The Great Expanse

The plane ride home is a grueling thirteen and one half hours. These are some stunning pictures I got at different parts of the trip. My favorite are those of us coming into Chicago because that meant I was sooo close to being home for the first time in a month, and that meant that I could take a hot shower, have homemade food, and drink water out of the tap.

Even though I was so glad to be home, I loved being in China.

Chinese English

All of these pictures make me laugh because of how odd the translation is. I once got yelled at for this, but I know that the Chinese laugh at me trying to speak their language, so its good all around.

Propaganda

China is infamous for its propaganda to the people. In all of these pictures, it shows happy, healthy, and strong people. This makes it seem as if their people should always be happy. Most of these paintings were created during the communist reign of Chairman Mao.
I feel bad for the people of China, because they are always exposed to propaganda that is trying to brain wash them into believing that everything is better than it really is.

Olympic Park

Olympic Park was a great place to visit. I went inside the Water Cube, and it was unbelievable to think that this was the place that four years ago, Michael Phelps made history with his eight gold medal streak. I felt like I was in the presence of royalty.

China Up Close

Everything is so different, yet similar.  These textures are individual to places in China. It interests me to see how elaborate everything is up close from the scaffolding of the Water Cube (above) to the carvings in wood at every temple (below).

Beautification

For the 2008 Olympics, Beijing planted thousands of flowers to make the city look more appealing and beautiful. This was amazing to me, because I grew up on a farm where flowers were every where and it made me feel right at home. They had so many different varieties of flowers too. It made me super happy to discover something new.

Children

The people in China are different than those in the U.S.A in many different ways, but one that stood out to me, was that they actually encouraged us to take pictures of their children. If you tried to take a picture of a child in the U.S, their parent would most likely call the police.

Many of the children that we saw thought that we were extremely strange, but they always smiled at us no matter what. The personality that many of the children had was also extremely funny because many seemed to be silly and outgoing.

An Opera Like None Other

Peking Opera is like no other opera I have ever heard of. The costumes are wild and elaborate, and the singing is screechy enough that dogs around the world should be howling on a daily basis.
I laughed most of the show because the way they sing is outrageous. I'm happy that I went, but I will probably never go again if given the chance.

Dinner and a Show

For dinner the one night that we stayed in Xian we had 18 different dumpling courses. Each was shaped like what was in it. For example, the duck above and the pig below.
After dinner was a show. I was slightly disappointed with the show because I thought that it was going to be acrobatics and it wasn't. However, it was a journey through time in China with choreographed dances.
The dinner was delicious and the show was informative as well as interesting.

An Army Fit for the Dead

The terra-cotta warriors were built for the first emperor of China so that he would have an army even in the afterlife. Above is a replica head being made, and below are the actual warriors that have been unearthed in Xian, China.
This is a sight to see with one's own eyes. I always thought that the warriors were only a foot tall because I had only seen pictures, but seeing them myself was a shock. It's crazy to think that all of these men have different facial features, and these are only a small amount of a huge army that is still underground.