Finally!  Now I can acess my blog!  I think what happened was that the Chinese government noticed I was talking about Tiananmen and  blocked me before I could say anything about [CENSORED].  Here are all the posts I’ve been trying to make for the last 2 1/2 weeks.
7 May 2015

Beijing, China

This morning, my host mom and brother took me to see South Luogu Lane, a part of old Beijing where there are a lot of stores and traditional architecture. On the way, I took some pictures of landmarks:

There sure are a lot of stray dogs here.

fter what seemed like forever in traffic, we arrived at the lane.  It was very pretty, lined with trees.

What an angry alpaca.

I'm definitely not going to eat or drink anything from here anytime soon.

I ate octopus for the first time today.

Well then... (BJ stands for Beijing)

This is the gate (大门) of the lane.  Many historical places have a similar gate.

I saw the hammer and sickle and wanted to get a picture of it.

What an interesting hookah.  The phoenix has a lot of cultural significance here.

Pipe man!

An interesting name for a store.

There are lots of propaganda postcards here in this shop.

Yes, liberate them from the Nationalist scum who have done so well for themselves and not killed thousands of their own people!

STARBUCKS!

This man makes sugar zodiac animals.  He made a rat for me.

Maybe related to a doctor I know?

After we got to the end of the lane, we went to a restaurant famous for its crab porridge. It was pretty good, which is strange, considering I usually hate shellfish. There were also some spicy noodle dishes as well as cucumbers. Here’s something I’ve noticed: the Chinese eat cucumbers a lot. Every morning for breakfast with my host family, there would always be a plate of cucumbers. This is another food that I never really liked, but now I’m quite partial to them.

A type of cucumber with flowers.

Crab porridge.

DOGGIE!!!

Here's me at the end of the lane.

After lunch, my host mom dropped Oscar and I off at Tiananmen Square, probably Beijing’s most popular landmark. According to Wikipedia, Tiananmen is the fourth largest public square in the world. It makes me wonder what the other three are, because Tiananmen is pretty freaking huge. In the center of the square, there is a monument to the Communist soldiers who died during the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang in the 1940’s. Also, we saw the outside of Mao Zedong’s mausoleum, where you can see his preserved body. (We didn’t go in, I think that would be kind of weird.) We went through Tiananmen (The actual gate.) Tiananmen means “Gate of Heavenly Peace” in Chinese, so the name refers to the doorway, not the public square.

On the left it says 中华人民共和国万岁 (Literally translates to “The People’s Republic of China 10,000 years) In Chinese, 10,000 years is considered to mean “long live” as in “Long live the King!” So it says “Long live the PRC.” On the right, it says 世界人民大团结万岁 which translates to “Long Live the Great Unity of the World’s Peoples.” 

Soldier. He's there to make sure nobody tries to stage another rebellion.

Ditto.  One thing I noticed is that there are fire extinguishers everywhere scattered throughout the square.  I looked it up on Wikipedia, and they’re there in case anyone tries to self-immolate again, which happened a few years ago.

Me in front of the gate

Ditto.

National Museum of China

Great Hall of the People

Monument in front of Mao Zedong's Mausoleum.

This is a monument for the (communist) Chinese soldiers who died in the war against the (nationalist) Republic of China.  It is called the Monument to the People's Heroes.

Mao Zedong's Mausoleum.

The other Monument

Chairman Mao.

We didn’t actually go into the Forbidden City, since you need a ticket, but we saw the ancient Chinese architecture from outside. Oscar and I took the subway back home, and we just chilled for the rest of the night.