10/10 Tsinghua University

October 10th

Remember that hotel I posted on Thursday night? Well forget it. We have already switched to a nicer hotel. Leon and his mom were not pleased with our first hotel - there were some concerns and the beds may have been just box springs or at least that is what they felt like.

We checked out and jumped in two taxis to head to the Shi Family along with all of our luggage both taxis cost 21 RMB each with no tip needed. That is less than $4 - can you imagine taking a taxi in a big city for only $4!

Here is a view from the Shi Family's apartment. There are a bunch of gardens downstairs. It used to be bricks but they decided to remove the bricks and make nice gardens.

We ate breakfast at the Shi Family's apartment - baozi (yeast dumpling or puffy dumpling), hot n sour soup, fried dough, cake (similar to pound cake). I may have said during breakfast this wise saying :

"Asking me if your Chinese pronunciation is correct is like asking a blind man if you look good today." (Ashley, 2014)

After breakfast, we checked into new hotel - softer beds, much better quality and still a good price. After checking into the new hotel, we went to purchase train tickets for trip to Xi'an.

Then it was back to the Shi Family apartment for snacks and then off to catch subway to go to Tsinghua University. The subways were really nice and clean. I think I could have navigated them without a local guide. They use a lot of good human factors - great status updates (i.e., direction you are heading, which station is next), a signal that tells you which side to exit on, and labels on the ground that tell you where to enter and exit. However, they don't give you much time to get on and off.

Once we got to Tsinghua, we walked around two lotus ponds and took lots of pictures. We saw a Confucius statue, Office of the University President building, and Leon's weeping rock (Leon may have had a tough time at China's premier university - Tsinghua is ranked highly among national and international universities). There were many weeping willow trees and bicycles around campus. There was a living fossil tree - yinxin (Chinese name). Here is a photo of Leon and I at his weeping spot.

We headed back on the subway. Then we went to the Beijing family's grandmother's house for dinner. It was delicious. We had pork, fish, shrimp, sticky rice, green beans, zucchini, winter melon, potatoes, onions, peppers, crab apples, and coke.

Grandmother is in middle and Leon's mom is on right.

The son (Yongjia) brought us back to the hotel after a full day. We were exhausted.

Mom and I wore mask today. The pollution levels were very high.