beautiful monotony: We are Rock Stars, Obviously…For so Many Reasons

Today I got up at 4:30 and had big plans to tackle my VPN issues. Long story short, after an hour of being treated terribly by the online chat tech support, Jenn and I decided to log on to my computer with her username and password. And viola! It worked- and we made quite a scene of excitement in Jamaica Blue coffee shop!

The plan for today is to hit as many major sites as possible, so I’ll keep it short and show the good stuff:

Tienanmen Square (this was an hour long cab ride!! And it wasn’t very far at all, the traffic here is insane and at some times of the day it is nearly impossible to find a cab.

The iconic Tiananmen Square view of Chairman Mao actually doubles as the entrance to the Forbidden City (The Gate of Heavenly Peace). The scale of the square is unfathomably huge scale and makes everything around it look far away and diminutive. The national anthem continues to play over and over again on a scratchy record player and propaganda is displayed over and over again on huge digital screens glorifying China’s people, culture, and landscape. Most propaganda is in Chinese and English so that foreigners can see that the government is very concerned with modernization and keeping up with the west. The phrase “Civilized Chaoyang” can be seen all over the business district.

I'm having a moment with taking pictures of bikes...

Chinese Paparazzi

Jenn and I have been very much aware this entire time that we seem to make quite the spectacle when walking around the city, except inside the Forbidden City gates we felt even more ridiculous since we were asked on multiple occasions to take our picture with older Chinese couples and with younger guys (who Jenn calls Chinese Justin Biebers) which further convinced me that we were really rocking the US tourist look. Our only explanation of this is that many visitors of the Forbidden City are domestic Chinese tourists who live in the countryside and rarely ever see Caucasians.