beijing day 1

i'm glad i went to china last year before the whole panatag shoal started. as i've mentioned in my previous entry, while i identify myself as a filipino, of course i still want to acknowledge my ethnicity since i am 100% chinese and i was brought up in a mix of filipino and chinese culture and values.

my friend C and i arrived in beijing almost midnight on oct 21. thanks to my rusty but still reliable mandarin speaking skills we were able to navigate the non-English country without a lot of problems.

on our first day, we decided to head over to the huge huge area where the tiannanmen square and forbidden city were located. unfortunately there were quite a number of people queueing to go inside the two sites so C and i ended up walking towards the other side which had a huge square / park and the national museum of china.

china railways museum

qian men, which was located at the south side of tiannanmen square

old man playing a chinese musical instrument -- this was soo cool

some sights along the tiannanment square

last we headed over to the national museum of china. we only had 1 hour to go around the museum as it was almost closing time but it was so big we were only able to go around one large exhibition hall. when the museum finally closed, we stayed for a bit outside to do some pictorials :)

after walking around for almost 5 hours in the cold, we finally called it quits and went back to the hotel for a much needed rest.