The Oprah of Beijing

The third and final day of our guided tour meant visits to the Summer and Winter Palaces of ancient Chinese emperors.  We approached the palaces as the same type of sites that we had seen earlier,  much like museums.  The palaces were more along the lines of parks, and we took advantage of the large lake in front of the Summer Palace by renting a six person paddle boat to tour around.  Afterwards, another Chinese restaurant was our destination for lunch.

While the Summer Palace was enjoyable, the Winter Palace brought our first look of an ancient place in China that had not been renovated or redressed for the tour.  The original palace had been burned down in WWI by French and English forces, and all that remains are the ruins of the once beautiful palace.  It was a fantastic chance to see something that hadn't been done up just for benefit.  The ruins were a look into the real history of China and not what the tour coordinators wanted us to see of their history.

After the palace tours, the guided tour ended with an evening at the Chinese opera, a classic tale of love and turmoil, all dressed up in face paint and huge costumes.  The opera was translated on screens next to the stage, but it was hard to follow, due to the screens sometimes not changing for several minutes and flashing through lines too fast to read.  Also, the volume of the performers' voices was so loud you wanted to cover your ears.  The acrobatics and combat acting were exciting, but the parts of the opera that simply included two people singing at each other for several minutes were hard to get through.

Monday was mostly a day off before training began on Tuesday, but we also got the chance to be the audience for a late night Beijing TV show.  He had the head of the Olympic volunteers and the oldest volunteer for these Olympics on as guests, and he used us as part of the show as well.  We never actually caught the name of the host, but we could understand him through a translator we heard over a radio, and he made several good jokes.  I was actually brought on stage, accompanied by some kind of warrior music by the show's musician, to act out a scenario of an athlete who didn't want to be interviewed.  It was a lot of fun, and when the host brought on two girls from a town in the country who wanted to promote their t-shirts to help their school, it felt a lot like Oprah had come to China.

The highlight of the evening was meeting the oldest volunteer for the Olympics, a structural engineer who, get this, graduated in 1948 from Michigan with his master's degree.  When I started talking to him about Michigan, his face lit up, and although his English wasn't great, his excitement over the topic came through just fine.  It was crazy to meet someone this far away from home that acts the same way as a college freshman does for his school.

Training starts on Tuesday, so stay tuned.