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Published: June 11th 2008
And so we've reached our last stop....
I was excited about visiting Beijing especially with the countdown to the Olympics well underway. However when we arrived I was surprised that this was the host city for one of the biggest sporting events in the world. With only 80 days to go the city was still like a construction site. A lot of the old buildings in the hutongs were being pulled down and being replaced with new, modern buildings. New hotels, restaurants etc. were in the process of being built everywhere. The strange thing was that many of the construction sites were not closed and members of the public could just wander through- health and safety regulations obviously not in existence! The city itself is also very polluted- like all the other big cities in Asia. I wouldn't like to try and run a marathon in these conditions.
The city is really busy and the traffic is terrible. We found the language barrier very difficult. Thankfully the subway station signs included both Chinese and English so this became our favourite mode of transportation. Taxis were a nightmare even when we had the address written down in Chinese! If I
was to return to China and visit anywhere outside the major cities I think I would have to have an English speaking guide. All that said, we enjoyed our time in Beijing and definitely saw plenty of interesting things.
On our first day in Beijing we visited Jingshan Park, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. The Forbidden City is very impressive but to fully appreciate it you probably need to be well informed about Chinese history and the Ming and Qing dynasties. Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world. It's really nice and would be a great place to soak up the atmosphere of the city. Unfortunately the day we visited was very windy and the dust from all the construction was really bad.
The following day we took a day trip and visited the Ming Tombs (the burial place of 13 of the 16 Ming emperors), the Great Wall of China at Badaling, a traditional Chinese tea house and a traditional Chinese Medicine Centre. The Ming tombs are cool- they reminded me of burial places of the Pharohs in Egypt. They are fairly well maintained now and alot of the paraphenalia that was buried
with the emperors is on display. These guys certainly had everything they could possibly need for the afterlife buried with them! Once an emperor was buried the person who closed the door on the tomb was executed as he knew how to open the tomb! Sounds bad, but apparently it was a great honour.
The Great Wall of China stretches for over 6,400 km and was built to protect the country from invaders mainly from Mongolia. Sections of the wall are open to the public and we visited the section at Badaling about 70km northwest of Beijing. This section of the wall has been largely reconstructed for tourists, but it was still good to see. I was surprised at how steep it was- it was a tough climb up to the top!
We finished the day off with vists to the tea house and the medicine centre. Both were entertaining in their own way, but it was obvious the aim was to sell tea and medicine to the tourists! We didn't succumb to the pressure.
The silk market in Beijing was quite an adventure.... We spent a couple of hours here doing some hard bargaining. The market
itself was probably the best we saw throughout Asia and we bought enough to fill our backpacks for the trip home. It was great to replace the well worn clothes of the last 9 months!
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View of the Forbidden City from 
