Beijing - We do not have enough clothes!

We arrive at 23:00 in Beijing to be greeted with -7degreesC temperatures. Our hostel is a converted old courtyard house in the old part of Beijing.

Out hostel is a 4 minute walk to Forbidden City, which I wasn't expecting so was a shock to be that close, but also pretty amazing. The whole of the Forbidden City is huge, I can't even describe how big it was. Each footpath had three elements. The middle path was for the Emperor to walk across and the other two paths were for everyone else. The Chinese Government are currently spending money on restoring many of the buildings and these looked particlarly colourful and spectacular. It must have been an amazing place in it's time but also formidable as the "normal" person was not allowed in there - hence it being called the Forbidden City. Much of the film The Last Emperor was filmed there and we were informed that in real life, the when the last emperor was crowned (although they didn't know he was the last one at the time) there were so many people and there was such a spectacle that he spent the whole ceremony crying. In fairness he was three. His father apparantly said to him "don't worry, it will be over soon" and how prophetic that turned out to be. The gardens within the city were really beautiful. It would be amazing to see them in the spring.

The walk around the Forbidden City was great as there was bright sunshine but it was only -1 degree C so we were very pleased that the first hawker who approached us offered gloves! Hurrah! Unfortunately Paul also spotted a stall that sold hats. Not just any old hat, though. This hat has tested the levels of oriental inscrutability to the limit. In short, the sight of a tall European with a Fu Manchu moustache wearing that hat is enough to make Confucious crack up.

We then walk across to Tiananman Square where there were hundreds of people both Chinese and European who were tourists like ourselves as it is the home of Mao's mausoleum. The sheer scale of this historic site is quite breathtaking.

That night we went to a Kung Fu show in a large theatre where a cast of 30 highly trained and incredibly skilled martial artists demonstrated their amazing abilities in sub zero temperatures to an audience of 10. The applause while heartfelt was muted to say the least.

We then headed off for Peking Duck at the most popular restaurant for duck in Beijing. This was, of course, just closing as we arrived. The situation was partially saved by a smiley man in a suit who escorted us the half mile to his restaurant serving "the highest quality ducks". This may well have been the case but I want to stress that Peking Duck is NOT the crispy aromatic duck we are used to. It is neither crispy nor aromatic despite the pancake trappings it is served with. We could not lose the taste for hours.

The next day was an admin day where we found the Vietnamese embassy to apply for our visas and also to brave the mass queues at the railway station to book our tickets for Xi'an. I say "brave" as there are 108 different ticket windows, no signs in English and each window was 15 people deep. We found are way to a random window where a nice lady spoke English and booked us our overnight sleeper train ticket. We also took it upon ourselves to purchase thermal underwear in preparation for our trip to the Great Wall. It's all glamour here! That night we decided to visit the restaurant at the bottom of our road which we had passed many times. We probably shoud have ventured further for dinner but this one was near and it was cold! Another deciding factor was the fact that having passed a few restaurants down the road, we noticed that everyone had their coats on and in this particular restaurant there were no coats to be seen - ah warmth.

It can become daunting when looking over your menu choices and there are waiting staff looking over your shoulder waiting for you to turn the page so they can point out the popular dishes. We decided not to opt for the sea cucumber or the beef neck and celery (you know how much I hate celery). When Paul asked for his dish, he was told "No, you don't want that one, you won't like it, have this one, it's nice". OK. We'll have that one then. We also liked some of the English translations so we also decided to go for a dish of "spicy louts" which when they turned up did not appear to be wearing a football scarves or drinking cans of Tenants Super but was a rather tasty dish of spicy lotus root. After our ordering experience, we were a bit dubious about what the food was going to be like but our feast of lotus root, sweet and sour spare ribs, eggplant stuffed with chicken in oyster sauce (with a garnish of bacon - which pleased Paul no end) were delicious. Our pot of jasmine tea went down very nicely apart from the presence of the tea lady who would refill your cup everytime you took a sip. In the end I tried to hide my drinking behind my hand, but no, she still spotted me!

THE GREAT WALL
We booked our trip to the Great Wall of China but it turned out we were the only two on it so we had our own private driver and guide. We were the first ones to arrive at the wall so for the first half an hour we had the wall to ourselves which was really special. The pictures, as ever, don't really do the place justice, nor does it really convey just how steep the steps were. The first few wre fine and then we had to keep stopping. The steps where all odd heights as well which didn't help. We got to one of the towers and it was amazing to be on the wall (which incidentally you can't see from the moon). It was humbling to be on such a big and important piece of history and seeing it meander and follow the ridges of the mountains. The original wall which was built over 2000 years ago during the Qin dynasty and was 7000km long and was added to in the Ming dynasty to make it 10000km long which is phenomenal. For Paul, what brought home the purpose of the wall was when the guide stood him at the battlement, pointed and said "That way is Mongolia". Paul had been saving his hip flask of brandy for the Great Wall so had a nip while we stood on the battlements! Despite it being a balmy 2 degrees C, we were very grateful that we had bought the thermal underwear and mum - thank you so much for the hand and feet warmers - they were great!

We also visited the Ming Tombs which were where the Ming Emperors were buried at the foot of a mountain, facing a lake. Very Feng Shui, apparantly. Although they haven't excavated the tombs, which is fine, we have no problem with that so the Ming Tombs we saw was a big hill with trees on it.

As a footnote to the duck story, we went to an excellent restaurant (Xiao Wang's Home Restaurant) and tried the duck again which was delicious and we discovered that we had been conned by the smiley man in the suit. Apparantly it happens a lot where a suited man hangs about outside a nice duck restaurant and tells the hapless tourist that the restaurant is closing but luckily the "sister" restaurant is open and he would be more than happy to take us...mmm that sounds familiar!

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