China Day 7: Jade Factory, Great Wall, Cloisonné Factory, Bird's Nest & Water Cube

Today it was warm and you could hear China calling us to come out and play.  Come out and play we would!! Watch out here come the American’s again!

Traffic is everything you have heard.  Charlotte, our guide, told us there are on average 9 million bikes and 5 million cars on the roads of Beijing everyday.  Rush hours can last up to 11 hours a day!  

  Recognize this building from the new Karate Kid??  It actually burned down and they were almost done rebuilding it.  I guess the Chinese people can get a little crazy with their fireworks on Chinese New Year!

Our first stop of the day was the Jade factory.  The history of Jade goes back as far as the Chinese civilization and was defined as beautiful stones by Xu Zhen (58-147).  The Chinese love Jade because of its culture, meaning and humanity.  A Chinese saying is, “Gold has value; Jade in invaluable”.  Jade symbolizes beauty, nobility, constancy, power, grace, purity, and immortality in the Chinese culture.  Everywhere you turn there was Jade.  The women wear their jade bracelets 24/7 and get them so tight they never come off.  They will pass them down the generations.  There are different colors of Jade stones.  Chinese women covet the green Jade that are filled with flecks of colors. There was fake Jade everywhere tourists go, so if you are traveling to China be sure you are paying for the real thing.  It was incredible to watch them creating and carving the Jade into items that cost up to $20,000.

The Jade Factory Beijing

They would chisel away at one piece for days!

Or months...

Or years!! 

The Olympians in 2008 were given medals made out of jade….amazing!

 Yes….Laura, Sky, and I all bought Jade bracelets!  Gorgeous!!! I wear mine all the time but did buy it big enough to slip off.  You will notice them in some of the next pictures!

The next stop on our trip was our 2^nd visit to The Great Wall of China but this time at Badaling!  It is a very popular visiting site. This area was extremely steep, we walked and walked and posed then we walked and walked and posed then we walked some more…

 The Great Wall is awe inspiring and many times we would just stop and look at the unending wall…I thought of the men that spent their entire lives building this wall day in and day out until they died.  It was a brutal sacrifice.  It is an amazing place to reflect.

Did I mention the stair climber has nothing on the Great Wall!

 Baby did I mention it was hot!!!

 As we headed back toward Beijing we stopped at a Cloisonné Factory.  This pottery was developed in the early fourteen to fifteenth century during the Ming dynasty.  They are exquisite and extremely intricate.  They furnished temples and palaces, because their flamboyant splendor was considered appropriate to the function of only great structures.   They were too flashy for common homes or scholarly places.  Cloisonné is extremely tedious and time consuming just to make one piece, but they are incredible.  We toured the process of making the Cloisonné and then enjoyed lunch upstairs. 

Then we were taking to the shopping area.  Prices were much higher than other places where we had seen similar items.  We were not your typical gullible tourists, but it was fun to look!

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the replica Terracotta Warriors that were guarding the factory.  I knew we were not going to be visiting the authentic warriors because they were not close to any of our locations on our itinerary.  

 We were off again…when, what to my wondering eyes should appear…could it be....The Bird’s Nest and Water Cube!!!

The kiddos were all handed kites and they ran off toward the incredible Bird’s Nest and Water Cube.  We were officially on the Beijing Olympic Green! I looked at the Bird’s Nest and thought about that astounding opening show and the beauty of the precision. 

My Favorite 3 Girls!

 

Funny! On the Grass in front of the Bird's Nest

 Then I thought about what did I really watch at that Olympics….Michael Phelps of course!! Awesome!!! 

 The architecture is characteristic of the Chinese people, nothing but the best.  The pictures below are not my pictures but I wanted you to see what we were able to see and what I couldn’t capture because they were people EVERYWHERE!!

Time to go…to DINNER!  

 Fun with friends and lots of píjiǔ (beer).  Beer is the only thing they serve cold.

 I don't have any other pictures from the evening...why??  Because I'm not sure we even made it to our pillows before we fell down exhausted from an amazing day!