More vacation pictures

Here are some more pictures from my vacation...

Here are my parents with our Beijing guide, Lily, in Tiananmen Square...



This is where China's version of congress meets next to Tiananmen Square. They only meet there once a year (in March)...



This is at the Forbidden City. There was a boy dressed up as the Emperor who would come out and wave to all of the vistors every few minutes...



This was a section of the Forbidden City when you first come in. Surprisingly there are not may people here. I think a lot of the crowds were waiting for the National Day holiday to visit the sights in Beijing...



The picture below was taken at the the Temple of Heaven. My parents are taking a break and talking to Lily...



At the Temple of Heaven you have to buy a ticket to get in but Chinese seniors get in for free, so a lot of them come there to meet with friends, play cards, exercise, play music (below), sing, or whatever...



These statues were outside of the Summer Palace. The dragon represents the emperor and the phoenix represents the empress...



We found this lady at the Summer Palace writing Chinese caligraphy with water and a brush. Lily said the style of caligraphy is called running caligraphy. It was very beautiful...



This is the main palace building at the Summer Palace. Empress Ci Xi (pronounced Tsee-She) did not live at this palace building though since she didn't like walking up and down the stairs all of the time...



This is the throne room in the main palace. It had been outfitted with gifts from other countries, such as electric chandlier, etc...



This is a view of some of the buildings outside around the throne room of the Summer Palace...



This is a view looking down at the main complex of the palace from near the throne room. If you look in the middle of the picture you will see my Mother, who like the Empress, decided it was too much of a climb up to the top and decided to wait for us at ground level...



A view to the west from the palace...



This is a view of Beijing to the east of the palace...



This is the Buddhist Temple that is right above and behind the main palace building in the Summer Palace...



This is the Buddha inside the temple. There's a sign there that says, "No photographs", and I was not going to take a picture, but everyone was ignoring the sign, so I thought I would too...



Here are my parents and I in beside Empress Ci Xi's marble boat. The story was that she wanted a boat, but was afraid to go out into the lake so she had this boat built...



The picture below is one of the views of Xi'an from inside the Big Wild Goose Pagoda...



Here is another view from the top of the pagoda. The fountain below is suppose to be the largest fountain in China (or maybe the world. I forget)...



Another view of Xi'an from the top of the pagoda...



Some pandas in ChengDu...



Here's a picture of my parents with a panda in the background....



Here's another panda picture. Aren't they cute?



At one place in the panda center they allowed people to come in and pet the pandas (for 400RMB). Here are a few Japanese tourists who were willing to pay that...



Cynthia (center) with my parents and her Grandmother (far left) looking at family photos...



Cynthia's boyfriend, Tony, and I looking at some martial arts videos on his computer...



At Cynthia's parents' house. Left to right - friend of Cynthia's family, Cynthia's Mother, my Mother, Me, my Father, Cynthia's Father, Cynthia...



That's all of the photos I have that are worht posting. If I get time I'll try to post some video I shot of the pandas.