Two to Tango: The Plum Blossom Festival

This past Saturday, our branch had an unofficial activity to the purple mountain for the start of the plum blossom festival. At first I was like, "What's the deal with the plum blossoms?" But as it turns out, the plum blossom is the flower of China and it only blooms once a year. Big deal! And super awesome.

So we met at the metro station at 10 am. We were pretty nervous when we first got there because we had no way to contact anyone if we couldn't find them. Fortunately, a group of 7 white people standing outside the metro is pretty conspicuous. Once we were all together (about 45 minutes later), we set out.

It was the first day of the festival and it was packed and the line to the ticket booth was about a mile long. We didn't have to stand in it because Sister Yu, our Branch President's wife, bought everyone tickets ahead of time. There was a bit of confusion as to where to pick the tickets up, so we ended up waiting around for about another 45 minutes. Eventually Sister Yu came back. We gave her money, she gave us tickets, and we were on our way.

Me and Soren with our tickets

The different groups within the group split up almost immediately and we started to explore. A few of the branch members gave us some good ideas as to where to go. We started down the Elephant road which was lined with all kind of different animals.

I couldn't get on the kneeling camel and yet Soren managed to get on the standing camel.

A lot of our time was spent in and around Plum Tree Hill. The blossoms were beautiful and it was fun to see the Chinese people having picnics under the trees. Some of them had tents to shelter their skin from the sun. Others had umbrellas to shelter their skin from the sun. They love fair skin over here.

After a while, our grumbling stomachs brought us back down the hill. All I wanted was a sandwich or a salad or something, but they don't really believe in cold meals in China. All you could buy were warm bottles of water, corn on the cob, Chinese hot dogs, and cup o' noodles. Soren and I ended up buying cup o' noodles out of necessity, but we weren't really happy about it. First of all, it cost us 10 Quai (as opposed to 3.50 at the Suguo). Second of all, it's a boiling hot meal and it was about 85 degrees that day. But, we ate it and were happy.

Cup o' noodles

Once we finished eating, we made our way to the Ming tomb. We went through many fun, beautiful buildings, saw little temples, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Maddie and I also spent some time trying to ditch a crazy Chinese lady in a mask who was obsessed with taking pictures of us. It was crazy crowded though. We had to go through a small, long tunnel with about a thousand other people. Totally worth it though. We also passed by some giant stone soldiers.

Not to mention the hundreds behind us

We spent a while climbing around the Ming tomb area. There were a lot of stairs, and a lot of walls pretending to be stairs. Unfortunately, to leave the Ming tomb area, we had to squeeze through the same tunnel.