Beijing, Day 1

After 12 hours of sleep, we finally got out of bed this morning and met Tony, our travel guide for the day. A shout-out to Dan for hooking us up with Tony. We had a great time today, thanks to him. First we went to a hutong, an old neighborhood of Beijing made up of twisting, narrow alleyways. We took a rickshaw through the alleys and visited a local family who’s lived in the hutong for 107 years. Four generations have grown up in the home, which is more like a cluster of separate rooms surrounding an inner courtyard. They showed us their kitchen, their coal-burning stove, their washing machine, which wasn’t much bigger than a toy one. A lot of hutongs have been demolished in recent years to make room for high-rises, but the government is now protecting the remaining few from the wrecking ball. Apparently, Jackie Chan bought a home in a hutong for US$5 million.
Later, we went to the Temple of Heaven, China’s most famous temple that was built in 1420 during the Qing dynasty. The emperor used to go there to pray for a good harvest during the first lunar month of every year. They just renovated the temple for the Olympics (like everything else in the city) and it looks beautiful. It’s surrounded by an enormous park where people fly kites and retirees get together to play cards and mahjong. We came across one group of old people who was singing songs from the ‘70s that thanked Chairman Mao for all the good deeds he did. Kind of spooky.
Beijing is incredibly clean. Not a speck of litter anywhere. Tony says there are public workers picking up cigarette butts and trash 24 hours a day all over the city, and I believe him. We even saw a truck spraying water on the road to keep the dust down. Didn’t seem dusty to us!