Day Three

Today we hopped on the bus feeling a bit bleary eyed and wobbly. We had done a lot of walking yesterday, and some of our group crashed back at the hotel never to be seen until the following morning (me)!

Others took a nap, and met up with the group to go to a restaurant where they thought they'd be having another typical Chinese dinner, which they did. What they didn't realize is that following the dinner, the restaurant turns into a combination side show-dance performance where ladies on stage were hurling themselves about balancing pots on their heads accompanied by strange extra terrestrial shreiks...some said it was sort of like a "Whirling Dervish a la Las Vegas" performance. This morning our friends are still shaking their heads and trying to process what they witnessed.

First stop today was The Temple of Heaven which is set amongst a 670 acre park. As we disembarked from the bus we were startled to see hundreds upon hundreds of people (senior citizens) taking part in a wide variety of early morning exercises. A huge section of an "adult playground" had retirees doing stretching, gymnastics, dancing...all the while laughing and chatting away. An ideal environment promoting a Sound Body and Sound Mind - combining fitness with social opportunities!

I will say more than once we found ourselves noting that we weren't seeing any obese Chinese...

Afterward, we made a requisite stop at a Tea house where we received a lengthy discussion of the origins of tea followed by sipping a few varieties. Suffice it to say the Simon brothers got a little "punchy" which set off the rest of us, and though we all made a few purchases I think it's fair to say the owners were dancing a little jig when we headed out the door.

Day Four

Today everyone was on pins & needles as we boarded our bus for a 2 hour ride out to The Great Wall. Marathon Tours insists that everyone meet at the site to get instructions, do a mini-walk along the wall, and finalize and review all the details. Our drive was a freeway that turned into a winding road which wound its way up up up back and forth down then up... Some compared it to the road to Hana...others to the road down to Yosemite. Whatever we were all glad when we finally arrived at Yin Yang Square.

2500 people registered to run the marathon from over 50 different countries. 1200 people are doing the half marathon and 800 are doing the entire marathon...the balance are doing a 5K "fun run". Those in our group doing the entire marathon include Dan Franklin, Ernie Prudente, Bill Simon, Stevie Gill, and the (4) YOUNGSTERS - our Sound Body Sound Mind group of 20 year olds Alex, Ben, Nathan, and Pat. Kate Prudente and her kids and Tony Winston are doing the Fun Run. Frank Baxter is doing the half marathon... but having run MANY marathons before I wouldn't be surprised if he approached the end and kept on going!!!

We have a GROUP PHOTO which I will post later.

Day Five

This morning we woke up to another lovely day - a littler hotter than yesterday but the sun was shining and we were on our way to a hutong. There is a lot to say about hutongs, but for now I will just quote from my guidebook: "In a region formerly protected by the Great Wall, Beijing was once also hidden behind its own city walls. Within the city walls were its citizens, each with a wall built around their own small homes and courtyards. Today, ring roads and walls of high-rise buildings have taken over the function of the city wall, and in the city center a dwindling labyrinthine inner core of crumbling old grey alleyways still remain which date back several centuries. These are the hutong, now disappearing to make way for busy streets, business parks, office buildings, and high-rise apartments."

One wonders where a family lives once their home/hutong has been "assumed" by the government in its quest to modernize Beijing? They are given a cash payment and are moved to one of the thousands of high rise apartment buildings near the city but often far from the city. The advantages of a new apartment are larger living spaces, a private bathroom (hutongs have public bathrooms!), electricity, AC-Heat, and modern kitchen conveniences. We are told many of the young families appreciate their newer homes/apartments (our guide mentioned "Unlike in a hutong, in an apartment you have privacy as you can close your door and be on your own), while their parents miss the "tight knit community and bustling social life" of the hutong. When a person is relocated to an apartment, they are permitted to live in it for 70 years. Remember, the land in China is owned by the government, so while you have your home it is not your private property.

We visited the most popular (and thus most crowded and commercial) hutong which is in an area surrounding the very beautiful Houhai Lake. We started off our tour by riding on bicycle-driven Ric-Shaws all over the village through winding paths, over bridges and down narrow alleyways.

Later that afternoon, after a quick stop at our hotel to freshen up, a group of us ventured out once again for a long awaited school visit.  As many of you know, the Dollie ladies of Dollies Making A Difference worked for weeks creating very special Asian dollies, which our group arranged to distribute to children at a public elementary school blocks away from our hotel in Beijing.

We were welcomed at the gate by the principal who led us through the playground to the school building (which looked just like our USA public schools!). On our way we were met by several 11 year olds who were leaving school early to attend accelerated programs at another site. One of the girls spoke very good English and she chatted away with Dylan and Kiera Prudente who were about the same age.

Here is the principal, who had worked at this elementary school for 20+ years!

How can that be? She looks around 21!!

Day Six

Day Six was all about The Great Wall Marathon. Our group of runners had spent the past 6 months training hard for this race...and they were ready to tackle this challenge.

Bill reported:

"Saturday morning wake up call was 2:30am, and our group got on the bus at 3:30am.

The hotel provided us with coffee and a light breakfast box for the 2 hour ride out to the beginning of the race - Yin Yang Square. We arrived around 6am, and hung out in the square with the other runners in the cold, early morning air. Luckily we were wearing our full Sound Body Sound Mind gear, which included long warm up pants and a jacket.

The race started at 7:30am with the shot of a gun. The runners started in four waves - the fastest runners went off first, then 10 minutes later the 2nd (which included full and half marathon entries) - then 3rd - and finally the 4th. You were organized in a group based on your most recently reported marathon time. Following the 4th group were the Fun Runners - which was an 8K...Kate, Keira, and Dylan Prudente did this event.

The race began at the bottom of a long road that winds uphill and finally ends at the foot of an entrance to The Great Wall..we walked on along the wall then down a very steep and narrow goat path back into Yin Yang Square. Out of Yin Yang Square again we headed into small, desolate Chinese villages where we ran for about 15 miles...very poor areas where the occasional villager and their child cheered us on.

Unlike other marathons I have run in, this one had cars and trucks beeping and passing us on the same road we were running on! Eventually we ran out of the villages and into the countryside. Let me just say, that while we had expected and trained for the 5200 steep, narrow, and uneven steps on The Great Wall, we were surprised at how hilly and steep the countryside was! This marathon was by far the most challenging one I had ever run. I was grateful to have simply finished.

When we entered Yin Yang square at the end, our name was announced on a loudspeaker...I was running with Ernie so the announcement went "Ernest Prudent and William E. Simon Jr." We were met by a marathon official, a British fellow, who immediately hung a ribbon with a medal around our neck, shook our hand and said, "Congratulations and God Bless You".

We all finished!

Ben, our youngest Sound Body Sound Mind member and a former rugby player, finished first!"

I don't have many photos as I wasn't at the race, so until I get some from our runners, these very few will have to do:

You may be wondering what those of us who did NOT run the race were up to during this memorable day. Peter toured the Beijing Art Museum and said it held a very impressive collection. Kathy woke up with a sinus infection and spent the day breathing herbs.

I fought an internal battle with myself as my laptop suddenly decided that 84,000 photos was all it was going to take and stopped accepting another one!!! How was I going to keep up my travel blog with this disaster happening? What to do? Oh me oh my... After driving myself crazy I decided to take action, and walked my laptop over to the nearby Apple store where I got excellent and very patient service from several of the young 20-30 year-olds who worked there. Unlike in LA where one has to beg and plead for someone to help you at the crowded Apple store, and that's after waiting in line...here the young folks are falling all over themselves to be of service, all the while wanting to know what it is like to live in California and have I met any movie stars? One of the young employees ("Lee" who kept telling me "Don't worry...don't worry") had graduated from Pace University in finance and had just moved back to China to find a wife. Another young employee ("Summer" who lives with her mother who is suffering from depression because her 34 year old daughter is not married yet) likes her job and doesn't really like her boyfriend, but understands that at her age she had better start being "less selfish" and start being nice to him...for her mother's sake.

Off to Shanghai tomorrow!

Day Seven

After we said our goodbyes to all our buddies who were heading back to the USA, Bill and I set off for Shanghai, China's largest city. The guidebook says: "This huge, sprawling beast of a metropolis has risen from the mud and silt of the Yangzi Delta, pushed aside its rivals and emerged as one of the liveliest and most exciting cities on the planet".  To which I reply: YES YES YES

Shanghai is divided into primarily 2 sections, Pudong and Puxi. Our driver from the airport told us how as recently as 1990, the area where our hotel sits - Podung - was simply farm land. Podung - "east of the Huangpu River" - is where the modern skyscrapers, broad boulevards, museums, concert hall, and fast rising financial center is. The other side of Shanghai - Puxi, west of the Huangpu River - is known as Shanghai "proper". Puxi is where you will see imposing classical buildings built over 100 years ago by the British, French, American, and Chinese lined up majestically along a wide promenade known as The Bund.

My guidebook was printed in 2010 and states the population of Shanghai as then 19 million. In 4 short years, the population in 2014 stands at 26 million! Our taxi driver said that in terms of "fast food", KFC is by far the most popular. One reason is that KFC arrived first in 1985, and today there are over 1000 KFC's in the city. The Chinese people love chicken. KFC's major competition is McDonalds which arrived in 1990, but the people aren't as crazy about beef. We mentioned that we were not seeing any Chinese-brand cars, and we were told that in China there are 2 huge car factories - General Motors and Volkswagen, and therefore most Chinese who own cars own these two types.