Summer Palace Posted May 26, 2004 at 12:00 am

We started the day off with a visit to the China Aeronautics University where we listened to a couple speakers before breaking up for guided tours. We were given a good lecture on some of the advances in aeronautics, including a primer on basic flight and the university’s unmanned aircraft research. The first thing they showed us was an in-house flight simulator; controls and gauges were shown across multiple monitors and the external view was projected onto a large screen. Some members of our group were allowed to try the simulator out. The second point of interest was the university’s aeronautics museum; the university has a yard of grounded aircraft, including a Harrier and cruise missiles. We had lunch on campus, but it was not in a dining hall. Lunch was served buffet-style; it was one of the stranger meals we’ve had, more because of the presentation and atmosphere than the food. The “corn-drop” soup (my name for it) made another disappointing appearance. This soup looks like egg-drop soup, but it contains corn and it has a sweet taste completely alien to good egg-drop soup; disappointing indeed.

After lunch we went directly—diregarding a short stop at the Friendship Store for some folks to change money—to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is huge, impressively extravagant, and completely mobbed by tourists (and peddlers). Like the Great Wall, there were many Chinese tourists and a few other Westerners. From what I understand, most of the Chinese tourists visiting the Beijing attractions are from outside of the Beijing municipality; it stands to reason, I suppose.

In the Summer Palace, we learned about the Dragon Lady, Cixi, and her infamous exploits; supposedly, she killed off several heirs to the throne and numerous other figures in her ambition to rule China. We saw the courtyard where Cixi placed one of the heirs under house arrest for years before having him killed shortly before her own death. We also saw an unlucky rock and a marble boat. We were originally scheduled to take a dragon boat ride across the large lake at the center of the grounds, but the ride was cancelled due to low water levels.

As we departed the Summer Palace, some people expressed an interest in returning to the hotel rather than going to the planned, and pre-paid, dinner. I stayed on for a dinner that proved to be pretty unsatisfying. The restaurant seemed to be making an attempt to cater to Western tastes by providing such cuisine as coarsely shredded iceberg lettuce; Italian, French, and other salad dressings; barbecue spare ribs; and a couple flavors of iced tea that were neither iced, nor refreshing. What was left of the group returned to the hotel for free time after the meal.

I met up with John and we walked to the nearby Hypermart to buy more tea. I bought chrysanthemum tea for Mom on recommendations from John and Robert. It was surprisingly cheap to buy these special kinds of tea; maybe they are more common than I surmised. I got about fifty grams for only 8 RMB ($0.97). We were also interested in finding a martial arts store with cool weapons, but conveying what we were looking for to our Chinese-speaking friends proved to be a task too great, as we never did get a good answer. The staff at the hotel suggested Curio City, located right next door, but Curio was closed by the time we got there.

We returned to the hotel for Cribbage in Dave’s room. I did not know how to play Cribbage, so Dave and John taught me by example. I watched one two-hand game before participating in a three-hand game. Unfortunately, beginner’s luck was not with me because I lost and got skunked, meaning I did not round the last corner before the winner passed 120 points. It was a lot of fun, regardless.

Cribbage does strike me as an interesting card game for a few reasons. First, Cribbage actually seems to have a strong two-person game so it’s that much easier to find enough people to play; most card games require four or more people for optimal play. Second, the game has an unusual scoring system based largely on finding an optimal number of partitions (i.e., to make 15’s) for a given hand of cards. There’s more to winning than getting high cards, pairs, and runs.

I needed to get my postcards sent off as we’re leaving in only one more day. D.J. was fast asleep by the time we were finished playing cards, but John let me hang out in his room while I wrote my postcards; I had six written by the end of the day.