Today we took a tour of the city gates. Sadly it was not a real kid friendly location, as is true in most of China, and thus I ended up carrying Gabe up and down about 100 steps (maybe more), and across the top of the city wall, as I was afraid he's slip and fall after it started raining on us (yes, we had this "fun" in the rain!). Seriously, it was amazing to be on top of the City gates, as tall as some of the tallest buildings to be seen for quite some distance, and looking down on a man-made river and the city itself. The architecture was unbelievable - each brick to make the entire city wall was hand made and marked with the creator's name and the date it was finished. The reason for this was that each brick was to be made in a perfect shape, and made to withstand time...if it broke or was misshapen the person who created it would be killed. Can you imagine - I'm talking about thousands if not millions of bricks to form a barrier around an entire city - a TALL barrier - and each brick had a name inscribed. The wall took 10 years to create and was finished in the year 1366. I am always in awe of the amazing and LONG history of this country (yes, dad, you read that right, I just acknowledged a "liking" for something historical) - when presented in historical dramatic writings (Shanghai Girls, Snow Flower and the Hidden Fan, etc) then I find history really interesting, also when I can walk around and see it for myself - but reading a history book or taking a history class, B-O-R-I-N-G!! ;-)
Anyway, as I said, it started to rain while we were touring the city wall and it hasn't stopped yet! So we have since been trying to entertain ourselves in our hotel room since around 11:30 am. I am thankful first that our hotel room is large in China standards, so I really shouldn't complain, HOWEVER, I am going stir crazy!! We've been drawing, coloring with the aqua doodle, playing with cars, tossing a beach ball, making a mess with tissues, and playing with our wooden toy lizard, and posing for more photos! However, it's only been 3 hours "trapped" and we've already done all of that - what will we do for the rest of the day!? Ha ha, do you remember your time with small children with a super small attention span...welcome to my world! ;-)
One great thing is China has an entire TV station for all day, every day "China has talent", and while we don't understand the explanation that goes along with each talent, nor the critiques afterward, we have found some of these talents quite entertaining. As a matter of fact, Gabe has just decided to sit down and watch some dancers for a while. So, perhaps this will hold his attention for more than 2 minutes, and at least it's giving me entertainment. Many of the talents are circ de soleil quality so they really are pretty amazing.
So, that's all from here for today. Praying it stops raining so we can go walk down to McDonald's for dinner. :-)
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| Statues of some emperor and an advisor (see I told you history's not my thing!) |
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The area where you come to pray for luck -
people were burning incense and hanging banners asking for luck |
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The spot to pray for money - by adding money to the
shrine. I found this quite ironic, but no more than spending money on the lotto I guess! |
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| The man-made river below the main city gate |
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| My boy with his new shades! |
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| This cracked me up - I didn't ask him to do this, he ran and posed on his own! |
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| Just a cool picture at a model of the city gate |
1 comments:
He is such a happy boy! That is awesome.
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