Auspicious Foreigners

Today we got up after the Melatonin wore off. We had a breakfast of Chinese shawarma and some fluffy dumplings that were not that great. The place was part of a chain supposedly famous for its snacks and was packed with locals. Since we both were disappointed we ended up getting more baozi from the joint next door, that we knew was good. We walked all the way to Tiananmen square and the Forbidden City. On our way we stopped for some atrociously overpriced tea, and signed up for a tour to the great wall, for tomorrow. It was the last day of the laborers holiday and the square was busy with people, some people waving red Chinese flags, some had streamers... Leia chose to dance with her hoop. We seemed to be the only non-Chinese people at the square, so we got a lot of attention even without Leia's hooping. Families wanted to get pictures with us, teenagers took selfies with us and parents photographed us with their children. There is no doubt, they mistook Guy for Ashton Kutcher. We then went to the Forbidden City, which was conveniently located across the street. Around that area there were many tour guides trying to convince us to hire them, we refused. We bought student tickets to enter the palace complex, hoping the cashier will not notice that both our student cards are way old. The palace complex was very large and impressive. The main area is made of an axis of the imperial palaces, where the emperor and his wife (or wives) resided and ruled, met dignitaries and held ceremonies. In the periphery there are the living quarters of the other officials, in the back of the complex past the imperial living quarters is the imperial garden. We enjoyed our walk through the Forbidden City. Most of the palaces are not open to the public, people crowd around the entrances and peek into them through windows to see the throne and the other imperial relics. We tried to walk back through the east side where they have many museums, but they all cost another ticket to enter and we wound up retracing our steps. We left through the east gate and walked to a food stall market, near the main shopping street of Wangfujing. The food market was very disappointing: oily, overpriced dim sum we didn't eat, outrageously overpriced hot pots, and someone who tried to push a worm skewer on us when we bought some squid and shrimp skewers. Maybe we were supposed to haggle? There were skewers of roaches, scorpions, and spiders, but nobody was eating them. We didn't really understand how to: the breaded shrimp with full shells on were challenge enough. For dinner we went to a hot pot restaurant on our street. That's like a "make your own soup" place: you put the ingredients in a basket and they make a soup out of it - it helped Leia get over her soup phobia. It was the same thing Guy had for lunch, at less than a quarter of the price.