Beijing Part1~China's Capital

We started our time in China with a visit to legendary Tiananmen Square. It was a blustery cold morning as wind filled the square. Today, it is a large paved public square that sits between several government buildings, Mao Ze Dong's Memorial Hall, a WWI and WWII monument, and the Tiananmen which was the imperial gate to the Forbidden City before the revolution in the 1940's. The emperor's private office buildings once stood where most of square is today.

Through the Tiananmen is the Forbidden City which was the palace of Chinese emperors for about six hundred years. The architecture is stunning in red and gold with hand painted ceilings and ornate golden animals to denote the importance of the building.

After some lunch, we changed into official dress for our visit to the American Embassy. Unfortunately we couldn't take any pictures of the brand new complex which is our second largest embassy in the world, only Iraq has a larger one. Inside, we met with a panel of agriculture experts and had a chance to pick their brains about the future of American and Chinese trade. They helped us get a better idea of how the incredibly complex Chinese economy works being both Communist regulated and powered by free trade. The biggest thing I got out of the meeting was the fact that China will continue to need to trade with the US in order to feed to their population since most of their limited resources are better served in manufacturing trade-wise.