Advertisement
Published: March 18th 2007
Our flight to Beijing was in the morning, but by the time we arrive and got settled into our hotel, it was mid-afternoon. Before I start talking about what we did, I'd just like to say that we stayed at the 7 Days Inn, a new hotel chain in China, and it was fabulous. If anyone wants a hotel that is both affordable and nice, this is the hotel for you. The hotel was located right near the Beijing Drum Tower and the remaining hutongs - very convenient.
After settling in, we decided to walk around and explore the neighborhood. The weather was incredibly beautiful for Beijing in March! The sun was shining and it was almost warm! The hotel is a five-minute walk from the Drum Tower, so we started there. The Drum Tower was originally built in in 1272 and has been rebuilt a few times, most recently in 1539. (It was renovated and opened to the public in the 1980's.) The function of the Drum Tower was to keep time. Inside was housed a clepsydra (water clock) and throughout the day, drums or bells or a combination would be sounded to mark the passing hours. Most
of the drums are now gone, but we were able to see a replica of the clepsydra (the original, according to a sign, is now "nowhere to be found!") and watch a brief (1 minute) drumming demonstration. After climbing up the steepest and scariest staircase in the world, we could walk around the top of the tower and look down at the hutongs below.
A hutong is an alley formed by the Chinese traditional "4-sided courtyard" (siheyuan) housing. Siheyuan consised of a central courtyard surrounded by a house on each side. When many siheyuan were built in the same area, alleyways resulted and these alleyways became known as hutongs. The hutongs were built from the 1200's to the early 1900's, during imperial rule. Many of them are found surrounding the Forbidden City (the imperial palace) and originally housed court officials, low-ranked imperial family members, and merchants. Today, many of the hutongs are in disrepair and the government is slowly demolishing them. A few of the siheyuan are being bought and renovated by people with much more money than I.
After the Drum Tower, we walked around HouHai Lake, a touristy area with lots of bars and a little
Reading up on the history of the Drum Tower
There is a drumming demonstation every half-hour. Unfortunately we missed it by one minute, due to the steep and scary stairs. So, after looking around, we had some time to kill while waiting for the next demonstration. Rachel put the time to good use.souvenier market. We also stopped at Starbucks. It was starting to get a bit cold and we wanted some hot chocolate...
We walked some more until we came to JingShan Park. Originally part of the Forbidden City, the hill in the middle of the park (the main feature of the park) was built with the earth removed to build the moat surrounding the Forbidden City. Once we reached the top, we had a spectacular view of the Forbidden City, BeiHai Park, and much of downtown Beijing.
By the time we climbed down from the man-made-from-the-moat hill, is was getting dark and a bit cold so we decided to head back towards the hotel and find some dinner. We ended up at a little restaurant near the drum tower. The owner of the restaurant was an old Chinese man who thought it was great that I can speak Chinese. This restaurant had chun bing (spring rolls) which is one of my favorite Chinese foods. Basically, it's a Chinese burrito, but you get to put all kinds of random things inside. I ordered spicey potatoes for mine. Rachel decided to try fried egg and tomatoes. The restuarant owner said, "You
View from the Drum Tower
Looking towards JingShan Park and the Forbidded City. can use the spring roll wrappers for the potatoes, but you cannot use them for the tomatoes." Okay... When the food arrived he showed me how to use my chopsticks to roll the wrap up, and when I did it successfully myself, he called me an "Old Beijinger" which is a very high complement. Rachel decided to defy the boss and tried to roll her fried egg and tomatoes in a spring roll wrap, only to find that the tomatoes were too moist and caused the wrap to fall apart. Oh, well! We came up with the solution of tearing up the wraps and mixing it with the egg and tomato, sort of like a taco salad.
After all that excitement, we were tired, so we headed back to the hotel to rest up for our next big day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.027s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
