Beijing: mouth caps, umbrella's and trycicles

Hi guys! Thanks for the comments. It might seem like it doesn't work, but somehow I have to accept them before they appear, and still 2 comments seem to not appear, sorry, I don't know why... But I got them, thanks!

Arrival in Beijing
So, now I'm in Beijing! My flight was ok, there was a little delay in Paris due to an electricity fallout, but I still got my flight in London. On the way to China I had an amazing view over Siberia with the sun going under! (Varvara, I'll definitely come to visit you some day, it looks great! Maybe in summer though ;) ) So then at 9h30 Chinese time (3h30 Dutch/French time) I arrived, after being tested for the pork flue... I only slept for half an hour in the plane (I guess the adrenaline), so I was quite tired. But I managed to find the train to Beijing centre at once, and the metro was quite like Paris so I got quite optimisted and decided that Beijing was going to be a piece of cake. A bit too early maybe... I decided to take the metro to Tiananmen Square to look around, find a place to sit down and look in my lonely planet for a good hotel. When I got out of the metro I was struck by the amount of polution (or actually, what I thought was polution). I could barely see the other side of the square due to a thick mist. I already read in the lonely planet that being in Beijing was like smoking 70 cigarettes a day, but this seemed extreme... Two other things that I noticed were the amount of people with mouth caps and girls with umbrella's (to avoid getting darker).

Trycicles
I looked for a nice hotel and I found one in the lonely planet. Someone wrote down the name for me in Chinese so I could ask a cab to drive me there (I decided that the Chinese people were also very helpfull, as opposed to some Maroccan people in Marrakech that would have asked me money for this... Offcourse, just a few minutes later I met someone who woke me up from my dream completely... ). A man on a tricycle (bike with a seat on the back for tourists) asked me if he could bring me somewhere. I showed him the card and he put up 3 fingers, so I thought 3 yen (about 30 cents; metro is 2 yen, but taxi is 12 yen plus 2 yen per km). I got on his tricycle, and he drove me to a bit of a dodgy place (looked like a construction site) and said we arrived. It didn't seem very obvious to me, but I decided to just pay him and to sort it out myself. When I wanted to give him 3 yen he said no (well, obviously he didn't speak a word English, but he made claer that is was not ok). He showed me a little note saying 300.... Seriously, it felt like Marrakech all over again; I guess the first day in a foreign country you just have to be swindled. I told him that I was not going to pay him 300 yen (30 euro's) for a 10 minutes bike-ride, that that was a ridiculous wage in Europe, let alone in China. And that he should have shown me that note in the beginning. Offcourse he didn't understand a word of it. And as I only saw one other person in this not very nice street I decided to make a comprimise. I gave 150, shouted a bit and then I left.

Tired and frustrated as I was I set down somewhere untill another tricycle man came to me (this time with a motor). Offcourse I didn't trust him any bit. But he kept persisting, and in the end I agreed that he would bring me to the hotel for 30 yen, I had to get there someway... This time he brought me to the north of the city (the other brought me to the South), to a big 3-star hotel... I talked with the hotel-staff and they were really nice and one could speak quite well English. So he translated for me. The trycicle man said that he could bring me there for another 30 yen (he also said that the other guy translated wrongly and that this trip was actually 50 yen), but I told him to just leave it and go. Then I wanted to walk away, but the hotel-guy called me back and told me that his friend was a taxi-driver and offered me to bring me to my hotel for free because the other guy was such an ass (well, this weren't the excact words obviously). First I didn't believe him, but as I still didn't know were to go I decided to give my confidence in humanity another change. And this time the guy set me off in front of the hotel! He was really nice and tried to speak some words in English. I tried to tell him in my best Chinese that he was really nice and I think he understood 'cause he looked quite happy. I thanked him, asked for his card and finally went to my hotel.

Offcourse, the rooms were all booked... Luckily the people in the hotel were also really nice and told me another hotel two blocks away. The street is very nice, with lots of little bars, restaurants and shops, and on walking distance from the centre! So I went to the other hotel, the rooms looked nice and not too expensive, so I stayed there, had to find a bank to get more money as I already spend quite some on those stupid tricycle men, and then I could finally sleep for a bit!

What I learned from this whole story; don't trust any tricycles! Taxi's are ok...

After two hours of sleep, I got up to pick Dian up from the airport! (She arrived in the evening at 22h.) I had to wait a while for her because she filled in that she had a cold and therefore they kept her for some more pig flue tests... I was really happy to not be alone anymore, my first day had been a bit of a challenge... So we went home to our hotel, had a thee and then a very very good sleep!

Day 2; forbidden city
Next day everything seemed to be better; the clouds which I thought were pollution turned out to be just clouds as they were dissapeared the next day. We walked to the centre, took an alternative route through the hutong (little streets with little houses were, I guess, the poorer Beijing people live) and arrived at the Jingshan Park; a nice park with a lot of local people singing, dancing and playing. We climed the (artificial) hill for a nice view over the forbidden city (the very centre of Beijing around which everything is build). Then we went to the forbidden city. This palace is a huge cluster of ancient Chinese builings from the Ming and Qing dynasties. We walked around there for a view hours and still haven't seen all of it. I wanted to place some pictures here, but offcourse I took the wrong cable so maybe next time... Anyway, it was really beautifull, but I won't bore you with a whole description.

At 17h the forbidden city closed down and we decided we wanted to try the famous Peking duck. We found a nice restaurant in the lonely planet, but after searching for half an hour we realised that the restaurant didn't exist anymore; some buildings were tore down (it looked like there was a fire, but it might also just have been because of the Olympics, we don't know...). Anyway, our restaurant was gone so we had to find another one. We finally ended up in some little place where with a lot of Chinese people, so we figured it should be good. However, there was no English menu, so we just pointed at some things at the Chinese menu and it turned out that we made an excellent choice with really typical northern-Chinese dishes (one spicy noodle soup, one sweet soup (I think with soya) that worked really well against a burning mouth from the spices, one noodle dish with cucumber and tofu and a filled breadlike thing.)
After this we went to a shopping mall just to look around for a bit, well honestly we wanted to see if the H&M has the same clothes as in Europe, but the H&M was still under construction, instead we found a little concert of some famous (it looked like at least) Chinese popstar (KIMI???), with some teenager girls screaming at the sides, quite funny to see. Then we took the metro home (in the metro they actually showed this little concert on the screen; what a coincidence...) and we went to sleep. And then we arrive already at today, sitting in an internet cafe.

I think we will stay a few more days in Beijing to see the Mao Memorial hall, the Summer Palace, the Chinese Wall, the Ming tombs and maybe some other historical sites and the Olympic stadium. Then we are thinking about going to a little town where the Chinese wall ends at the sea (Shanhaiguan) and then we'll see.

I see that I already wrote an immense story, I hope I didn't bore you... If I did here a short summary; my first day was not the best, I won't trust any trycicles anymore here. Besides that, the Chinese people seem to be very kind and helpfull. But their English is worse as I expected (especially from Beijing), so I wished I worked a bit harder on my Chinese... But at least now I have a reason to work on it ;) Beijing itself is also not as Western as I expected (I expected it more to be like a huge modern city like Manhattan but then with Chinese adverts everywhere; but I guess that's Hong Kong). But it's a nice city with lots to see.

Oh and I have a Chinese number now, you can reach me on +8613401162263. Calling to Europe is not too expensive during the day, but after 21h (15h EU time) it gets 5 times as expensive... I don't know how much it is to send messages, but we'll notice... The number of the hotel is +86-010-64013961, one girl speaks good English, the rest not really...

Well, that's it for now. I'm not sure when we will go to an internet cafe again, I think in about a week... See you!

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