water dripping on us from the many leaks in the City that had obviously not been repaired for ages, one aspect of the City definitely showed us that we were still in the year 2007. At the end of the long maze of strangely shaped hallways, we entered......a SILK SHOP. And Chinese people were taking tours of the City and then buying lots of silk at the end of the tour! How did I not consider this "tourist attraction" as not another "tourist trap"? I should have known.
(To be continued...)
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