On our first morning we had a good look around our hotel. We liked this Chinese bonsai tree in the foyer. It was just the right size for us.

We really liked the hotel garden and you could eat out there if you wanted to.

Tea is very popular in China and it's made fresh in all kinds of tea pots. People drink tea with all of their meals. We chose this tea set to have our tea in the hotel garden. Then we were ready to walk around Beijing.

We saw people doing tai chi in the morning. It's a really good way to start the day.

We saw groups of friends playing games in lots of places. These men were playing dominoes.

These men were playing music in a square. The man standing up was the singer. They weren't buskers. They were just doing it because they love it.

We thought these people were very good at swirling their long ribbons.

We met this little girl at a park. She liked us a lot and she smiled so much that we felt good all day!

Lots of places have lions guarding the entrance. There are female and male lions but they kind of look the same. You can tell that this is a male lion because he has a sphere, representing the world, at his paw. Female lions have a cub at their paw. The lions look scary but they are about protecting the people inside.

We saw lots of cafes and bars along the river where people go to relax and meet their friends.

We found a Chinese shadow puppet shop. We spent ages looking at them up close and we bought some to take home.

At the end of the day we went to another cheerful and busy restaurant for more great Chinese food.

We wanted to see Beijing's traditional hutongs. Hutongs are narrow stone streets between rows of courtyard houses. Some hutongs are hundreds of years old. There aren't many left now but people are trying hard to  preserve them so they don't disappear forever.

We met two other Australians who wanted to see the hutongs so we shared a ride. 

You can't see the actual houses and their courtyards from the street. They are behind walls and gates that look like doorways. Some of the doorways are up high,

and some doorways are down at street level.

You can tell that rich people built this house because you can see four beams at the top. These ones were painted blue. Families had to have lots of money to have four beams.

We went through one of the doorways and into a courtyard. It was really pretty, with vegetable gardens and fruit trees in the middle and a house around them.

We were invited into the courtyard house and we met some of the family who live there. There are four generations living there. We thought it was a really good way to live because they all look after each other.

We had roasted Beijing Duck for dinner that night. In Australia it's called Peking duck. That's because Beijing used to be called Peking. The Beijing duck was carved at our table and it tasted REALLY good!

We left the city for a couple of days to walk the Great Wall of China!

You can see our story on our Great Wall blog. It was fantastic.

We went to the Forbidden City. It's in Beijing but it's like a city with high walls all around it. It's very big, with lots of buildings and stairways. It was where the emperors lived for most of the year. It was called the forbidden city because ordinary people were forbidden to enter it. China doesn't have emperors now but people like to come and see it and learn about their history. China has a very long history - thousands of years!

When you get up close you can see that the buildings are very colourful and ornate.

This guard was keeping people in the right areas of the forbidden city.

We decided to go to the emperors' Summer Palace on a dragon boat.

The captain let us ride on the dragon's head.

On the way we sailed past the Beijing Zoo and we saw where the kangaroos are.

The summer palace has its own beautiful lake and bridges. The emperors used to stay here in the summer.

There are rocky gardens,

and water gardens,

and shaded walkways with gardens on each side.

The emperors must have loved summer!

The palace buildings were interesting and lovely to look at.

We really enjoyed this fish for dinner. It's a special fish that's made to look like a dragon with big scales. All the food looked good as well as tasting good.

We had a very unusual and quite nice dessert. It was made of frozen corn. Chinese people don't really eat desserts like we do but they like to make them for visitors. It was a good idea because corn was in season so there was lots of it to use up. 

Before we left we went to the Australian embassy. You can see our coat of arms at the top. Embassies are very important places and they always have guards to make sure people don't go in without permission. These guards were doing a great job protecting our embassy. Thankyou guards!

We found someone's passport at the embassy so we looked after it until they came back. It was a red passport from Britain. Australian passports are blue. It reminded us that we were going back home to Australia really soon.

We sat and talked about all the things we'd enjoyed doing in China and then we did one of our favourite things one more time before flying home....

eating Chinese food!

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