China, Last part. Food market, Temple of Heaven and Silk factory

The strange food market.
On the second to last night in town we went to an interesting market. It's the market you see in Fear factor or in the Amazing Race were they make the contestants eat the strange and exotic food that make our stomachs turn. Well we got to see this up close and personal. We walked the isle of strange things the locals eat and for the most part couldn't believe they ate them!! I mean seriously who NEEDS to eat a CENTIPEDE!! GROSS!! But it was quite the experience and I even tried a scorpion with a friend. Turns out it's not too bad and I would have had another had I not hopped right onto the bus after trying one. Kind of like a frog leg, if you've ever had one. Very crunchy fried goodness... if you can get past the fact that you are putting a scorpion in your mouth! That was a little tough.
Star fish (you turn the hard part inside out and eat the insides, my friend said it had the texture of refried beans) I think the other thing in the front of the picture is squid and some other kind of sea urchin in the back. NO IDEA how to eat those!!

Seriously... shark anyone???

MMMM... more yummy squids or the likes. This would have been deep fried of course!

Lobsters, but remember that you would have had this deep fried and would have dug the meat out of it. Probably not that bad.

Scorpion... NOT the one I ate, this one was supposed to be gross and oozed black stuff.

This is the one I tried. I only had one of the three.

Lorri and Heather getting ready to try a scorpion. A little apprehensive... to say the least.

Still excited... Can't believe we're about to eat a SCORPION!!

Ok, EWW the thought of eating this is REALLY gross, but hey it's not that bad.

Temple of Heaven

This place is like Central park in Beijing. There are a lot of elderly folks who come here and socialize, by dancing, singing, playing cards or other games. Our tour guide said that the Chinese are a very used to living in community and wouldn't know what to do if they were by themselves, so they come here to have community. It was a really neat place, and it was quite pretty as well.

I loved all the older people. The character in their faces was amazing!

This was the actual Temple of Heaven. (I think.)

Not so sure what I was doing here. I was with other girls and I think this was their idea! :)

The Silk Factory

This place fascinated me!! I mean really, who really knew how they made silk clothing out of something the silk worm made. So this is how it's made. When the silk worm makes a cocoon there is either one or two silk worms that curl up together. When it is just one then the string is very organized and a single thread can be pulled from that and unwound and made into silk "thread". This is what is in the picture above. They put about 7 cocoons in water and pull out the threads from each and then pull them all together winding them together into one strong thread. The picture below shows it going all the way into the spool of silk thread. (that's the stuff at the top middle of the picture.) I just loved seeing this... but then again I'm the person who loves factory tours of any kind.

Now when there are two worms in a cocoon they can't pull a single thread out of it so they have to remove the worm, and then after soaking the cocoon, they stretch it over this half hoop thing you see below. They do this over and over until they have the desired thickness. Then they stretch it onto a bigger hoop. The silk is very strong, in the back of this picture you can see a little girl trying to push through the silk, couldn't be done.

Then when it's dry they take the silk with 4 different ladies and pull it in all directions to make a silk quilt. This is like a down blanket, but just one big piece instead of individual sections filled with down. Here they are letting our group try and pull the silk, it was harder than it looked.

These are the ladies that do it all the time and make it look easy!

Just one parting shot of the strange things you see in China. These crates were supposed to carry beer!! Could you imagine all those crates full of beer on the back of a bike!!

Well that's all of the China pictures... after this point we went to shop and I didn't take ONE picture of that. I was too busy shopping!! I mean really the shopping there was CRAZY and way too much fun. I got a LV wallet for $7!!! I got some $500 shoes (I had no idea they were worth that much!!) for about $8!! Way too much fun to take a picture though!!

PS if you are reading this and I haven't added a new China blog in front of this one... well they are going to be backwards, but forwards. Last day first and then first day last. But if you don't check the blog too often (as most of my family doesn't) then this shouldn't be a problem for you, you will just read them all in order from top to bottom. (ok hope I didn't confuse everyone) Whatever... there's more China coming... Just wait. :)