Jen & Jeff's Adventures

Jeff and I have just returned from our week long "honeymoon"/winter vacation in Beijing, China. The week was great fun and included two Great Wall hikes, a Peking Opera, an acrobatics show, Peking duck (we're vegetarians, but we HAD to try it...), the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, a Hotong tour, a visit to a pearl (I originally typed purl!!) market, a silk market, and a trip to KFC for Jeff so he could have his egg tart.... oh yeah, our trip also included fireworks. LOTS of fireworks! When we first arrived in Beijing our tour guide told us that it was impossible to see fireworks in the city, we had to go outside Beijing in order to see a show since fireworks are illegal in the city centre - boy was he wrong!

The above video is not ours (we didn't think about taking a video until the morning after, and by then it was too late, but this video depicts exactly what we saw on February 6th - the beginning of the Spring Festival, more commonly known as Chinese (or Lunar in Korea) New Year. We watched the fireworks from our hostel window. The whole sky filled up just like this (this video was taken in Beijing 2008!)

Througout the day we periodically heard firecrackers being set off, the short ones that don't fire high into the sky, but that do make A LOT of noise. By the time midnight rolled around the fireworks were in full swing and didn't stop until at least 1:30. There were about four hours of solid fireworks that night - I'm pretty sure that most of them were set off by the general population - we certainly saw a few that were a little too close for comfort for me!!!

Walking down the street was insane too. We had to make sure that we watched where we were going since people were lighting firecrackers everywhere. It really did sound and look like a war zone. The next morning we saw the carnage of the night before - red paper and cardboard were strewn everywhere along the small streets where we stayed!

Over the next couple of days we'll try to get our pictures posted and post a few more blog entries.. there is certainly a lot to blog about!!

We are also preparing for another trip - our trip home to Canada for my sisters' wedding. We leave in a week!

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