Sunday I woke up even earlier to go on a tour of the Qing tombs. The Qing dynasty was the last dynasty in China and the majority of the emperors and their wives are buried outside of Beijing. Hua and I took a cab down to near Tian’anmen square to catch the tour bus to the tombs. Here is me taking a picture of myself to chronicle the event, as a side ntoe it was not until I looked at this picture a couple of days later that I realized I had toothpaste nasties on my mouth. Thanks for telling me Hua.


The pick up place was near the oldest church in China which is a catholic church and since this was Easter there was quite the crowd going in. For a fleeting moment I felt like I should wander in for Easter mass but the moment fleeted and I jumped on the tour bus.


I got to see quite a bit of the countryside from the bus considering it was three hour ride to get there. We drove through towns of a lot of varying sizes which was a pretty interesting view of China. Much different from being in Beijing and only seeing how people live here, this was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. The main drawback was the size of the seats in the bus. As we were waiting to leave one group of people left because the bus was so uncomfortable and they were small people.






On the way there we stopped to pee which is not that exciting but helps set the stage for later. As we got to the tombs the tour guide jumped out and bought all the people on the bus tickets. She then handed them out and found there was one extra ticket which could only mean that we had left a person when we stopped to pee. She stopped the bus on the side of the road and started counting people until the guy to my right started yelling that it did not matter at this point if we left someone or not. We were pretty much at the tombs so we might as well go the last little bit and let everyone who was accounted for see the tombs. She relented and we went on.


The tombs themselves were really amazing. One nice thing is that it is so far outside of Beijing that no one is there. This means it is not crowded and the people trying to sell you stuff don’t even try with me because they don’t even know enough English to determine the amount they want to charge me for whatever.



The first tomb we went to was an empress’ tomb which also had a number of concubines for a particular emperor. The next tomb was CiXi aka the woman behind the curtain aka the woman who caused an end to the dynasty method of government in China. She is a really interesting historical figure. She is the reason we have a phrase “ruling from behind a curtain”. She placed her son as the emperor than her nephew and ruled for about 74 years which is longer than any other emperor. Her tomb is larger than every tomb except for Xian Long who was one of the most famous Qing emperors.


















After CiXi’s tomb we saw Qian Long’s tomb and it was awesome. The tomb itself had the most intricate carvings and was huge. It was really interesting and made me interested in Buddhism again because all the carvings are related to Buddhism. Qian Long ruled for a year less than his grandfather in a time of peace in China. His life is fodder for many Chinese TV series currently. He wrote poems and traveled the country.














His grandfather, KangXi, was the next tomb we saw. He was as famous as Qian Long but for different reasons. He was the first Qing emperor to take over all of China and rule from Beijing. He was a military genius and well known for this. His rule paved the way for Qian Long’s later success.

We also saw the man in between these two who only ruled briefly and supposedly died at 24 even though the rumor is that he joined the monastery. His tomb is thought to be empty because he died in the monastery so it is the only tomb that has not been opened by the government or by tomb raiders. He joined the monastery because his mother killed the woman he loved instead of letting him marry her. She just was not the marrying type.





Porcupines that I was supposed to pay a dollar to take a picture of but did not because the boy forget to say dollar and only said one. I responded with "what?" as I was taking the picture. Score for Justin.


On the way to all these tombs we decided to hire a motorcycle cart to drive us in between. As Hua said the tombs were not built with tourists in mind. From the back of the cart we saw many goats, sheeps and even a herd of camels. It was fun being able to ride in a contraption like this.

After the last tomb we picked up two women who were on our bus and headed back to the bus or so I thought. Hua and the women decided they wanted to see another temple even though we had 5 minutes to make it back to the bus. “Everyone else will be late” I believe were the words out of Hua’s mouth. Needless to say no one else was late or at least as late as us. The women were mighty embarrassed but Hua did not seem to mind and I think everyone expected me to be late.









The bus ride itself passed by quickly because I was passed out. The one interesting thing that happened was that they revived the whole missing person debacle. I suggested that they just ask all the people who were sitting by themselves if there had ever been anyone sitting with them. After counting the rows four more times they decided to follow my idea and determined that no one was missing. When we got back we had dinner at a fast food duck place and headed home. I forced myself to stay up to 10 again and then passed out.