2007 Gymnastic Summer Camp to China July 12---28, 2007, to Beijing , Suzhou , Shanghai , 17 Days

GSCC Preliminary Program:

7/12/07
Depart in San Francisco by Air China flight 986 at 1:55 pm. En route to , Beijing, China, a city which will host the 2008 Olympic Games.

7/13/07
Arrive in Beijing at 5:55 pm. Warmly welcomed by WayToChina 's Welcome Team with news reporters. Transferred by a fleet of tour coaches to the Beijing Exhibition Hotel * * * ( or better ) . Check in to the rooms and have a short rest for about 30 minutes. A Welcome Dinner is held in the hotel restaurant around 8:30 pm.

7/14/07
Our first lesson in China is touring Beijing , the heart of the nation, the Capital city of China.
Tours start at 9:00 am after breakfast. Beijing sits on a broad dry plain in north China , same latitude as Philadelphia , PA. Beijing has been inhabited for 500,000 years, but the first documented settlement dates to 3,000 years ago. As the nation's Capital, Beijing has a population of 13 million. Our tour starts at the Tiananmen Square , which is the largest square on earth, covering 123 acres, paved entirely by huge slabs, accommodating half a million people at once. The late Chairman Mao's Tomb is on the Square, so is the Great Hall of the People , the meeting place of the Congress. To the north of the Square, Tiananmen Gate guards the entrance to the Forbidden City . Visiting the Forbidden City is a must. This 9,999-room “city-within-a-city” Imperial Palace was home to 24 Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties between 1406 and 1911.
After a lunch of Sichuan Cuisine, we will visit the Temple of Heaven , which was built in 1420, a sacred place used by the Emperors to pray to the heaven for good harvests. The Chinese Emperors once humbled themselves in the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests to ensure a bountiful crop. Believe it or not, the huge construction was built 600 years ago without use of a single nail.
This evening, a grand Peking Duck Banquet is given to welcome our young gymnasts. It is a dinner-show-kind-of-banquet, a 79-member dance troupe with live orchestra is giving their excellent performance on the stage during and after the Banquet .

7/15/07
Gymnastic Training by Gymnastics Instructor Ms Yuhong Yao and Mr. Moffatt..

7/16/07
Gymnastic Training jointly by Ms Yao, Mr. Moffatt, and their Chinese counterparts.

7/17/07
Gymnastic Training together with some Chinese Gymnasts.

7/18/07
An excursion is arranged today after breakfast to one of the seven wonders of the world, the Great Wall . The 3,750-mile-long Great Wall stretches from east to west in North China , is the only man made structure visible with naked eyes from the moon. The massive construction of different sections of the Wall started about 2,000 years ago during the Warring State Period . Later, the sections of the walls were connected and fortified by the successive Emperors in order to defend themselves from invasions of the minority tribes.
After a lunch of the Northeast-China Cuisine at the Great Wall, we continue our visit to the Ming Tombs , where 13 Emperors and their Empresses of the Ming Dynasty were buried between 1368 and 1644.

7/19/07
Gymnastic Training jointly by Ms Yao, Mr. Moffatt and their Chinese counterparts.

7/20/07
Professional Exchange Day.
After breakfast, we will conduct a site inspection at various Gymnastic Teams, Gymnasiums, and schools. It is a perfect opportunity for our young gymnasts to learn from the Chinese peers, exchange gymnastic technics, and make international friends.

7/21/07
Gymnastic training jointly with Chinese gymnasts.

7/22/07
Gymnastic Training in the morning. In the afternoon, a Gymnastic Workshop with Chinese peers is held. A brief talk on 2008 Beijing Olympics and on Chinese cultures will be given by a senior gymnastic coach from a Chinese Gymnastic Team. Then, a formal gymnastic performance given by our GSCC Campers is arranged in a local gymnasium.

7/23/07
Gymnastic Training jointly by Ms Yao, Mr Moffatt, and their Chinese counterparts.

7/24/07
An early Flight to Shanghai is arranged this morning. check in at the Novotel Hotel * * * .( or better ). We start to visit China 's largest and most cosmopolitan city which has a population of 14 million. Shanghai started life as a fishing village and small silk-weaving center, and became a seaport in the 17 th century. Trade in silk, tea and opium boomed later on. In 1842, the Treaty of Nanjing forced the city to open itself to large-scale foreign trade and settlement. Therefore many old houses are foreign styles. We will visit the Temple of Jade Buddha , which is the most famous temple in the city. The White Jade Buddha , carved from a precious piece of milky white jade, was brought all the way from Burma in 1882. The jade Buddha is still used for worship today, and visitors must remove their shoes to enter. We will also visit the Old Town near Zhongshan Road . The Huxinting Tea House is said to be a very safe and clean place, because it sits in the center of a pond, humanbeings can cross the zig-zag bridge to take tea in the teahouse, but evil spirits cannot ------ they cannot turn those corners.

We will have a Welcome Dinner Reception at 5 pm, then an exciting night-tour to the famous Bund , and the unbelievable Nanjing Road .

7/25/07
Gymnastic Training jointly by Ms Yao, Mr Moffatt, and their Chinese counterparts.

7/26/07
Gymnastic Training jointly by Ms Yao, Mr Moffatt, and their Chinese counterparts.

7/27/07
After an early breakfast, we will go to the heavenly city Suzhou . During the Yuan Dynasty about 800 years ago, Suzhou' s main production such as the finest silk got to be shipped to many big cities through the Grand Canal, and the local economy and population boomed almost overnight. As a result, Suzhou was full of wealthy people, who had enough money to build their mansions with huge and luxurious gardens. With time, many of the gardens were abandoned, but we still see over 150 famous gardens here today. Suzhou is a city on the water, lies in the Yangtze River Basin of southern Jiangsu Province . Poets have compared Suzhou to Heaven and called it the Venice of the East .
Our lunch is served in Suzhou before we check into Changmen Hotel * * * (or better). The whole afternoon will be spent in the Garden of Forest of Lions . It seems impossible that this small 14 th century garden, only one acre in size, contains four lakes embellished with numerous bridges, caves and hills. A wonderful Welcome/Farewell Dinner is prepared in the hotel for our young campers, we are going to say Farewell to China tomorrow.

7/28/07
After a Suzhou style breakfast, we continue our visit to the gardens.
The Humble Administrator's Garden is the largest and the most famous of Suzhou' s gardens. It was designed in the 16 th century as the private residence of a retired court censor. Water fills much of the garden's 10 acres. If time allows, we will also visit the Liu Garden which ranks with the Humble Administrator's Garden, the Summer Palace in Beijing, and the Imperial Summer Resort in Chengde, as one of China' s four nationally protected State Gardens.
We are going to have a lunch of Sichuan Cuisine before leaving the city for Shanghai International Airport . Our flight CA 985 will depart at 5:15 pm for San Francisco . Our home bound flight will gain one day when crossing the International Date Line , so we arrive in SFO the same day at 11:55 am. End of our 17-day Gymnast Summer Camp in China.