This is our hotel the Quianmen Jianguo Hotel in Beijing. It is VERY ornate and beautiful. Below are two pictures of the lobby.
We rode around in rickshaws to several places, one of those was the porcelan factory where Glen found a very large clay soldier. The one next to Glen's that is not in the picture has a detachable head which one of our fellow group members (John) took off to take a picture with. We are with some GREAT people.
Glen pushed me out into the center of the bus to introduce us to the group when it was our turn. He's such a chicken. I think he just wanted an excuse to take MORE pictures.
Glen and me in our rickshaw. I felt bad having the little old man pedal us around. I seriously thought about making him get in the seat with Glen and I would pedal them around. In any case I asked Glen to tip him every time we stopped, so needless to say whenever we would come out of one of our stops he would be there waiting to guide us back to his rickshaw with a huge smile on his face. Glen tried to ask him his name but he didn't speak any english and our Chinese is very bad.
We also stopped at the Silk factory to see how silk is made and look at all the beautiful things that can then be made from the silk fabric.
Glen said this was a jackalope. Chinese version. It was standing guard in front of the silk factory.
Those little bean shaped things are silk coccons with little dead worms in them. The cocoons with ine worm in them get fed into this machine, where they find the end of the strand of silk and then use the machine to unwind it and put it on a spool.
You can see the spools at the top. The cocoons are soaked in water to make them easier to unwind and spool.
Inside the jars are representations of each stage of the silk worms life. Below them in the case are are skeins of silk.
There are bridges that you haveto cross over to enter certain sections of the forbidden city. I think they are made mostly of marble.