Beijing Basement

With Singapore slung, we arrived in Beijing, glimpsing a few of Hong Kong’s islands through the mirk during our two hour layover there. Having done none of the planning for this part of the trip and knowing very little about China, I didn’t have much idea of what to expect.

What I had read the night before in the Lonely Planet, suggested that the city bared little or no resemblance to the rest of the country and was not unlike many other modern capital cities around Asia. The only other ‘research’ I had done was look at the Olympic 2008 website, which is extremely flash as you would expect for a country a year away from the biggest global event on the planet. It provided the usual reports on a state of the art constructions and venues and left me with the strong impression that we would be arriving in a high-tech city with integrated transport etc. - all those things that the Olympic committees insist on these days. So when we arrived at a slightly ‘tired’ airport with no visitor information and struggled to find what bus would take us into the city we were somewhat surprised. Now, I know this was all in rapid contrast to the effortless transport system we had just experienced in Singapore with its silky smooth subway and helpful bus drivers and I don’t want to sound like a pompous old colonial Brit complaining that it’s about time these fuzzy wuzzies learn to talk properly… however, it really was a bit of a surprise how ill-prepared the city appeared for the influx of the rest of the world in a year’s time.

We guessed where to get off in town and I arranged a taxi ride to our hostel for about 20 Yuan or ₤1.30. Well actually, although the guy was standing next to a taxi it unfortunately wasn’t his and a few minutes later we were whizzing along, squeezed in the back of a motorized cycle rickshaw surrounded by torn, flapping plastic. Anyway, great way to see the back streets though and if he hadn’t then tried to charge us US$20 for the 10 minute bike ride it would have been a pleasant transfer! Of course as seasoned travelers we politely corrected him on the price and he eventually left the hostel reception with 20 Yuan after about 10 minutes of arguing. We were intrigued whether he really thought we (or maybe all Westerners) are rich enough to throw $20 around like that??!

And so to our beautiful digs… we had reserved a room online having heard that accommodation could be hard to come by and that it was surprisingly expensive. The reception looked OK and overlooking the signs like ‘Air Defence Basement’, ‘Please open your luggage so our serviceman can check for dangerous tools’ and ‘Please abide by the rules made by the Public Security Bureau, certain punishment will be addressed to those who do not abide’ we were just happy to be close to getting a bed.

‘Room 47 on floor 4, take the lift and the porter will show you the room’ said the receptionist (in slightly more broken English). In the lift there were only 3 buttons:

Reception 1
-3
-4

Yes the only way was down…we never found out what was on the buttonless minus 2 level, maybe it was just solid concrete, but the Air Defence Basement sign made more sense now as we went 30 feet below ground and guessed that the view wasn’t going to be great. We did our best to ignore the slightly damp smell, as the porter escorted us through the blast doors, down a long corridor to a tiny room, unlocked the door and a few bugs ran back under the beds. It was habitable, if not inviting and the springs hadn’t quite made it out through the top of the mattresses, so we said yes for at least that night. To be fair to the place, it is in a fantastic location right in the centre of town, near Tianamen Square and alongside the Hyatt Hotel and according to another Brit who had been travelling in China for a while, quite good value at ₤7.50 a night for a twin. Maybe that doesn’t sound much to you guys, but our basic budget is about ₤13 a day for the two of us and in Thailand the most we paid was ₤5/6 for rooms with aircon, view and ensuite bathroom. Admittedly the price always goes up in cities, Singapore was ₤20 a night, but again that was a nice hostel, with a kitchen, wireless internet, towels, private bathroom, TV and sunlight! Having dealt with 4 currencies in 5 days (Thai Baht, Malaysian Ringitt, Singapore dollars and Chinese Yuan) we were beginning to find it difficult to judge the value of money, but on first impressions it appeared that accommodation in China seemed a tad expensive.

The other thing that the Olympic website mentioned was the ‘Smiling Beijing’ campaign which hinted that they might be facing a certain attitude problem with the local populace and on a number of ‘queuing days’ that had been organized to educate the local population about the finer points of orderly behaviour whilst in crowds! I’m sure they must have imported some British experts for the last task!

Not much else to say about our first 24 hours in Beijing apart from it was bleedin’ cold, foggy and as far as we could see there were only about 900 bicycles, not the 9 million that Katie Melua claims in her recent tune. We eventually tracked down the only bookshop in town that sells a city map with some English translations on it, but failed to find a Lonely Planet guide and were told by a shop that had every other destination from Fiji to Finland that they ‘didn’t stock’ the edition for China…. obviously not quite the land of the free just yet….

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