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Published: August 15th 2007
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Beijing
Suburbian area Another fun part of Beijing were the markets. There are markets everywhere and the Chinese are determined and persistent salespeople. You have to be on your guard and bargaining is the only way to do business. Now personally I'm happy enough to walk into the shop, check the label and pay the price-less stress. But Mathias has proven himself to be a champion bargainer so I let him do all the work 😉. The best place to experience this was the Silk Street Market. It used to be an outdoor market but has been brought indoors into a 6 story huge building crammed with fake designer clothes, silk, sunglasses, jewellery, chinese clothes-everything and anything! I got myself what I thought was a nice bargain Roxy T-shirt for 4euro only to have it rip after a few days which goes to show you can't have it every way. Mind you Mathias's sandals are still going well. Some designer fakes are better than others. I saw some v v nice handbags in the silk market, and we saw some not so fabulous "Adidsa" and "Pama" stuff..
It was also here that we got our first introduction to the Chinese Tea House culture,
Beijing
Park just opposite to the Forbidden City and we're now completely hooked on Oolong tea. Its just delicious! Plus they have lots of different kinds of "tea snacks" like green tea cookies, pumpkin seed bites and tea cakes. Fab! Mathias is a huge fan of green tea too, but I'll stick with the Oolong.. Most tea houses are great, they offer free tastings and explain about the Chinese tea making/drinking culture. Unfortuneately we also had a not so nice experience with some rip off merchants who after we decided not to buy their overpriced and tasteless tea, tried to charge us for the free samples-the cheek!
At times we were frustrated with the obvious rip offs and scams that people would try on us. It seems in Beijing there is one price for the locals and one for the foreigners. Countless times we witnessed locals paying 1yuan for a bottle of water, only for the vendor to demand twice this from us. Although its not a huge amount of money, it all adds up for backpackers-plus you just want to be treated fairly like everyone else. But it would be unfair to judge China on Beijing. There is always a certain "capital city mentailty" in places
Beijing
Chimpanse in the Beijing Zoo like this.
I know some smart person would like to ask if there are in fact 9 million bicycles in Beijing. The answer is Yes-at least. And these intrepid sui-cyclists do whatever they please. They have their own cycle lanes (for bikes and mopeds) on which they travel in both directions regardless of traffic flow. Sometimes if they feel like it they cycle on the main road, thus running the risk of becoming roadkill at the hands of one of the many Mad Max bus drivers. More often than not they use the pavement as their personal road, cycling in any which way they please. Your only warning is a tinny sounding horn, as they demand you move or be run over. It seems to be the case in China that small yields to big. ie a bus will stop for neither man nor beast. Zebra crossings (without lights) are suggested crossings only, cars are not obliged to stop and they don't, it would only show weakness. Even if you do have the authority of the little green man to guide you across you shouldn't be so naive to think that traffic will stop. You have to be quick and on your guard-needless to say I was a useless wreck in Beijing, but Mathias was on the ball!
To be honest we probably spent too long in Beijing. 4 or 5 days would be plenty. Its a very historic city and some sights like the Forbidden City should not be missed but the pollution is almost unbearable, prices are high, scams are everywhere and some of the people were not the friendliest that we have met. Had we left China at this point.... well let's just say the reviews wouldn't have been great.
The next stop on our itenary was Xi'an, home of the famous Terracotta Army. Booking train tickets as a foreigner in China is a bit of a nightmare-would help of course if we could speak Chinese! We braved the chaos of the huge Beijing West train station, obediently queuing at the designated English speaking counter. We were willing to be flexible with our dates and times. However the lady at the counter insisted there was only 1 train and 1 class available for us EVER. Her English abilities stretched to that one sentence. She demanded 1500 Yuan (150 Euro) for 2 soft sleeper tickets on the express train and wouldnt budge. We didn't even bother arguing because she couldn't or wouldn't speak english to us. Thankfully our Wanch Hotel was a lot more helpful and booked cheap tickets for us with only a small commission fee. The only problem was that there was just one type of seat available-Hard Seat and this was for a 18 hour train journey. The tickets were very cheap , just 150Yuan (15euro ) each so we thought-feck it we'll survive....
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