Day 32

The day started out with a huge rainstorm. The streets were once again flooded here. They said it happened a lot when I was gone too and that this is quite unusual. I walked through about 6 inches of water to eat breakfast. (I am glad I have shorts, sandal, and an umbrella). This afternoon I went to the Forbidden City. It is so amazing how they were able to build such vast and complex buildings and walls. Three 30 foot thick and 25 feet high, walls surround the city! The entire ground had a stone floor that was 13 layers thick. Each layer was laid at a different angle to the last one so that no one could dig under the wall and into the city. The walls surround a complex that consists of 980 buildings with 8,700 rooms. It covers 7,800,000 sq ft. It was constructed during the Ming and Qing dynasty, which was around 1400-1420. It took 15 years to build with over 1 million workers. It is crazy how much history there is in China and how everything was specifically used to symbolize something. After the Forbidden City, Geoff had a meeting that I sat in on. Then we walked around various streets in Beijing. There is a wide variety of buildings in the city. It was cool to see modern buildings on one side and old original ones on the other side. He took me to Wangfujing walking street, which is full of food vendors, and small knick-knack shops. Most of them are food at night though. They roll out a cart with a propane grill on it and they cook about anything you could possibly think about eating. They had scorpions on sticks where the legs were still moving, starfish, eel, sparrow, pigeon, and spiders just to name a few. I tried the ostrich. It was pretty good but a little on the tough side. I also had strawberries and miniature apples on a stick. They were covered with a caramel like substance. They were very sweet! It was another fun day in China.