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Our final day in Beijing luckily wasn't too fast-paced. We checked out for breakfast at 7.15pm and weren't leaving till 8am.
Quite a few stops today involved "commission-induced buying situations", CIBS as I have named them. These are places where you can see things being made and processes explained, after which you are then guilt-tripped into making a purchase. Not I, I'd like to add! I've seen this done before in Egypt and Morocco so my advice is always use these tours as an indication of traditional goods you can buy and then do your own hunting around in town thus saving yourself a small fortune! In these shops the mark-up was nearly 400%!
Our first stop of the day was to a really old building situatied in De Sheng Men, a rather impressive old-style building situated above town-level. This sold carved animal icons and sculptures which were said to symbolise certain powers, used by many successful businessmen and wealthy individuals. You will see such figures as dragons, dogs, lions, bullocks etc. at the front of buildings, entrances and gates as a means of protection and comfort to the institutions they represent.
The shop allegedly housed a 300 year-old statue that was said to have been rubbed only by the Emperor...and evidently hundreds and thousands of bidding tourists since! We also managed to spy another such statue in an adjacent room and came to the conclusion that the guy was blatantly talking "bullocks".
The next stop was home of one of the most historical and famous chinese medicine stores in China. The building itself was used back in the day for traditional herbal rememdies and has carried on in the same line since...albeit at a price! We were made to sit in what can only be described as a classroom - wooden desks, high-back chairs, a whiteboard (slightly more modern than when I was at school!), and a man who was getting into the role of teacher a bit too much, describing to us the different ailments the body can undertake - basically scaremongering you into buying his herbal medicine, which would be the only true cure! Some of us were even told to leave the class if we carried on chatting, and people soon slipped into the schoolkid mentality of putting their hands up to ask questions! I, yet again, was the dunce of the class as today's "lesson" was given in Mandarin, again.
When the lesson was finally over, we were told we could have a health consultation for 20 Yuan per 'family'. Having ganged up with two other guys from the trip (don't get any ideas boys!) we soon realised that the 'health advisers' lost interest as soon as they realised you weren't going to buy their medicine. They literally walked off mid consultation from one family, so we decided to wait the rest of the session outside!
Lunch involved a variety of diferent dumpling dishes, very satisfactory! Then we made our way to the Olympic Village for a foot massage by the official Olympic foot masseurs - apparently they do exist! This consisted of a 45 minute massage and pedicure for the bargain price of 80 Yuan - for which my feet were eternally grateful! It has even prompted me to buy a foot spa when I return to the UK as my feet were and state and I was rather embarrassed by the condition I had let them get in!
Feeling rather sleepy we coached it to the airport and returned to Hong Kong, absolutely shattered! For the fourth consecutive night, no night out for us! The HK nightlife will have to wait for our coming...again.
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