Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall
Our first full day in China we went to the Temple of Heaven, Tian'an Men Square, and the Forbidden City. To get to the Temple of Heaven, you walk through a huge park with literally tens of thousands of people who congregate there starting early 
in the morning. There are huge groups singing, playing hacky sack and a weird version of paddle ball, and doing several versions of Tai Chi.
The Temple of Heaven itself was quite cool and has something to do with the harvest. From there we went to Tian'an Men Square
the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was very cool but they were doing a lot of construction for the Olympics, and Tian'an Men Square was gigantic. Apparently Chairman Mao is a big deal here. (I am trying to do the Mao face, but I don't think he wore sunglasses and a Cardinals baseball cap too often).After the Forbidden City we did the coolest thing - we took a rickshaw tour through a Hutong. The Hutongs are a series of neighborhoods that are quite unique. There are a series of low-rise buildings around courtyards and each family shares a courtyard with four other families. The streets are very narrow and there are hundreds of people hanging out on the streets.
We got to go into a local family's home, and apparently a big thing to do here is raise grasshoppers for grasshopper (or cricket) fighting. I am a scaredy little frady cat when it comes to gross crawly bugs, so I wasn't thrilled with the direction of the conversation, but it was pretty fascinating. After he showed us his bugs I kept imagining things were crawling on my legs. I realized later that was just flashbacks from back when I was a hippy.
Here is a picture of us in the house with the local dude.
Yesterday we went to the Great Wall of China, which is, well, great. I don't have time to give you too much detail because we are off to Nanchang today. We pick up the twins tomorrow (Monday)!!!
Here is a short video of some people playing music near the Temple of Heaven:
More to follow later!
