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Published: March 16th 2007
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We had around 5 days to get a feel for the city and spent the majority of that time wandering around wearing out the soles of our shoes. Other than the usual tourist spots of Tian'anmen Square, The Forbidden City, Summer Palace and a trip out to the Great Wall, we didn’t have much on the agenda. Often we have found it more rewarding to visit the ‘normal’ parts of a city rather than those aimed at visitors as this process gives you a far more realistic (and cheaper) perspective on a country.
Our first encounter with the city was the Wangfujing ‘walking street’, a pedestrian area right in the center of town. Adjoining this was the ‘Traditional Custom and Culture Alley’ which was mainly aimed at tourists and contained lots of small restaurants and ‘snack’ bars. Their idea of a snack, traditional or otherwise wasn’t ours… various skewered items including starfish, bugs and other weevils and the worst of all the scorpions that were still alive. When I say ‘tourists’ don’t imagine a whole load of Westerners roaming around, quite the opposite. As someone pointed out to me fairly early on, China has such a vast population it
has never traditionally had to bother pandering to foreigners, particularly tourists, as it has endless internal supply of Chinese travelers. Maybe things are changing, but to be honest all I can think of is situations where the West are trying to get into the Chinese market not vice versa , for example mobile phone companies seeing the potential goldmine of a billion(?) people. In one shopping center we came across a very impressive ‘Visit New Zealand’ exhibition, complete with DVD’s specifically tailored to highlight the historic links with China as early immigrants to NZ - as I say, most people are after China’s business not the other way around.
Whilst walking around we were approached by a number of art students who all spoke very good English and were obviously angling for a sale. One couple were particularly friendly and talked to us for sometime about China and living in Beijing. Their technique worked well and we were soon looking at their excellent artwork and ended up buying the silk painting shown in the photo. It was actually very pleasant ‘hassle’ for a change and £20 for a hand painted silk with the meaning explained to us by the
artist seemed a fair price for a momento of China. By the way, the bamboo in the picture means ‘Gentlemen’ indicating strength, moving forward step by step and never giving up until you succeed - the plum blossom signifies an ‘elegant lady’, this plant only flowers in Winter, is hardy and has a strong will in life.
After tucking into a bowl of soggy noodles we headed off to the infamous Tian'anmen Square. The scenes shown on TV from the massacre in 1989 were playing in Lexa’s mind, but this was in stark contrast to the busy Sunday we saw in front of us, a mêlée of happy tourists, families, kite and souvenir sellers. We quickly became familiar with the postcards, Chairman Mao’s little red book and most memorably the waving chairman Mao watches which were so cheesy we almost bought one!
One addition to our pre-arranged list of sights was a visit to the Science museum, which I guess isn’t on a lot of Western tourist’s itinerary. Given the usual front of propaganda expected of Communist countries, we were ready for a state-of-the-art experience, promoting everything that is modern China, without a hint of failing or decay.
Well the reality was a little different, many of the displays were rather outdated, quite a few were broken and some were positively antiquated. There were a couple of obvious exceptions, these being exhibits that were sponsored by oil and computer companies which were glossy and up to the minute. The shiny Intel manufacturing display made more sense when we heard on the news later that they had recently agreed to build a huge silicon wafer fabrication plant in the north of the country, the first of its kind in the east I think.
On one of the other days we basically walked northwards across town, winding our way through various parks, gardens and ending up in the old Beijing backstreets or Hutongs. During this journey we passed through Jingshan Park with its colourful pagoda’s and later Beihai Park where there were several groups of Beijingers ballroom dancing in the mist and another practicing a kind of Tai Chi with swords. This taste for open air public exercise was complemented by the gym style gear we kept coming across alongside the roads, openly accessible to everyone. We also found old folk playing a kind of hacky-sack game by kicking
a shuttle cock to each other, others playing table tennis and some really mad ones swimming in Qinhai lake. All in all it seemed a very social way to keep fit and more attractive than going to a gym and staring in silence at a TV screen in front of you.
We had some fun with the street maps that we came across during our perambulations, eventually agreeing after walking up and down the same bit of road 3 times that the ‘You are here’ mark on a couple of the maps was in the wrong place. It did mean we saw some areas that we would have otherwise missed, a large meat and fish market for example which was full of anything you might ever want and quite a few you wouldn’t.
Talking of food, we did struggle a little with the cuisine…. There were the obvious Western no-no’s such as Shark fin soup which we had expected to find, but were surprised that was in even the most ordinary of restaurants and not that expensive. How can you justify selling something so publicly that is endangering the existence of entire species? Beyond that there were those
child hood horrors of liver and kidney, but they were for lightweights, real men ate knuckles, feet, ears or one of our favourites pork with added gristle! We both love ‘Chinese’ food at home, but it has obviously been adapted to Western palates. Call us unadventurous, but we didn’t find ourselves feeling too attracted to the local offerings and I have to admit that for a quick hassle free meal we resorted to McDonalds on several occasions, somewhere we never go back home but here the Golden Arches were like a ray of light for two weary travelers!
Lexa’s biggest disappointment was her long awaited meal of Peking Duck, which was abandoned after visiting numerous places where the dish was served as a whole duck complete with head staring back at you, again too much for our delicate tastes and familiarity with meat that arrives in nice plastic packages! We did recover the situation just before we left by accosting a local in the street who was dressed as a duck for some reason. That was as close to Peking duck as we were going to get!
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