The tour guides are really packing stuff in - today was almost too much at times. After starting off in Tiananmen Square we walked through to the gardens outside the Forbidden City, where the WWF have their main headquarters in China. As the tour price includes a contribution to the WWF they invited us in for a short tour of the office and a presentation on what they are doing in China. Generally they are trying to ensure that local people are in favour of environmental improvements by giving them money-making opportunities (e.g. eco-tourism) or improving their livelihoods by, for example, cleaning polluted waters so that there are more fish to catch.
After that we walked through the Forbidden City which is a vast area of temples and other buildings originally created so that the Emporer could walk around his own town without meeting any commoners. Lunch was in the Hutong district, an area of town where there are local houses that are quite old and in a Qing dynasty style, with lots of narrow twisting streets. We took a cycle rickshaw through the district, stopping off to go inside someone's house - I found this a bit awkward. Walking through the rest of the Hutong district we came to the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, the latter of which contains a huge bell, the biggest in China. Then back to the coach for a long trip through the Beijing rush hour to Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven.
All in all a very full day leaving me exhausted.
[I can't actually see the blog site from here - it's not available on the Chinese internet. I'm posting via Flickr, so I hope this all looks OK but there's not much I can do if it doesn't..]
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