Day 4
After breakfast at the hotel we headed over to the heart of Beijing Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square was named after the Tiananmen gate to the Forbidden City. The largest public square in the world, 440,000 meters. It is a political center. The building on the right side is the congress. Next was the Forbidden City, the main entrance was north of the Tiananmen Square underneath the portrait of the famous Chairman Mao. Dousen talked very little about the protest in 1989 on the bus, as soon as we got out he didn't talk about the protest at all. He only spoke about the one million people that came to Tiananmen Square for celebration. It reminded me of when we landed, my phone got no access to Google, Facebook or any other social media. I came to question myself if the younger people in China knew about June 4, of 1989, it seemed like the government just wanted to bury the incident. There is no freedom of speech or press and still there is corruption. I have been warned to not talk about June 4 in class back in the U.S, my teacher also mentioned not to search about June 4 in China because the party will go through your email and your phone conversations. As I was standing near the Tiananmen Square and thinking to myself why would the party leave out such important history, the party cannot face the incident and just wants to bury it?
Next was the Forbidden City, the main entrance was north of the Tiananmen Square underneath the portrait of the famous Chairman Mao. The middle entrance was for the emperor, high and low ranked officers were on the side. The Forbidden City is the biggest complex in the world, if you were to go to each room per day, it would take you 27 years to finish. It looked like a city itself, all built for just one man, the emperor. Twenty four emperors and the members of the Royal family call it home, and no one was allowed to enter or leave without permission or that person would be executed. The palace took almost one million workers and almost 20 years to complete. The middle entrance was for the emperor (the imperial way), high and low ranked officer were on the side. We got to see the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the largest building in the Forbidden City, where the military and civil officials’ line up and everyone has to be in the right spot for the emperor, the place was massive. If someone asked me to live here with all the luxury in the palace in that time frame, I wouldn't, the Forbidden City to me is like a cage. If you want to go somewhere you have ask permission from the king. It seemed very lonely and you would have no freedom. I had such high expectations for the Forbidden City originally, but when I got there it didn’t satisfy me, because there was only a small part of the palace open to the public and we had little time.
After lunch we take the tour of Peking Union medical school, the top and largest medical school in China (PUMC) 1917-2016, combining with Chinese Academic of medical science is the School of basic medicine, clinical medicine, nursing, public health, adult education, and graduate school. An eight - year curriculum program for clinical medicine and 3 more years to become a young doctor. Only 60-90 students are accepted each year. There are more female students then male and they looked very young. The most crucial part is once they choose this major there is no way of changing their major. We walked through the hospital and we found out that Lung Cancer was not the first, Breast Cancer was the first cancer China had to deal with.
We visited old Beijing, Hutong. We took a rickshaw, there were bars and restaurants on the left side and a river on the right side, I see the scene of the community seems really fun. Hutong is a small alley courtyard, normally rectangular and people live inside. Right now the regular courtyard is very expensive. We visited one of the local family’s, there were 8 people in one room and 3 in another room, and they have lived here for 5 generations. We were sitting under a tree and it felt quaint. On our way out our rickshaw driver was very tired from cycling all day I assume. Luiz gave him very good tip.