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Published: October 5th 2008
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Confucius says - A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
As we rolled into Beijing you could see it was not a city suffering from an Olympic hangover but bright, new and pristine looking. The city was bustling with people as it was one of China's National holidays everyone was in good spirits, they are a nation of people who look very proud of their capital and quite rightly so.
Our first impression felt as though we were on the film set of Bladerunner as street announcements were broadcast loudly throughout the high rise city and little battery powered police vehicles that looked like golf buggies whizzed around. Once you scratch away at the surface the old traditions and way of life are still to be found. One minute you can be passing designer shops and glossy department stores and the next stumbling across alleyways selling traditional street food; tasty morsels include starfish, snake, locusts and scorpions which incidentally were still wriggling on their skewers awaiting their deep fried fate, it does not get much fresher than that; we would have indulged had the vendor not got dirty finger nails! We tried some other delicious delicacies that were non insect based.
Not far from the modern shopping
Still Smiling!
this time on the Great Wall district you come across a world that could not feel further away from new modern Beijing where people still live a traditional way of life. The hutongs are a maze of alleyways made up of rows of low rise buildings in courtyards, we mooched around for hours taking in the sights, sounds and smells.
The 29th October will forever be known as the "The Great Wall debacle"! We booked a tour with the hotel it read "An all day visit to see the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, this is the quiet section of the wall that is rarely visited by tourists". We were picked up by our guide and directed to a minibus, we collected five more people, which was nice, the more the merrier to share our memorable day. After setting off and a debrief of facts about the wall from our guide we took a sharp turn off the main road and pulled into a busy coach park, at this point alarm bells were ringing as ladies approached our minibus with walkie talkies looking officious. To our horror we realised we had arrived at the Jade factory tour! After a quick discussion in the back
of the minibus we decided we would not be moved, it would be fair to say that our guide had not had to deal with a mutiny before, a phone call followed to her boss and we got the all clear to continue on our way. Finally, The Great Wall, we had arrived and hitched a ride to the top on a chairlift, getting off without skis or boards was a kinda strange feeling. We set off to conquer the wall in all its smoggy glory; when you see the wall snaking its way over the mountains it is hard to imagine how it would ever be built today nevermind back in the 12th century; it is a truly amazing feat of engineering. Feeling quite pleased with ourselves for wriggling out of the Jade tour we thought great we will get to spend longer on the wall.....but no we were told we had 1.5 hours at which point The Great Wall tour ended with a toboggan ride to the bottom, a little bit of Disney in China, I'm sure Mao would have approved. Next stop lunch - great we were starving. Drove to our lunch destination and piled off the
Snack street.....
A market for the locals minibus to be approached by another officious lady, damn we had been tricked at our weakest point, hungry and thirsty; we were promptly taken on a tour around a ceramic workshop and then into the obligatory souvenir shop, at long last it was time for lunch. One more stop to go the Olympic village. 1t was an amazing sight to see the vastness of the village, the Bird's Nest and the Aquacube, it is just a shame we had to see it from so far away due to a security fence that was surrounding it; to access the area you needed a ticket to do a tour, gone were the romantic images of it being the people's games. Next stop home or so we thought, one minute down the road our guide received a phone call which was then passed to "The People's minibus republic" representative who was advised that we would be obliged to go to the tea tasting tour that was part of the days ever increasing jamboree. We learned about tea for different ailments and the benefits of using a pee-pee boy! Rob the non-tea drinker found it as useful as a chocolate teapot, which incidentally they
and the snacks
.....for the tourists had none of. Surely next stop must be home? We never believed it until we closed the hotel door, still half expecting the manager of the jade factory to make an appearance. All in all the wall was amazing and the rest was a storm in a teacup!
We cannot fail to mention the smog which covered the city for 5 days while we were there like a heavy layer of fog, it is something you hear about but another thing to experience. The other slightly daunting aspect of Beijing is the challenge of crossing the roads, even though the little green man is beckoning you to cross and the traffic policeman with his whistle is also encouraging you this seems to make no difference as the traffic continues regardless; the fact that the traffic police never step foot on the road is a bit of a giveaway as to what's in store.
Beijing was an amazing city with great food, we ate the most amazing roast duck which took forty minutes but is was worth the wait, it was carved in front of us and every piece of the duck was then served including a item that
Power to the People
four of these statues surround Mao's Mausoleum we found hard to identify, we realised after a bit of prodding and poking that it was the head cut in half, after watching the locals for tips on how to consume it Rob was right at home sucking away at the brains. The people were particularly friendly for such a large city, many insisted on having their photo taken with us, when this happened on numerous occasions in Tiananmen Square we thought they must be mistaking us for someone else either that or it must have been the beard, Rob's not Kirstin's. We toured the Forbidden City (awesome), the Summer Palace (beautiful) and Drum/Bell tower amongst lots of other things and we could have still found loads more to do. One thing that did strike us about Beijing was how green a city it is with its parks and tree lined streets; old trees were even poking out of the houses in the Hutongs.
We have thoroughly enjoyed Beijing and could have easily spent longer exploring but it is time to move on, our next stop is Xi'an arriving by overnight train, so it's goodbye Mr Mao, hello the Qin.
LOL
K&R
xx
ps Ren you
must come back and visit I am sure you would not recognise the place.
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Ren
non-member comment
Beijing missing it!
Absolutely missing it after seeing all your pics, deffo the ones from the Hutongs, need to go back soon! Have a great time at X'ian another miracle place! Tent 3 must be finished there now. R xx