China Day Eight -- We saw pandas!

At the Beijing Zoo

Today was a free day in Beijing for us. We had already seen the major sights that we wanted to see, so today we chose to have a more leisurely pace as we explored the city. We relaxed most of the morning in the hotel room as I caught up my blogging and organized things so that I would be more prepared to pack later in the day.

After a relaxing morning that allowed our aching feet to rest we headed out for our last outing of our trip to Beijing. We looked through our touring books to see if there was anything we wanted to do before leaving. We decided to check out a shopping area that was highly recommended. Unfortunately it didn't show up on Herman's Beijing app on his iPhone, so we only had a street to go on as we searched for the place. The book did list a subway station nearby, so we took the line there.

When we arrived at the stop we found that all of the street names were in Chinese, so we couldn't see the one we wanted. We figured that it would be a big market, so it should be easy to find if we just started walking. As we have every day of this trip, we ended up meandering through local Chinese neighborhoods. While we walked we came upon another little tea shop. Herman had stopped to grab some food from a street vendor, and I was waiting right outside the tea shop. I looked inside and saw that they had lots of tea sets. One of the things I really wanted to purchase while in China was a China tea set, so I headed inside to check it out.

This little shop, like the one we visited yesterday, was manned by people who did not speak any English, but we made it work. This shop had custom made clay tea pots created by in house artisans. Those were interesting to see, but they were extremely expensive and not exactly like what I was looking for. I did find two sets that I liked a lot, and I couldn't decide which one I wanted. One had a distinctly Chinese look with a golden dragon amidst other designs. The other was a bit more modern looking -- red with gold Chinese lettering on it. The lady helping me tried to explain what the characters signified, but I had no clue what she was saying. It sounded important though. I asked Laney and Savannah to help me decide, and of course, they chose differently. I decided to put my new haggling skills to the test and ended up negotiating with the lady to get both of them at significant savings. Hurray! However, I thought that these little sets would be packaged in small little packages. No. She brought out these huge boxes filled with tight packing material so that it wouldn't break in transport. I was grateful for that but a bit sorry that now I was going to have to carry these two big packages with us all day as we walked.

This picture doesn't show just how crowded the
subway cars are.  We were packed inside
like sardines.

Outside the subway after our last ride.

We looked and looked all over for this market but ended up finding ourselves back at the Lama Temple for the third day in a row. At that point we decided to give up on finding the market. We then debated what to do next. Laney really wanted to go to the Beijing zoo to see the pandas. I was against this because I had read some pretty negative reviews of this zoo and the panda exhibit in particular. I had read that the display seemed to be cruel with the pandas in tight little pens. But we took a vote, and I lost, so we headed to the zoo.

I love this picture of Spencer
at the zoo.

Too cute!

Another cute panda!

Hyrum riding a statue outside the zoo

This was a nice enough zoo. It is more like zoos in the US used to be years ago. We really only went to the panda exhibit. It was very inexpensive to take the whole family in. I imagine that if it were extremely hot outside I might have been more worried about the exhibit, but it was pretty pleasant, and the pandas seemed happy. The cutest panda was the baby inside. Adorable! It played and romped all over its little area. I was glad to see them. I think we'll have a better opportunity to see more pandas in Guangzhou, but if not, at least.we were able to see some while we were in China.

We're pointing to the one spot of the zoo we visited

There were lots of families at the zoo -- just like there are at other zoos all over the world. It was nice to see all of the kids out with their families. We were, once again, a curiosity to everyone. We were the only non-Asians at the park that we saw. Add to that the unusual size if our group, and we were celebrities. Lots of moms, dads, grandmas, and grandpas wanted to get pictures of their babies with our kids.

I thought that heading through the Beijing subways during rush hour during the week was crazy, but it was nothing compared to the chaos that we encountered as we left the zoo and entered the subway. We joined tons of other families, all with children, and all with packages, making the security line clogged forever. Then the cars were super crowded as we jammed ourselves onto the line. It was the busiest and most crowded that we found the subway all week. I'm glad we experienced this at the end of the week rather than at the beginning or I would have never had the nerve to get on the subway again. But we made it back to our home stop on Tiannanmen Square just fine, so all turned out okay.

We stopped at the hotel for a brief respite and so we could drop off my big teapot boxes. Then we headed out for our very last outing of the week. Herman gave all of the kids some money so that they could purchase something to remind them of their time in Beijing, and just so we wouldn't break tradition, we headed to Wangfujing to visit their markets.

The first thing I did when we got there was head over to the Gap store so that I could buy some socks. It seemed a bit weird to walk into a Gap in China and see the Gap workers looking very Gap worker-like. I guess I could have gotten some socks at a street market, but I needed a bit more cushion in my socks if I was going to survive the walking of this trip. I can say this -- Gap prices in China are no better than they are in the US. You'd think it would be. Oh well. My aching feet are happy.

Trying the fried scorpions

I kind of liked the scorpions -- crispy and salty!

I think JoJo had had enough touring for the day.

Wangfujing is a lot more crowded on the weekend than it is during the week. This was the first time while we were here this week when I really worried about pickpocketers. But with so many people it was also super exciting to be there. After going all week without having a vendor grab at me, I was accosted at every turn. They were nice enough, but it got old pretty fast. I ended up buying a beautiful Chinese fan. The vendor was trying to influence me as I haggled prices, and he said, "This is pure silk. Very nice.". I was like "Sure buddy.". No way was that real silk. But still it was pretty, and I got a good enough price for it.

Everyone got their items without too much of a problem. We did have a vendor pretend to take JoJo yet again. Not so cool -- especially in such a crowded environment. But we all made it back to the hotel.

We have become pretty good at crossing busy streets while have been here. I was super nervous about this before we came because the people in Beijing don't necessarily follow traffic rules, and pedestrians never have the right of way. But we found that if we just followed a big crowd across we'd be okay. Even when the crowd was comprised of idiots who chose to cross ten lanes of traffic against a light. Eek! By the end of the week we were even good at crossing on our own, but I was still more timid than Herman. There were some times when I had to put my foot down and refuse to cross at spots. We ended the week pretty confident in our ability to navigate the craziness of Beijing traffic.

We got back to the hotel and everyone crashed. I stayed up alone to pack everything up. This might sound unfair, but I prefer it that way. I am a bit anal about packing. I like for weight to be distributed equally and for items to be packed tightly. My time working at Mulch's during high school packing groceries prepared me well for packing up the Blau family goods. Still, we had expanded quite a bit since we got to Beijing. We had burned through a bunch of snack food, so I thought we would have plenty of space, but our souvenirs more than filled that space. I had to break out the extra bag we had stored for just that reason. We are going to figure out a better plan before we board the plane back to the US.

I know we didn't visit this place today, but I had to
add this picture somewhere on this blog.
We love this!

I finally headed to bed about 11pm, totally worrying about getting our family boarded on the train tomorrow. It'll be yet another adventure for the Blau family!

For posterity's sake, the hotel where we stayed
in Beijing