Day five

The stone boat at the Summer Palace

Today is a sightseeing day. First we visited the Summer Palace where the empress Americans refer to as the Dragon Lady spent her summers.

We walked along the longest corridor and were able to take a boat ride across the lake.

We all had a great chuckle as the tour guides chided us that we could not miss the boat or we would be left and all three guides plus the tour organizer were left standing on the dock! Needless to say, they managed to hurry across on another boat and were spared being left behind.
We had a buffet lunch at a tourist restaurant that had spaghetti, french fries and pizza. We could also purchase ice cream. From the restaurant we visited the pearl factory. Parents were ushered into the golden room where the most expensive items were and given a crash course on how to buy quality pearls. You could also choose your pearls and have them strung as you watched. We next visited the jade factory where they explained the varying degrees of jade and gave us a brief tour of where they carve the jade. Once again, the adults were ushered into the golden room where very eager and persistent sales persons attempted to sale very expensive pieces of jade. The director of our studio arrived and met us at the jade factory. We were all cheered to have her join us, although she came directly from the airport and must have been exhausted.
After this big day of shopping we attended the closing ceremonies for the Beijing cultural festival. The ceremonies took place in a closed amusement park.

They had a large buffet and each cultural group performed again. My eldest daughter's hair clip flew off during our performance and landed in the flowers around the stage! Losing a costume accessory is a big offense and Alex, the guide on her bus, crawled under the cameras and retrieved it, saving the day for us. When we returned to the hotel, we had to repack for the trip to Lou yang as we can only carry one small suitcase each on the train.