mock-up of old beijing

Sunday - 1st March was spent exploring the outskirts of Beijing as we wanted to visit the 13Ming Tombs. Now the Ming Tombs houses 13 of the 16 emperors back but only 1 has been fully excavated; the 定陵。The journey to get to the outskirts was super long and luckily we met these 2 uncles who offered to ferry us from one attraction to another for just 5RMB for the entire day. We only had to pay him at the end of the day. Sounds good eh? I'm just glad we took up the offer as the places were pretty far apart, though he did bring us to places we never intended to go initially where I eventually spent 200RMB on my dad's gift. The most expensive present I've bought so far (wait.. that's the only gift I've gotten so far).

In the end, we went to 4 different locations; Beijing Shishanling Waxworks Palace of Ming Dynasty aka 北京十三陵的皇蜡像宫，Old Beijing aka 老北京， Sacred Way Museum of Ming Tombs aka 明十三陵神道博物馆 and Ding Ling aka 定陵。

I don't have any pictures from the waxwork palace as there were restrictions on the filming rules and regulations. Apparently, you are only allowed to take pictures IF you purchased a ticket for 10RMB. Nonsense crap. The pictures of the place are not in my possession, so.. Sorry you have to wait till I get my hands on Sheng Yuan's camera.

I shall start my entry proper with the review of Old Beijing. Basically, the entire place was modeled after the olden days with the typical and classic chinese architecture. The only thing cool about this place is that it was used for the filming of 还珠格格. Ok, maybe it wasn't that cool after all. This was the place I got my dad's gift; 2 sets of collector's edition. So they tried to model it as closely as possible to include the 4 vices of the China back then; 吃，喝，嫖，赌. Needless to say, there's a gambling den and a brothel included in the layout. BUT.. of course all for show only la. Don't think too much. There's even a mock opium room.
Too bad they tied the pipe to the table. I wanted to take it up. So now that we've tried smoking, lets move onto gambling. In order for you to play the game, you had to spend 10rmb to exchange for 3 copper coins which some of the guys did. I was too busy snapping pictures to be gambling, besides.. I don't gamble to begin with. Somehow, it felt like a scam cause out of the 3 games they played, the guys lost 2 games. I mean, how difficult is it to lose at Big and Small?? Some thing is fishy about the place.. hmm..
And so after gambling away all his possessions, Jiwei decided to give up on gambling. Herein lies the true meaning of 金盆洗手. This is a ritual that everyone must perform if they decided to leave the gambling den. There is a trick to doing it right. Apparently, for you to be able to walk out, you need to create ripples and splashes by rubbing your palms on the handles. If ripples and splashes occur, you are then safe to walk out. Otherwise, you should just think of carrying on, ok. I added that last sentence myself. If you think you're rich enough, you can always trot over to the brothel next door. Trust me, you wouldn't want to. There's nothing interesting to see, perhaps the most interesting artifact you will find is the heater in the middle of the room for it keeps you warm. Apparently, this was 1 of the room where they filmed 还珠格格; the part where ziwei was blind for a really long time. I can't remember the exact details though. They filmed it at a brothel. Gosh. Haha
Another room that the filming took place. This time around, its about ziwei and erkang getting married if I'm not mistaken. The very famous 漱芳斋 which was played countless of times during the show which was shown like tens of years ago.
Well, at least I got something out of this trip. Haha. Although my books are not as HUGE as that which you see below. I still think its pretty worthwhile for the books at I felt cheated at buying those books. Lol.
Its running late, i shall get back to posting about my other visits stated above soon. Hopefully tomorrow.