Today is the 12th of September. The committee decided to visit the mausoleum of chairman Mao. This meant that we had to get out of bed at 6 o'clock in the morning. It was a surprise to see a blue sky in Beijing when we opened the curtains. We had the rice from yesterday as our breakfast.
After breakfast we went to Tian'anmen square to see the mausoleum of chairman Mao. However, the queue was 2 hours long. Eventually we found a new queue with a waiting time of only 20 minutes. After passing the security check I bought a flower for chairman Mao. The flower was left at the statue of chairman Mao. After the statue, in which chairman Mao sits on a chair just like president Lincoln in Washington, we passed his last resting place.
After we visited chairman Mao, it was time to get into the bus and head for the Nokia campus. The visit at Nokia wasn't that interesting. We saw the fitness room, some soccer tables, the roof and outdated phones. Then we got the chance to visit the factory. But this was also a disappointment since we only had a chance to see the hallway instead of the real working floor...
After Nokia, we went back to the hostel to change clothes and checkout. It was time to leave Beijing and take the Bullet Train to Naning. Once again we did manage to get trough the metro with all our suitcases in Beijing. The train station for the Bullet Train is just like an airport and we had to get trough a security check once again.
Once in the Bullet Train there was beer and we could enjoy the view of the country. At the moment I am writing this, we travel at a speed of 311km/h. At quarter to seven we arrived at the Nanjing train station. After a trip with the metro and a walk of about 2 km we arrived at our hostel and went to our room to drop off our suitcases. Around 9 o'clock we were finally ready to get some diner, which we found in a shopping mall. We drunk one more beer when we got back at the hostel and went to bed after it.
Gerwin Hoogsteen