Shopping, Nightmarket, Forbidden City

Last night, Kat and I went shopping at a shopping center, ate some pizza (my first western food here), and then found a nightmarket! The nightmarket was a lot of fun, with lots of people set up on the sidewalks with their goods spread out on blankets. We had fun bargaining.

This morning dawned hot and smoggy.


We spent a long time figuring out travel, and eventually met Sarah and Erik at the *North* gate of The Forbidden City. We had a lot of fun exploring that. We learned a bit about the system of concubines that existed, and how some (like the Dowager Empress CiXi) rose through the ranks. We saw a chart detailing the food alloted to each of them... being higher ranking seems to get you more food. Most of the buildings had trim like this:

Here we all are as a group (Me, Kat, and Sarah in front, Erik in back).

I had a talk with some art (a concubine enjoying her tea.)

After a while we came to a series of courtyards:

Then we went and hung around Tiananmen square, had a snack, took a picture with some Chinese people (upon request, as usual), and headed off for some food. We got into some lively discussion of politics and ideology, had some hot soup, did some shopping, and experienced the most delicious tea ever.

Tomorrow morning we leave for an epic adventure!