Days 190-191: National Week

Workers in China don't get vacation days. Instead, they get 3 one-week holidays through the year, all at the same time. During these weeks, the government removes road tolls, encouraging people to travel and see other parts of the country. Through a bout of poor planning/research on my part, the group tour I was in started in the capital city of the most populous country in the world at the beginning of the busiest, most crowded week of the year (the National Holiday). Our first visit as a group was back to the Great Wall - the same section as I had visited before, but much earlier in the morning to avoid the crowds. I didn't mind revisiting the wall, and this time I just turned left upon reaching the top instead of right, so that in total, between the two visits, I covered the entire section open to visitors. It was also a good chance to talk to others in the group and get to know everybody a bit.

After returning from the wall I decided to go visit the Lama Temple, as it was one of the few big places I hadn't seen in Beijing yet. It was a large collection of temples and Buddhas, both of which I'd already seen a lot of already, but it was still worth visiting.

In the evening we went out to a kung fu performance as a group. It had a story, but a very loose one, and the entire thing was dubbed in english and obviously meant to cater towards tourists, which made it all seem a bit gimicky. It was still fairly entertaining, but something I wouldn't really have missed.

After the show we got the unfortunate news that our guide's (Frank) father-in-law had just passed away, and that he would be leaving us for a few days once we got to Xi'an to look after family affairs.

The last day the group visited a few of the places I'd already been to, so I just took things easy on my own and explored some parks. From what I heard, the crowds were immense and a lot of them didn't get a chance to see all they wanted, so I'm glad I checked things out on my own before the holiday started. Ti'anamen and the Forbidden City were particularily packed with people, and the normal high security at the square was considerably upgraded with people in different uniforms everywhere.

In the evening we all headed to the crowded train station to catch the sleeper train from Beijing to Xi'an.