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Published: January 12th 2012
Hello Travel lovers
This edition of our travel blog takes us to the Far East on our first visit to China
We only had a few days in China as we were on our way to Japan but we couldn’t land in Beijing and past up the opportunity to explore the city! We landed at Beijing’s new airport at mid-day and the first thing you notice is the size of the place, its massive! Its so big that when you land you have to take an internal train to the baggage area to collect your bags. The cavernous indoor hall must be the largest structure I have ever been in, and because it was built for the Olympics its all brand new.
Because we only had a couple of days to fit in as much as we could I had arranged for local driver to pick us up from the airport and take us to the Great Wall of China, what an introduction to the country. Our driver John Ping was there to great us and in no time he was whisking us on our way to the Mutianyu Section of the great wall that is just over
an hour north of Beijing.
This section of the wall is a nice mix of the restored and the authentic sections, but we chose this section for the incredible views. The really amazing thing about the wall is not the size but the route that it takes. The builders tried to build it onto of the ridge line of the mountains so it literally stretches over the highest peaks of the mountain range and into the distances. We had just over three hours to hike along the wall which in places is incredible steep, and everywhere you look you get an incredible view of the surrounding mountains and countryside.
We were lucky enough to watch and glorious sunset at the great wall before our driver transferred us to our hostel in central Beijing. Although we were both a little jet lagged after our flight we decided that its best to push through it, so after a quick shower we decided to head out and explore Beijing. We were staying in a lovely Hutong style guest house which is built into an enclosed courtyard just of a very famous area of Beijing called Ghost street.
Tucked behind Beijing's
Inner Dongzhimen Street, "Ghost Street" is from Dongzhimen cloverleaf junction in the east, to Jiaodaokou East Street in the west. Along the street there are more than 150 shops, including 100 restaurants, making it one of the most unique and famous food streets in Beijing. The name of the street is said to derive from Beijing's old "Ghost Fairs". These fairs mainly sold groceries, vegetables and fruit ran from late at night until dawn. The traders' kerosene lamps formed a ghostly sight from which the name "Ghost Fair" derived.
Stretching over one kilometer, this is the only street in Beijing that truly never sleeps. Ghost street is a 24-hour celebration of Chinese cuisine, with hungry patrons arriving anytime from noon to 4am to chow down on the street where some of Beijing's best loved specialties were created. You can sample almost anything here, from Sichuan shuizhuyu and malatang to the rich taste of grilled seafood chuan'er and Peking duck. We did a quick wander up and down the street looking in the windows and enjoying our first real taste of Beijing. The one thing that I instantly notice was the lack of western tourists, we didn't see any, this
is very much a local area. We chose a restaurant based on our unique criteria that is 1) is must be full of local's, and 2) it had a picture menu. We found a place that met our criteria and heading in to sample the local cuisine. We ordered a couple of beers and perused the picture menu looking for a dish that took our fancy. The centre page was taken up by an A4 size photo of what is their speciality dish and it looked scrumptious, so I decided that is what I would have. Louise had a mild concern over what meat it was so I got out the trust lonely planet and started pointing to the mandarin writing in the food section and pointed to beef. I worked my way through all the meats in the book and it appears that it wasn’t any of them, and I was at a bit of a loss. Lucky the waiter was quite a young guy with a smart phone and a translator app so he typed the dish in and translated to English and showed me the screen, it read Dog Hotpot. Erm I am a pretty adventurous eater
but I didn’t really fancy dog!!
I played it safe and we ordered a chicken and a beef dish and some dumplings and other assorted side plus plenty more beers. China is a pretty cheap country to visit (especially compared to Japan) and the whole meal and drink was less than Ten pounds. We had a reasonably early night as we had a big day planned the next day.
We were up early for our one full day of sightseeing in Beijing. We headed to the Temple of Heaven park which is one of the largest parks in Beijing. Because it was still fairly early is was full of people doing there morning Tai chi, as well as playing hacky sack which is like a small bean bag they the kick to each other. The actual temple of Heaven is in the middle of the park and is a lovely temple complex built in 1420 A.D. during the Ming Dynasty to offer sacrifice to Heaven.
The metro system is Beijing got a major upgrade for the Olympics and is very modern and efficient, and cheap, really cheap. One ride on it anyway is just 20 pence. We
use the metro to zip around Beijing as we explored the city. Our next stop was Tiananmen Square in the centre of Beijing. It truly is an impressive sight because of its vastness. Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world. the square is best known in recent memory as the focal point of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, a pro-democracy movement which ended on 4 June 1989 with the declaration of martial law in Beijing by the government and the death of at least hundreds of protesters. Used as a massive meeting place since its creation, its flatness is contrasted by the 38-meter (125 ft) high Monument to the People's Heroes, and the Mausoleum of chairman Mao. It’s a very impressive place and was full of Chinese tourists all of whom seemed as impressed with the place as we were.
The forbidden city leads directly of the square and that was our next stop. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political
center of Chinese government. The local common people were forbidden to enter the city for almost 500 years hence its name. The place is a truly huge and world's largest surviving palace complex and incredibly beautiful. We spent a few hours wandering through it checking out the pavilions and gardens that make it up.
Our wandering hadn’t finished and despite sore feet we entered Jingshan park which is directly behind the forbidden city. The park has the only really hill in Beijing which is built on an incredibly flat plain and once you have hiked to the top you get a glorious 360 degree panoramic view of the city as well as looking directly down into the forbidden city. Jingshan park leads onto Bei lake which is a very famous park in Beijing. Its shores are surrounded by bars and restaurants and in the evening is a very lively area to explore. As it was Christmas day and very cold the lake had frozen over and was packed full of people who were ice skating on it.
By this time out feet felt like they were going to drop off as we had been walking for the best
part of eight hours and it was getting dark, so we headed back to the hostel for a power nap and a couple of beers. That evening we decided to head back to the lake and check out its night life but we were done with walking. So for the princely sum of £1.50 we got a taxi across town back to the park. It’s a totally different place at night, full of people out enjoying themselves and neon bars and restaurants. We had another great meal the did a mini bar crawl checking out the live bands doing a mix of Chinese and western pop music.
Sadly as we had to be up at 5am for our flight to Tokyo we didn’t stay out to late. With very bleary eyes we hauled ourselves out of bed and trudged to the metro in the cold and dark. We got the airport express which took 25mins to get to the airport and cost just over £2. Compare this to the Heathrow express that we got just two days earlier and cost £18 each!!!
Beijing is a great city to visit and we really enjoyed it. It seems to have
two faces, the post Olympic polished exterior with its brand new infrastructure and the typical tourist sites. But you don’t need stray too far from the beaten track to see the other side. How the locals live and a much more authentic Chinese vibe to it which I think I enjoyed the most. Wandering through the parks and the local Hutong areas of the city was a great culture shock and we had a very enjoyable couple of days in Beijing although the city has a long way to go before it can compete with the like of London, Paris or Tokyo which is the next stop on our Far east odyssey.
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Chris and Nikki
Chris
Your great wall pictures are great. When my wife and I went it was a Chinese bank holiday so you couldn't move without bumping into someone.