Diarrhea > Us

So the posts are kind of spread pretty far apart, mainly because we've had no time to rest in the past few days--We've been jumping from place to place. The past few days, we've had a new guide with us. Before, we were accompanied by a son of a family friend, Zhou Wenbing (Fred for short), who we discovered played WoW and had a level 70 undead mage, who he took a screenshot of and showed us on his awesome transforming (seriously) cell phone. We was nonchalant and completely apathetic, but he let us do whatever we wanted which was pretty cool. Also, we underestimated his understanding of english, which we found was way more than we thought when he laughed as I exclaimed at a car that we cut off "FUCK YOU MOTHAFUCKA!"

Anyway, the past few days we have been led by the daughter of another family friend, who is timid, mousey, and much like any common asian girl you might imagine. Her name is (last name?) Xiaoye, but we call her Samantha. Our driver's name is Mr. Sui, but we call him Sheldon. Anyway, on to the narrative.

Diarrhea is taking over our bodies like the the flu in Magic Johnson(perhaps not the best analogy?). The only two left unafflicted are Shacka and Antonio, Shacka probably because of his beard and white-man-devil-magic and Antonio because of his daily four simultaneous doses of Imodium (healthy?). But we've still been able to get through to some pretty awesome places.

From where we left off, we went to the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square, which are across the street from one another. Tian'anmen Square, of course, would be most recognizable probably from the images of the Tank Man during the Tian'anmen Incident (I choose not to say Massacre, because it's depressing). But the square itself is massive, and can hold about 1 million people (i think, maybe more). In the middle is a column-esque monument with carvings at the bottom depicting the CCP's struggle during the Revolution. From Tian'anmen you can see the giant portrait of Mao hanging above the central entrance to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is the area that was built to house the Emperor and his enormous court, consisting of 9,999 houses. The original construction stopped at 9,999 because it was believed that only the Jade Emperor (ruler of the Heavens) had 10,000 buildings in his court. As a side-note, 10,000 is denoted by the word "wan" and is an important number in Chinese culture. It is the largest commonly used unit, and many times is used to express longevity--"wan sui" means long life.

The city is massive, and its buildings even more so. The first building we saw was the site upon which Chairman Mao stood when he first addressed the Chinese people and issued his famous speech, wherein he bade the commoners to stand up, and marked the beginning of CCP rule. Unfortunately, a lot of the buildings were undergoing renovation, so we were unable to enter. However, we could see the famous Dragon and Pheonix steps--Slabs of marble going up along the sides of steps that depict nine dragons floating among the clouds, atop the Five Sacred Mountains of China (One of which we will be climbing), and the bottom shows the waters turning beneath. We couldn't really walk through the entire city, or at least, we didn't because we were super-tired. However, we did take a walk through the Hall of Clocks, which is basically another hall converted into a museum for the clocks found within the Forbidden City. Clocks within were of both Chinese and European origins, and some of them were incredible. For example, one had a small automated man who was able to write Chinese calligraphy--eight words in total--on two sheets of paper.

That about wraps it up for the Forbidden City, and now Alex wants on the computer, so I suppose the rest will come later. PEACE