Most Hutong Homes Have No Bathrooms or . . .

. . . Getting to Know Our New Travel Buddies.

Our first full day in Beijing and we are officially exhausted! We managed to stay up until 9:30 last night and I managed to sleep until Phil woke me at 6:30 this morning, but poor Alex was up at 4:00 and didn't go back to sleep until this evening at the Chinese Acrobat Theater!

We started our day at the Temple of Heaven park. Built in the 1400's as a place to give thanks for the good harvest and originally only accessable to the Emperor, now is a major tourist attraction and city park. The park is used daily by the seniors in Beijing as a health club and social center. Huge open areas are littered with what looks like kid's playground equipment, but is in fact apparatus for the adults to keep fit. And the place was packed!! It was amazing watching the various fitness routines taking place. In other areas of the park we found seniors playing cards, dominoes, various musical instruments and singing old familiar songs from their youth. Much healthier than sitting around watching Jeopardy.





We then went to one of the many Hutong neighborhoods that can be found in Beijing. The Hutong are narrow alleyways that date back to when Genghis Khan destroyed BJ and the Chinese had to rebuild the city. Today there is a combination of one-storey ramshackle dwellings and historic courtyard homes. Our group cruised around the area in a 5 rickshaw caravan through the maze of homes to our lunch destination.
We dined in a two room home, the double mattress propped up against the wall to make room for the table. The food was amazing. The homeowner kept bringing plate after plate of various veggie dishes, peanuts, rice, pickled cucumber, dim sum and, the group fav, the sauteed garlic sprouts. The family dog hung out at our feet for a while until his owner got wise to him and kicked him out (we think he knew that perhaps our chopstick skills could yield him a snack).

While on our Hutong tour it was explained to us that most of these homes have no bathrooms and therefore the families rely on the many public restrooms dotting the neighborhood.

We visited the Drum Tower, that originally marked the center of the old Mongol capital and was used to both mark the hours of the day and announce the closing of the city wall gates. One of the best parts of the Tower visit was the dizzyingly steep stairs we had to climb to get into the tower.

After the Drum Tower as we were returning through the Hutong, a few of us decided to use one of the public toilets. Ten turkish toilets (sometimes known as squatty potties) awaited us with little 3 foot high by 4 foot long partitions separating each one. No doors. No privacy. Quite the moment that we were able to share on this first day!

We ended our day at the theater watching incredibly strong and incredibly bendy acrobats. Before the show began we started chatting with some Americans sitting in front of us (not with our group) that had their teenage son with them and are also adopting. They also get their daughter on Mother's Day and have their consulate appointment on the same day as ours. And the husband works for Caterpillar. Small world.