Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden CIty

As you can tell from my first post on China, we don't really live in real China.  We have it pretty easy out here in Shunyi.  It is a really nice, quite-ish area.  The Chinese people around here are so used to foreigners they don't really bat an eye.  But when you go downtown, it is a different story.  Our first trip to real China was on a weekend in July.  An extremely hot day, but Kelly just HAD to see something in China.  He gets bummed sometimes that we live out here instead of downtown, so we had to go and see something.  So I found a place to hire a driver and invited another family to go with us.  We all piled in this huge 12 passenger van and he took us to Tiananmen Square.  We wanted to see the biggest attraction in Beijing at the hottest time of year and at the peak of tourist season.  Bright idea!!!  So our driver dropped us off, we had 2 single strollers for Sawyer and Izzy and I carried Mabel on me and Lincoln walked.  Our friends had 2 girls and they brought their double stroller.  We really should have brought our double, we just didn't know how things would be.  

So we step out of the van and walk under the underpass with, it seemed all of China, to the square.  I could not believe there were so many people at Tiananmen Square at 9am!  We could hardly move.  Everyone was forming a huge line to see the dead and very orange looking little man Chairman Mao. (I  waited in that line 15 years ago when i was 19 years old.  I was teaching English in Guanzhou and we came to Beijing to check it out).  We were not going to see the little orange man, so we pushed and pushed and pushed our way past the crowds to get to the other end of Tiananmen Square.  We were making our way to the Forbidden City.  The kids were rather shocked.  If we stopped at all people would start surrounding us wanted to take our pictures.  Isabel was a mess, she was crying and screaming at everyone.  I think she was having culture shock.  Poor girl, she was so tired and so upset the whole day.  She did not like these Chinese people always looking at her and wanting to take her picture.  So we tried to keep on moving.  

The thing we hate most about going downtown is people touching our kids.  The people who usually go up to our kids and touch their faces or hair or legs. They are usually from out of town.  They are also visitors from the sticks who don't have very much education and have never seen anyone with so many kids and look different.  So for some reason it is just fun to touch them.  Seriously!!!  I don't mind the picture taking or just looking at the kids, but please take a step back and DO NOT TOUCH MY KIDS.  I have no idea where you have been and when the last time you washed your hands.  I have learned how to say Do not touch in Chinese, and it helps some of the time.  

Anyway, we made our way to the Forbidden City and I helped us go through the handicap entrance because we had 3 strollers.  I think they didn't know what to do with us, so they just let us through without having to wait in the long line to enter the city.  The kids got to run around a little more, it wasn't as busy.  They pretended they were the last emperor and the Forbidden City was their playground, (or prison).  

We finally got out of the city and called the driver to pick us up.  It took him a while to get to us, but by the time he did we were so glad we had a driver to get us out of those crowds.  He drove us to a place called Annies for lunch.  They sell pizza and other Italian food.  The funny thing is that we picked that place because it said it had a great play place for the kids.  We of course drove to the only Annies that did not have a play place.  But they kids were plenty hungry, so it wasn't so bad.  

Izzy was really funny, the day before we got her pink helmet in the mail so she wanted to wear it everywhere.  She brought it in the van with us and when she saw it she wanted to wear it to lunch.  So she wore it the whole time.  See picture below.

After coming home we had enough of China and were once again so happy we live out here in quiet Shunyi and people don't touch our kids when we walk out the door.