Visiting the Motherland

All of the fam successfully made it to China for our visit to the homeland! While the Yeh’s often get together, this is our first family vacation in 10 years (minus Richelle). We miss you!

Climbing the Great Wall of China was as amazing as expected. One of the fun perks of visiting the Mutianyu site was the option to toboggan to the bottom. Lots of fun! You can see the Great Wall in the background with the slide in the top right picture.

After visiting Beijing for 3 short days, I realized how little I know about Chinese history…and also how American I really am. The historical sites were neat (top left – Forbidden City, bottom left – Temple of Heaven, top right – summer palace) and I’m interested in learning more. We also had a chance to visit the Olympic Bird’s Nest national stadium (bottom right). As this is my first visit to China, I’ve been surprised by 1) how much less polluted Beijing was than I expected - Kampala and Manila are much worse! 2) how I really cannot understand the Beijing accent and 3) people here really DO have different “public habits” – slurping soup, blowing snot out of the nose, and yelling on their mobile phones.

Since we were in Beijing, we of course tried Peking duck (bottom left, top middle, top right). It was delicious! They carved the duck in front of you and created the perfect cut of skin, fat, and meat to create our own wraps. We also tried a local Hutong lunch (top left), hand cut noodle soup (bottom middle), and roasted lamb (bottom right).

We are now in Anhui province and will be visiting where my dad’s side of the family lived.