Today was our tour of the Fragrant Hill or mountain as it has been deemed by the rest of our group. We arrived after a short 45 minute or so drive and met at the bottom of the hill to figure out ‘the plan’. Once we had determined who was walking up and who was riding the cable car, we split off to find the right path up the mountain. For me, the trek wasn’t difficult, however the humid air made the hike less than ideal, as I wish for a climate similar to that of the southwest, where you can walk all day and not be soaked in sweat, but after a 40 minute blast up the hill, I was pretty moist. It was a beautiful day, which made the hill all the more pretty, and I finally got a whiff of why they call the hill “Fragrant” about two thirds of the way up when I began to smell the pungent odor of tree sap and pine.
When we finally got to the top, the whole of Beijing was visible as well as its characteristic smog layer, but it was a sight to see non-the-less. At the top of the hill, there was hundreds, maybe thousands of red ribbons tied to the trees. Apparently, it will give you good luck if you tie a certain ribbon to the tree and write your name on that given ribbon. So I thought if it was cheap, I would just get one and tie it to one of the trees. Vivienne told me mine would give me good luck in my marital relationship, but I wasn’t aware that I was married, so that might be useless good luck ribbon. Oh well. After a few photo opportunities, we started our journey down the hill, which incidentally took far less time than it did on the way up. After everyone made it to the bottom, we boarded the bus and headed over to Tsinghua University for our Peking duck meal. Again the food was unique and delicious, and I got my first chance to try the brain of the duck, which can only be described through the word, “Pastey”. I do believe that one of the best things I ate all trip was at this meal when we made tortilla like wraps, with thin crepes, duck, cucumber, onions, and a special duck sauce. I ate around 6 of these and have no regrets about it.
After the meal had concluded, and we headed back to the hotel, a few of us decided to head back to a shopping area that we were already at to look around for some quick souvenirs for our families. I didn’t buy anything, but I just hung out with Ruby for a while and we fooled around with some of the shop vendors. Before we left the areas, we decided that we were all going to eat some scorpions, so we all chipped in to buy two sticks of scorpions and we each had one of the scorpions. They were actually pretty good, which was a bit surprising but I wasn’t really concerned about eating it anyway. After we completed that little adventure, we headed back to our hotel on the subway and turned in for the night.