Day+3+May+24

 DAY 3: MAY 24

May 24th (M): Tour Olympic Site, the Summer Palace, and take the Hutong Tour Take overnight train to Xi An, departs 9:18 PM  Our first day in Xi’an is coming to a close, leaving me with two very full days to describe. Forgive me if my memory of yesterday fails me; we pack so much into a day that yesterday already seems forever ago. Our last day in Beijing began with a “hutong tour,” a rickshaw ride through some of the old alleyways of Beijing. While so much of China seems to be undergoing reconstruction, the state has made a concerted effort to maintain a good portion of hutongs—neighborhoods of single-story dwellings in the “first” and “second” rings of Beijing. Today these hutongs are homes to Beijing citizens and locales for shops, restaurants, and other small businesses. During our hutong tour yesterday, we visited some of these small shops, but we also had a chance to stop into the interior of a real home: a courtyard surrounded by four small structures, traditionally one for the elders, one for the sons, one for the daughters, and one for the servants. After the hutong tour, we headed north to the Summer Palace, a main residence for the Empress Dowager Cixi, one of the last rulers of the Qing dynasty. These expansive grounds—a lake, marvelous gardens, and numerous buildings, some linked by a seemingly unending outdoor “long corridor”—offered an escape from the center of Beijing but also served as a very congenial prison for the rightful emperor while Cixi ruled. After lunch, we visited the Olympic Park. The only building we entered was the Bird’s Nest, which hosted the opening and closing ceremonies and most of the track and filed events. From there we could see the Water Cube, the gymnastics facility, the media center, and a striking seven-star hotel. With a few hours still before we needed to be at the train station for our departure to Xi’an, we enjoyed a traditional tea ceremony at the Tea House; visited the Lama Temple (home to the world’s largest wooden Buddha, carved from a single sandalwood tree); and explored a local park surrounding the Temple of Earth....