Day 1 (May 16th): Arrival and an Exciting Start

On May 15^th, I have arrived in Beijing at 11 o’clock.  Above is the first scene that I saw of Beijing.  Surprisingly, the sky had a clear blue color and the streets were cleaner than expected.  It was a fresh new start of the journey

In the morning, Dr. Hong led study abroad crew to a Chinese breakfast restaurant.  Interestingly, Chinese breakfast was quite different from ones in United States.  Their typical breakfast included dumpling, rice water, fried breads, and spicy tofu soup.  With Jetlag, everyone was shocked to see the differences but tastes of the foods were great.  It was similar to the foods in Korea.

During noon, we went to Beijing Summer Palace, which is the largest royal park in China.  We were guided by our tour guide who called himself Michael.  He was very intelligent about Chinese history and informed us lots of background information regarding places we visited.  This time, we were informed of history of Summer Palace and structures of the place.  Summer Palace is surrounded with Kunming Lake and Longevity hill.  Unfortunately, we did not climb Longevity hill but we crossed Kunming Lake with dragon boat.  The lake was so big that we were amazed to hear it was built by men.  In the center of the Summer Palace, we visited the marble boat, which is also known as boat of purity. According to Michael, it was first built in 1755 by Emperor Qianlong.  It was built to symbolize solidarity of the imperial power.

Above is the image of Kunming Lake.  It had an emerald color with beautiful scenery.

Above is the image of the beds of emperor.  It was unique in that there were several beds in a room.  According to Michael, it was set up that way to confuse assassins from assassinating Emperor.

Above is the image of the team that went for Public Health system in China course.  From left, they are Beatriz, Danniel (me), Seth, Dr. Alicia Hong, and Debra. The picture was taken as we could see Longevity hill from there.

After touring the summer palace, we went to have our lunch.  We had steamed dumplings, fried dumplings, Chinese mapo tofu, and Chinese sesame chicken.  They were somewhat similar with American Chinese foods, but they had more unique flavor compared to American Chinese foods.  For instance, the tofu in Chinese mapo tofu had more sticky flavor and tongue-numbing flavor.  I really enjoyed the uniqueness and taste of the foods.  Moreover, it was the day when Texans learned they couldn’t handle the Beijing portion of the food.  The portions of foods in Beijing were huge. It was huge in a sense that we could not finish even the half of the foods ordered.  Before the order, we said “We are Texas! We can handle everything”.  However, after the meal, we thought “We will not be greedy on foods in Beijing.”

 After lunch, we visited the Chinese home.  We took a bus to nearby hospital from Chinese home and rode bicycle carriages to visit Chinese home.  On the way, we went past a shopping street that was formed prepare for Beijing Olympic game.  We were amazed to hear the shopping street has once been a residential town.  It had changed tremendously to the point where none of the residential places were visible.  If not told by Michael, we would have never recognized it.  It showed how powerful the Government was and how much they could do. 

The neighborhood where we went for visiting Chinese home was called Qianjing Hutong.  It was where Emperor Puyi resided temporarily in 1959.  When we got to the Chinese household, we saw many small rooms.  Surprisingly, every room accompanied different families.  The housing price in the area is so expansive in that people could not afford a whole house for themselves.  However, it was helpful to have a open space in the middle of the house.  It had gardens and playable spaces for the children.  Therefore, it could

have acted as additional spaces for the residents.  As a public health practitioner, I believe those environments should help with children’s health.

After touring Chinese households, we came back at the hotel and decided to meet back up at 6pm for dinner.  For dinner, we had an adventure as Dr. Hong was not with us.  We walked for a 30 minutes touring around and stopped by izakaya restaurant.  We had salad, ton katsu, and duck barbeque as dinner and came back to hotel.  Since I was the only Asian among our group, Chinese came to me automatically as they expected me as a translator.  However, I could not attend to the expectation.  Fortunately, there was a waitress who spoke a little English and we could safely order food and enjoy dinner.