Thursday May 24

Early start to the day. Expecting to get a bite to eat at the restaurant before getting on the bus, but the restaurant was locked up, so not even a cup of coffee. Wondering if there is a boycott of our group.  Good thing I had some fruit and a granola bar. We plugged into city center for another group tour day and started at the mausoleum of Mao Tse Tung. Thousands were lined up to walk past his casket. No backpacks, no cameras and a long line-up decided for us that we wouldn
 “adjusted” our tour rate and wasn’t including the fee to enter, we boycotted. We had already walked through several courtyards surrounded by many little rooms and the inside of the Temple was much the same. The story surrounding the Temple was interesting. 600 years ago, it was believed that God had a mansion with 10,000 rooms. The Emperor was considered to be somewhat of a god and insisted on building 9,999 ½ rooms. Reached construction of over 8500 rooms. 9 is a lucky number in China and you see it everywhere in the architecture. The Emperor had 3000 concubines, some who never saw his face during their whole lives. After entering the Temple, they were never allowed outside the Temple area and when the Emperor died, several were sent to the grave with him. There were 24 emperors in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Quite interesting history.
Next stop that our Chinese tour guide, Linda, insisted on seeing was the silk factory. A very interesting tour as they had displays of the stages of growth of the silk worm, some live ones munching mulberry leaves and cocoons of silk. We were walked through the process of taking the single strand of silk from the cocoon and weaving eight of them together to make a useable strand. A single silk strand is 1/3 the diameter of a human hair and over 1000 meters long. The silk is used to make comforters for bedding, is non-allergenic, strong and warm. Other uses include silk cloth. Well, the ladies certainly went wild in the shopping department and the bus literally began filling up. Our guide must have received a nice commission on that stop!

The Temple of Heaven was our next stop, but when we found out that the tour guide had
 ’t a very cooperative group, resisting the route mapped out by our Chinese guide,  She admitted it meant more commissions for her. The 90 minute spa was not in the schedule, but cutting some time off of the shopping spree would allow for that “treat”. Holding the bus back 20 minutes beyond scheduled departure was going to cost a lot and there was little flexibility in thinking and calculating reasonable remuneration. We had previously taken up an offering for the bus driver who had been doing a superb job of getting us around in a timely fashion. He was quite pleased with the extra he received even though his schedule was stretched to a rather long day.
Lunch at the Brown Door Café, upstairs in a room where it felt like the floor would not hold 18 people, but it was a very nice meal and very inexpensive. There was such a rush to go shopping at the Pearl Market, that we almost missed the complimentary dessert of deep-fried apple covered with a sticky goo that you had to immediately dip into cold water to set the crust and then pop a steaming hot piece into your mouth. One of the boys was celebrating his 16^th birthday, so we all benefited from that.

As if there had not been enough shopping already, the Pearl Market was 4 floors of shopping center, plus another building adjacent where you could buy anything. Our tour guide had bid us adieu earlier from the Café, our new guide became the airline attendant in our group who had been here many times before. I guess we weren
 “airline” clients. Closed circuit television monitored the entrance alley and the locked door was opened when they recognized our airline guide. Here you could purchase goods at a deep discount, really deep discount. I had brought along with me prescriptions for eye glasses and purchased replacement lenses for two pairs of glasses with blended bi-focals and one new pair including frames, a total of 3 sets for less than C$250. The ladies bought purses, handbags and 5 Samsonite duffle bags on wheels, planning on loading up, and they did…both here and at the Pearl Market. ’t do the trick, so the driver stopped at a KFC enroute home and some of the group got out to buy a snack. A chicken burger sure went down nicely, but one of the boys decided to order a pizza at the adjacent Pizza Hut, delaying our trip home even more until our the airline guide mother came and found us. We finally reached our hotel at 9:30 p.m., unloaded the bus in front of the hotel, and oh, my, what a pile of stuff! Everyone seemede to slink to their rooms. My new glasses should arrive at the hotel tomorrow noon by courier.
Before Pearl Market shopping, a clandestine trip around several corners, down narrow alleys to a dead-end with a massive steel door, a place the owners were trying to keep hidden from Chinese shoppers. This location was apparently kept secret for
Shopping ran into 5:30 p.m. and the rush was on to get to the spa where apparently we were to be given sumptuous fare while we got a foot massage. Not. A cup of lemon tea and 8 thin slices of apple called a fruit platter. Joke. After the back and foot massage, I was feeling weak and dis-oriented. A fruit bar didn’t make that trip. Tien Anmen Square was next, adjacent to the Mao site. This square is the largest in the world and can easily hold a crowd of 500,000.  The 2 squares combined would hold a million people.  Both squares are accessed from opposite sides of the surrounding streets through underground walkways. There is tight security including an airport-style security scanner that you are asked to put your luggage and backpacks through. They randomly choose people to screen. I must have looked particularly innocent today, because I went through the security gates unscathed. There were a lot of people and tour groups, and lots of umbrellas due to the sun. We’ve had great weather, but it is raining all around this region, especially southern China where Matthew and I will be heading in just a few days. Hopefully, the weather system will have rained out by then.