For my birthday we went to the Summer Palace in Beijing, which was the summer retreat (like a villa) for the emperor. The Palace itself is quite small, for a palace, and is more of a collection of exquisite small buildings than one large structure. All of this is within a beautiful park dominated by a multiple acre artificial lake. The lake is dotted with small islands covered in trees and pagodas, and you can walk to them on arched marble bridges, or take a boat shaped like a dragon.
Then we went to a Beijing opera performance at an opera hall built in 1804. It was where the Chinese Revolution was started (opera houses used to be centers of socializing and exchange of ideas). The performance was really interesting: the performers sing, dance, do comedy routines and perform acrobatics as if they were made out of rubber. B and I had a really good time.
Yesterday we went to the Great Wall, but it wasn't very fun. It was extremely crowded, so much so that it was difficult to move, and took 15 min to move 5 feet. And we went on a Monday! It must be terrible during the weekend. They have many tacky souvenir stands and some poor sun bears on exhibit which you can feed cucumber to (their bear area is very sad and pitiful, and made me feel depressed to see). But the Wall is very impressive, snaking across inhospitable terrain, so I'm glad I went.
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