Back home

Despite my efforts to blog while actually in China, busy touring schedules and obscene charges for Internet usage at hotels prevented me from doing that. So here I am back-blogging about the trip.

I still have things to say about Beijing! That seems like a lifetime ago.

After our day in the Forbidden City, we headed to a silk factory where I actually got to see real worms making silk. Ew. But still fascinating. After a brief tutorial of how Chinese silk is the best the world, we were ushered in to their showrooms to - you guessed it - spend our dollars! They showed us how they made silk comforters and because of the group-think mentality as sooon as one person decided to buy one, everyone started to buy them also. They had these gorgeous silk duvet covers also but those were just too expensive. I bought one for R place and one for Didi's.

After the silk factory we headed to the Summer Palace - a magnificent lake and beautiful surrounding grounds. It was the summer resort for the mother of one of the Qing emperors. I can see why the imperial family chose to make that their summer home - it was several degrees cooler there than in the Forbidden City. The breeze off the lake was so refreshing after a miserable day in the sun (temps were in the high 90s). Because of the time that we lost in the Forbidden City due to my wanderings and the time that it took 24 people to buy approx. 40 kilos of silk, we didn't have that much time to tour the grounds of the palace. Also, we couldn't go to the actual palace because it (like the rest of Beijing) was being renovated in preparations for the Olympics next year. But nevertheless, a worthwhile stop during the tour.

Our next stop?? The pearl factory. Here we got a tutorial about freshwater vs. seawater pearls (seawater is better) and how to spot a fake pearl. I had read a little about it in my Frommer's guide. Wanna' know?

1. Rub the pearls together. They should grind a little. If there is no friction - you got some plastic.
2. Ask the salesperson to shave off a little of the pearl - it should come off like a white powder.
3. Run the beads through a flame. A genuine pearl should be fine - a fake one will turn black.
4. While round pearls are obviously more valuable, completely spherical pearls are very hard to find - a string of them would be impossible or fiendishly expensive.

After the tutorial came the feeding frenzy of shopping. I took a hilarious picture juxtaposing the men at the pearl factory vs the women. The men: casually sitting around drinking tea. The women: jumping from one glass case to another followed by over-eager salesgirls. Mom and I bought two sets (neckalce, earrings and bracelet) of pearls: one black and the other white for Didi and myself respectively. If the tour guide was getting any commission for these shopping excursions, he was making a killing with this group.