wHUAt time is it? 中国 time!

Wednesday, May 22, 2013, 2:45pm, 中国 time!

So, it’s literally the beginning of the end of our time here with CET. This means our “last” of everything. Yesterday was our last Tuesday that we’ll have in China, today is our last Wednesday we’ll have in China.. It’s all so surreal. Today was also our last day of a new lesson. Next week it will all just be preparation for our final exams and graduation. Yesterday was our last painting class, so I guess this entry is in honor or our 画画课。

We all sneaked some pictures during class since it was our last one. So here’s what it looks like during class, and that’s our professor, Li laoshi. We drew Giant Pandas for our last lesson :’(

There’s Jiansi and Meimei.

Haha, there’s me and Hailin.

This is a picture of Jiansi also taking pictures…

There’s Hailin with Weiya and Beili in the back.

And finally here’s a class picture in front of BIE, with all of our dedicated classmates and teacher!

So , yesterday was also our big semester presentation. It was a lot of fun! For the entire semester I’ve been working on it and yesterday I presented and got it all done. Everyone did a really good job and I feel like a free bird, now. But all of my energy will now be put into this Friday’s China Night. It will be a fun night full of skits and laughter. I bet it’s going to be better than Jan Term’s since we are all much better at Chinese now and we all are pretty funny, actually. I will have more about this later!

So right now, we’re just all sort of coming down with nostalgia and excitement all in one. It’s hard to believe that we only have 12 days until we are leaving China. I think I’m ready, but at the same time I will miss so many things.But, hey, all these feelings will be better developed next week, when I’ll be procrastinating from studying…. :)

Oh, how 14 weeks flew by…

Sunday, May 19, 2013,10:45pm China time!

Okay, so we’re still alive. It’s been a busy time here, and it’s kind of like a mad dash to the finish. Everyday I’ve been trying to figure out when I’ll have time to go to this place, or when I’ll have time to buy that thing. It’s all so sad because with every passing day, I am thinking of more reasons of why I’ll miss Beijing.

But anyway, since I want to go to sleep and resume doing homework tomorrow morning, I will just really quickly re-cap what generally went on last week and over this past weekend. If you are a fan of Glee, think of it as a “What you missed on Glee” special that appears before each episode.

So last Wednesday was my friend Jianci’s birthday. He’s from Soka University in California, but he’s originally from Japan! He and Meisui are just the cutest Japanese friends I have ever met! This is his cake..

..and this is him with Meisui. <3

Then on Friday, we all took a fieldtrip to a rural high school that was surprisingly well-funded, very beautiful, and…

VERY big!

We each had a chance to give a little lesson of some aspect of America to a group of high school kids, I talked about American families, and then then we just got to chat and just have a lot of fun. This was Hailin and my group! They reminded me of the awkward but fun days of high school. Oh, how I miss those days sometimes…

On the bulletin boards outside, they had poems written in English. Generally speaking, high school students in China have a pretty good understanding of the English language, since it’s part of their gaokao, their rigorous college entrance exam. They just don’t practice it often. But anyway, this was my favorite poem…

Then that night, my roommate and I watch a movie in a theater, and it was awesome because it was my first time in a Chinese movie theater, and here’s the ad for the movie we watched! It was probably the best movie I’ve seen in a while, and the weirdest thing is that there were only Chinese subtitles, but i understood most of it..yeah!

Proof that we were actually in a Chinese theater… you don’t see guys like this in American theaters!

Then on Saturday, I went to Big Brother, Big Sister, and the kids were fired up as usual. This is my little brother after we had our studying session and we outside playing:

And of course the day would end like this because it was hot outside and the kids wanted to play in the sprinklers when they came on…

Then on Saturday night, I was in the Sanlitun area to meet my friend’s friends when we saw a huge sea of green coming back from the worker’s stadium after watching a soccer match between Beijing and Tianjin. I hear it was 2:2, and judging from the huge crowd of people outside, it was a big game. I bought a shirt ;)

Then today, a few of us girls wanted to get some souvenirs. We went to the Pearl Market and this time, I actually took pictures of everything to show you guys how much there is in places where a lot of tourists go to.

One of every color..

And of course, pearls.

My favorite is of this Chinese lady pulling a customer back in. He looks amused.

But that’s it for now, I’ve got to go to sleep. I feel like sleep has been rare lately because of everything that needs to be done. We have a presentation on Tuesday and we also have to prepare a skit for China night on Friday. I will keep you updated as much as possible, but I don’t know how many adventures I will be able to go on with all this time just evaporating away!

…and that’s what you missed in CHINA!

Monday, May 13, 2013, 12:51pm, 中国 time!

So the theme for this entry is animals! I don’t think I mentioned this is the past before, but the closest subway stop to BIE is the Beijing Zoo. Isn’t it ironic that when we get off the subway, all of us CET kids get off at the Beijing Zoo? Hmm, what are they saying?…

Anyway… I want to start with what we did with what we did at 哥哥姐姐 this past Saturday. They had an artistic expression workshop where they listened to a narrated story and then all the kids drew what they thought the story was telling them. Every child had a different drawing in the end. It was really cute and really relaxing. And for the first time, the kids were not super bouncy everywhere. Maybe it’s the hot weather that’s playing into their moods, or maybe it’s just that they are getting used to us. These 3 cuties are in my “family” We had 3 kids and 3 big brothers/sisters in each family. This first little guy is my little brother, 张引. I’m a proud older sister : ).

The real animals came when on Sunday, I went finally went to the Beijing Zoo for the first time on Sunday. It was hot and there were so many people out because it was Mother’s Day, and it was just a great day to be outside. In the past, I never wanted to go to the Zoo because I heard the animals are not necessarily well-taken care of there, but I figured since a couple of my friends were going, that I’d just give it a shot, what is there to lose, really?

The front entrance. She’s doing a cute pose, I’m glad I caught that!

The inside was surprisingly really big and very scenic.

It seemed like the facilities were really nice, but when I kept looking around, there environment for the animals was generally not very clean and the animals did not seem happy. So instead of taking pictures of animals, I focused more on taking pictures of humans…haha.

And funny signs . I learned a lot from this sign, such as when Pandas walk, they are slow, but when they climb, they are surprisingly fast? :? 我看不出来。。。

I had to take a picture of the Giant Panda to, you know, prove that I saw one.

But the other animals 呢? I think his face says it all…

At least there were signs that told you to protect the animals, but I can’t promise that they were being followed…

After we saw all there was to see, we just walked around and took random pictures. We were set free to be our own animals!

This kid was so cute on this elephant…

…that we decided to take our own picture..

And that was the end of the day. The sun was going down and everything was basically closed. It was not necessarily a super fun time, but since we do live at the Beijing Zoo, might as well go just once.

So, this week, oh, man, feeling all the work ahead of me. Due dates are arriving and it’s not a good feeling, but, hey, it’ll be okay. Time will move forward whether we want it to or not. I’ll keep you updated on anything else that happens. Until then, you’ll hear from me the next time I feel like procrastinating.   ;)

Saturday, May 11, 2013, 8:44pm, 中国 time!

So yesterday, CET took us to 798 a popular art district in China. Do you remember when I went there during the winter? It was cold and I mainly went into galleries and looked at art as opposed to seeing outside. I was very excited to be going for a second time, and this time when the weather was nice enough to walk around and enjoy the rays of sun we’ve been having for a while now. 夏天来了！

It’s actually ironic because before we went on the trip, I talked with a teacher about 798 and she said she doesn’t like it that much; he said it was more like a commercialized art scene as opposed to the a real place to enjoy art. That was disappointing to here, especially because I went once and thought it was nice.Nevertheless, I went on the trip and here comes the commentary:

We all took a big bus to the place, which was convenient becasue it took about an hour and a half of subway and bus when i went there before, and that was not counting the time it took to find and entrance when I got there! With this bus, it only took about an hour. I sat with my friend Juan Juan she’s from Wesleyan and she’s pretty awesome!

We sat through a while in traffic, but we still got there in about an hour. :)

So, Sheng Ming from UNC surprised u during the bus ride because he wanted to talk to Juan Juan about Game of Thrones. Apparently it’s a big deal right now. I feel like I’m the only person’ who’s not watching it. But his visit was hilarious nonetheless. I don’t know if it was because they were talking about the drama of Game of Thrones or the fact that the conversation was all in Chinese, haha.

We got off the bus, and we immediately saw signs of art…

As we were walking up until we got into the district.

This is the famous statue of the place. 798 is supposed to be a place of rebellion, artistic rebellion, but rebellion still.And you can see the anger in this guy’s eyes.. and the force he has on the giant paintbrush in the hand. So iconic!

We continued and saw pieces that were places…

This is LiLin, he’s kindly showing us the sign that points out locations of 798.

The entire places was full of cool art stuff. It definitely felt very modern and relaxed.

We saw some hilarious figurines outside of shops…

And some intense stuff on walls… ( I love graffitti, it’s just has a way of saying things you can’t put to words)

Then we went into some galleries, and the first one we went to was a little odd, it was paintings of all women … hmm, awkward for us…

So, we kept moving, but even this bathroom sign was all colored-up!

And we saw more designs everywhere, everything felt so chaotically harmonic…

But we did see paintings like this…

And then decided to go back to the street art. I think we gravitated towards those because they were just so fun to play with!

Most of the places there were stores that sold artsy stuff, like these plastic vases that can also be a fish bowl. 0.o

Then we went into another exhibit, where these was this piece. It seemed to be the only piece like that there. It was really strange. It gave Meiyi the creeps, haha.

Then we went back to the street art.

Then we kind of just rested for the last half an hour or so.

Overall, I wasn’t too impressed by the spring experience of 798.I liked the outdoor art better than the exhibits themselves, which is a bummer. I give it a rating of a 6/10, but it was nice to be outside and catch some rays. And we were done for the weekend, which was good!

So we only have 3 weeks left and this will be the busiest 3 weeks that we’ll ever have a CET. With a fieldtrip that requires a presentation to high school kids next week, Holy Cross’s research project due and China night preparations both the week after, graduation in 3 weeks, still wanting to go to a lot of places, still wanting to buy a lot of things, and fighting off the nostalgia that is already coming on— not to even mention homework everyday and tests every week, this is going to be Hell Week x 3 Beijing style. I’ve been thinking lately that we spend these past 4.5 months getting ourselves into the culture of living and studying in Beijing, and now we’re going to have to go back to the U.S. and get re-acclimated back into the American culture.

I’ve already started to miss Beijing, I can say that it has changed every one of us in some way or another. When we go back, it definitely won’t be the same, but it will be really good. Changes that were supposed to happen have happened and still are. All I can say is that I am really grateful for the opportunities I’ve had in Beijing thus far. So these 3 weeks will be good and  I’ll do my best with updating the blog. I promise this won’t be the last one before we go back to the states. A lot is about to happen… and procrastinating is definitely one of those future occurrences. ;)

Sunday, May 5, 2013, 11:31pm, 中国 time!

So CET took us on a trip to the Great Wall for the second time, and I thought, hmm, that’s cool. Another chance to go hiking! Except this time, we were going on a different site of the Wall, last time we went on Mutianyu , this time we went on JInShanLing. This part is a little farther from us and has a lot of historical significance in terms of the Mongol invasion in China. I’m not much if a history buff, so I thought it would be just the normal Wall… boy, was I wrong.

We started off early in the morning, and our Resident Director Andria Payne brought her doggy! Sooo cute!

The bus ride was over 2 hours because of the traffic, but we got there eventually..

And once we started, they kept emphasizing that in order to get on the Great Wall, you need to climb a mountain. It was like last time, except the terrain was different. More green, and loopy, and the warm weather didn’t help!

But we were approaching the wall, you can start to see the towers that line the Wall behind Lulu, MeiYi’s roommate. She’s so cute!

And we just about reached the Wall, with everyone huffing and puffing, haha.

And this is what we saw…

I noticed right away that this part has much more character than the site at Mutianyu. I felt like I was in the ancient ruins of China.

There was much more up and down, and much steeper and much more dangerous. But, hey, we’re all young, we can do it!

Then there were parts like, really?!

But we were fine— yes, we are strong. :D

It was so beautiful and relaxing up there. And it really felt like an adventure.

..especially when there was nothing separating us from the broken road and our doom.

But then we kept walking and all of a sudden, we hit nicely fixed wall.

Then it goes back to being all hazardous, again.

At this point, I went up ahead alone and the roads started to turn to this.

This part of the Wall is called the Wild Wall.

It tried to catch the wind in a photo, but I guess it didn’t transfer too well, here. But it felt like I could’ve fallen off the wall from the gusts of wind that came at me.

Then I hit this tower that didn’t seem to have a way to go around….hmm, what’s the best way to get around a problem?

My friend Jay, who caught up to me is demonstrating… take it head-on!

Once we climbed the wall, literally, we saw this..

And then it got pretty abstract from here.

And then we finally hit the government-placed wall that wouldn’t let us go any further. Aww, shucks!

So we headed back, and enjoyed the view:

On the way back, I bumped into some friends who wanted to check out that space, so I stopped and journaled a little. What more inspiring place than the Great Wall of China?

And Ali brought this great HC banner, so of course, we took photos!

And so after the climb, we had a yoga class on the Wall. I look a little nervous because we had just started the class when we took this picture,  对不起，老师！

It got pretty ugly during yoga, I learned I need to do more stretching, haha.

But I felt so relaxed afterwards and it was a great day. Very tiring, but so worth it. now we all can say that we’ve been to the Great Wall of China, twice!

Friday, May 3, 2013, 7:05pm 中国 time!

So it’s Friday, and we are on the weekend, now, but I can’t help but feel that all of us at CET are experiencing a really strange transition-period right now. Spring Break was 2 weeks ago, and that was fun and relaxing, but once we started classes again, I felt strange. Maybe it was because we started using a new textbook (because we finished our last one) or maybe because we haven’t had a normal test for the past 2 weeks (because we’ve been having special field trips/ holidays instead) but I can’t help but feel like I have (and I feel a lot of us) have been living between the fact that we only have one more month left, and that this last month means we should enjoy every second.

That being said, I’ve been wanting to do much more exploring these days, just anywhere and any time. Not good for my studies? Probably, but I’m in Beijing, and I need to just 享受我在北京的生活！(enjoy my life in Beijing!)

I’ve been taking too many pictures and going to just random places all week. This post is definitely just a jumble of everything that’s been going on lately. I’ve been running outside, and I found that there is a whole different night-life in Beijing. Night time is when all the old people come out and exercise! The following photos are just places I’ve been to this week. Both night and day time!

3 pics below: when I went running to the ZiZhuYuan, the Bamboo park that I’ve gone to several times before, but this was the first time at night!

Just Beijing at night…

Then I also went on a bike ride on Wednesday when we didn’t have class on Labor Day. It was beautiful out (another reason why studying has been difficult lately!) and I actually didn’t have a plan. But by the time I reached the Imperial Palace, I decided to follow a guy on a bike and see where that led me…

The back of the Imperial Palace from the perspective on a bike, hmm, looks familiar…

He led me to the National Art Museum of China!

There was an exhibit about motion, which was cool, but I think this was the coolest piece.

And there was also an exhibit about Spanish sculpture through history. Viva Las Mujeres!

Also, on Thursday, I ended up walking to my roommate to school. She goes to Minzu University and it’s 30 minutes from CET, but I wanted to go , anyway. I thought it would be cool to see morning life off campus.

Her campus has a venue for when performances on campus happen, although it looks more like a temple…

Then yesterday evening, I just explored our neighborhood. I walked out, turned a couple of times and it brought be to this public living area with a bunch of apartment units are stacked. It was really pretty.

And this is a picture of the flower trees that line the street next perpendicular to our school’s street. They are beautiful and so fragrant! I had to take this picture to remember it!

Ahh, so this was last night. Li Xiao (my roommate) and I went on a night-time bike ride to Hou Hai. I’ve run there before at night, but I forgot my camera at the time, so I had to go back, and we decided to go together. :)

It’s so beautiful at night, there. There are so many restaurants that line the lake and little bars where people are performing live.

And that’s all the pictures I can dig up, now. This last photo is just next to a campus. I don’t know why there are flags because before this week, there weren’t any. Maybe it’s a sign that things are quickly changing and that things are not as they used to be.

That’s what I’ve been feeling lately. I think all of us have been having mixed feelings abut going back home. Some people are super stoked, others are not. I’m still looking for more adventures. I just want to keep discovering things until time runs out.

These next few weeks are fast approaching, i can feel it already. Tomorrow we’ll be having another trip to the Great Wall, except this time we’ll be visiting a different part and it will be really hot! More about that later! Until then, take it easy, and for those who are at HC, good luck with final projects/papers/tests!!

Monday, April 29, 2013, 1:30pm 中国 time!

On Saturday, instead of going to good ‘ole Tus Park for 哥哥姐姐 volunteering, this week’s activities were moved to a migrant school Called ZhiXing School in ChangPing, located in the suburbs of Beijing. Since the location was changed, this week was optional for all the big brothers and sisters. It was moved because I found out that since this Wednesday is Labor Day, the kids get that day off, but to make up for that, the kids have to go to school on Saturday. And since our normal little brothers and sisters go to all different schools, the organization we worked agreed to initiate their activities at this school that BEAM also works with, so win-win I’d say. And I get another field trip! The only thing is that I had to get there myself and I have the worst sense of direction…

So I got some directions from Emily, one of the directors of 哥哥姐姐 and those directions led me to the terminal stop of Line 5. The terminal stop on any lines equates to … very far away. So I took the subway for an hour until i reached the outskirts of Beijing. I got off and this is what I saw:

A whole new world, really. Everyone who got off this stop seemed to be travelling further elsewhere. It was hot and it felt like summer, why did I wear a black shirt? And to top it off, I couldn’t find my bus stop. When I got here, I walked around for a good half and hour before I saw about 2-3 buses that I should have been on. But where were the buses coming from? 谁知道。。。。

I kept asking people, but as most Chinese people would tell, you, “just keep going that way” while pointing in an ambiguous direction. This was fun…

Picture of me walking into the 3rd bus stop finding out that I just need to keep going “that way”.

Finally I found my bus stop and I waited there until the bus came. 985 was my bus number.

This is my happy wink. I was so happy to be here. But I still had a few stops to go!

When I arrived, I almost got there until I bumped into Karen, who’s a BEAM director. She told me that two of our brothers and sisters got lost on the way there, too, and we decided to wait for them.

Once our friends came,  we got to the heavenly gates of the school:

So the group we were working with was a Church group that has a bunch of sites across China. I was really surprised to see all these teenagers there. And since I got there an hour late, everyone was just int he middle of playing games with the kids.  I hopped into a group.

This day really reminded me of my grade school days when we used to have our field day every spring, or should we call it “fun day”.

In this game, they tied two people’s legs, then a person dipped their face in water, and then they walked across to a second bowl of flower with a stick of pocky (like a sweet cookie/cracker-type snack) and you had to pick it up with your mouth and then walk back.

The catch is that they tried to make you look silly by getting the flour stuck with the water… isn’t that juvenile?

The girls were so cute. I had just girls in my group but the school had grades 1-6 of boys and girls.

We had some extra time, so we gave our girls English names. This is Hannah!

And then all the kids got candy from the Church group. How did they know kids like candy?

Then while the kids were getting ready to go home, I took some pictures of the place.

The cutest kids in the world!

Then after the kids left, I walked around and explored.

And found these two guys.

They agreed to show me their homework and desks.
 They are 11 years old, and they seem to like school, one of them really likes math, and both of them thought I was weird. (I know because they kept whispering around me.) Not like I was the only one other person there… haha

There’s the sign that we talked about in class the first weeks of the semester: 好好学习天天向上。 Study well, and improve. Good old Mao Zhu Xi. This was saying was advocated to improve student’s study ethic before when education was just beginning. And it still lives on today.

This desk really reminded me of grade school.

I wanted to leave my name, but that would totally give then a bad example.

This room was probably for the dunce. It was rather spooky, though.

Okay, so that was my trip to a migrant school called ZhiXing School. CET will also be taking all of us to a school in about 2.5 weeks. I’m super excited. I want to see how different the kids would be there. Plus, we’re going to have a chance to teach the kids English! Yes, you heard it, we will be speaking English at that time! But it’s for the good of the kids… : )

Saturday, April 27, 2013, 12:30pm 中国 time!

So yesterday, we went to the Summer Palace and like I mentioned before, we didn’t have class or a test this week, so I was so happy. It felt like a long weekend, but the only catch was this trip was mandatory, and all the teachers came, too. I felt like we were in grade school, again. : )

We had an early morning and left campus at 9am and headed there. While on the bus, they gave us these maps. Nanxing and Ai Li are showing us how to look at a map, haha.

It was a beautiful day, skies were clear and at the Palace, the air was so clean and Chinese people were everywhere—I hear a lot of old Chinese people go here just to exercise and enjoy themselves. I’m starting to look forward to being old …

Once we got to a little area surrounded by water, we split up into our classes and started playing games. We played the same game that I played with the Chinese roommates on our trip to Pingyao (the game about figuring out who has the different card, just by describing our place/thing/etc. You don’t know who has what, but everyone except one person has a different but somewhat similar thing. Example: everyone’s paper says iphone except one person who has ipad. The point of the game is to figure out who is not the same), plus, we had a pretty cool background.

Then we had a jianzi contest. It’s a Chinese hacky-sack. Each class had one student and one teacher try to kick the jianzi as many times as possible. Their total number of hits is their score. Guess who won… my class! Oh, yeah.

This guy is not in my class, but I’ll have a video of my teacher later. She was amazing at it.

Then we had a friendly game of tug-o-war. My class totally lost. We are all pretty weak…But then we did a match of students vs. teachers, and of course students dominated!

Then they showed us where we were on the map, and set us free for the rest of the day. That’s Li Xuan (Resident Director) (and former Chinese roommate of a Holy Cross graduate who came to China in 2010, I beleive!) and Zhu Laoshi (Academic Director of CET)

The scenery and aura of this place was great..

Nanxing <3

The only not pretty thing about this place was that we found this guy, haha. But that’s minor compared to everything else ; )

And of course, PiJun had to buy this..

…And go around trying to entertain the Chinese locals… they loved him!

The Summer Palace was beautiful and really inspiring.The only thing is that I woke up this morning with sore arms and a sore back from the games. I think it’s time for me to start joining the Chinese elderly…

But really.

Friday, April 26, 2013, 9:00pm, 中国 time!

Okay, so I’m really excited about this post because it’s a double-feature.  Yesterday after class, I went to JIng Shan Park with Jiansi and Meisui. We didn’t have any exams this week because just this morning, we all had a fieldtrip to the Summer Palace (but that’s for the next post ;). So we decided after our Thursday classes, that we’d, you know, just hop on the bus and go to Jing Shan Park. This park is a man-made hill  This park is right across from the exit of the Imperial Palace, the gigantic (more like a city of its own) home of former Chinese rulers, and it just so happens that I didn’t have enough time to post about it earlier, but I have all the pictures saved from Winter. So, first you can look through these pictures from Winter, and then compare it with the beautiful spring pictures of today. I hope you enjoy the contrast!

When I went to the Imperial Palace, I was with Eli from Clark (remember her?) and her roommate Wang Lu. We stopped by Tiananmen Square before we went to the Palace Museum. Oh, winter clothes…

It was cold and wintery that day, but there were still people there to look around!

As we looked through, literally all the buildings looked the same and it felt like we’d never finish viewing all of it. I’m absolutely sure we didn’t get to see everything, but that’s okay. I probably wouldn’t remember it, anyway.

Inside an old-fashioned bedroom…

And so this is where yesterday began. When we got off the bus, we got off at the exit of the Imperial Palace. In this picture the exit is in our background.

This water is what officially separates the Forbidden City and Jing Shan Park:

And then we were off to the Park (right behind us), we just had to turn around and snap another picture…

Once we entered, this is what we saw:

Then we kept moving forward, trying to get to the top:

There was beautiful wildlife everywhere. It was clean, sunny, and so naturally beautiful.

Almost to the top, you can start to see the Imperial Palace (aka the Forbidden City):

At the top, you could have gotten your picture taken for 20 kuai a person. It was pretty silly…

I didn’t know that the central point of Beijing was here, but I found it!

And here we can see the Forbidden City. To be honest, it was more beautiful here than from the inside.

This is from the other side of the temple, if you notice that guy, he helped us take the previous picture, He was so funny and abnormally happy, but that’s cool!

Jiansi gave us some candy on the top… How how Japanese..

And there were other temples scattered in places.

Then we looked at the nature.

And they were doing a little photo shoot. More proof that Asian people like plants in pictures! It’s global, I swear!

We were proudly NOT part of this tour! We are independent and free-spirited! :P

Homage to the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who supposedly hung himself here.

That was out day. It was just so relaxing. Too bad all this beautiful weather does not help me get my homework done… This could be a problem in the weeks to come. Believe it or not, we only have about a month and a few days left. It’s amazing how quickly time went by. And it’s even crazier to see these pictures of the scenery compared with one another.

But more to come about the Summer Palace trip, next!