Julia Colón
March 13th, 2024
Our morning began bright and early with a departure time of 6 am. We were all a little bummed out because the hotel breakfast hadn’t opened yet, and it was arguably one of the best ones of the entire trip. Anyways, we made our way to the train station in Chongqing, said farewell to our fabulous tour guide Michael, and boarded the train.
The trip from Chongqing to Beijing is approximately 6/6.5 hours on a high-speed railway train. The majority of us knocked out immediately and woke back up at around 11:30/12 for our lecture on the high speed railway in China and the overall purpose of its development. We learned that the high speed railway trains in China can reach a speed of up to 350 km per hour, which is the fastest speed that has currently been reached by any other high speed railway system in the world. Additionally, one of the overall purposes of developing this infrastructure was to promote urbanization in specific areas of the country. We passed through a city that we were told only existed because a high speed railway station had been placed there. After the lecture, we ate lunch on board the train before arriving in Beijing.
Upon our arrival, we met our new tour guide, Cathy, who took us straight to the Summer Palace. We learned that the Summer Palace grounds were all man made, including the lake and mountains that surrounded it and was actually reconstructed after its destruction in the Second Opium war by Emperor Guangxu, which he gifted to the Empress Dowager Cixi. We were given some free time to explore the grounds and take in all the beautiful scenery. Right as the sun was starting to go down, we headed back to the hotel to set our stuff down before dinner.
After dinner, a few of us decided to split off and check out the olympic village which was really fun as many members of the group recall the Beijing 2008 games as the most memorable olympics of their childhood. In all honesty, the London 2016 games were probably the most memorable of my childhood, but it was still an awesome thing to see. We made the trek back to the hotel successfully and called it a night!
