Great Walls, Temples, and the fascinating culture of Beijing, China!

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It's something we had always talked about, and then the day finally came to go to the continent of Asia! The options for places to visit and things to do are enormous. But one thing was certain, we had to go see the Great Wall of China! So we began our trip in Beijing China, then moved on to South East Asia. I did a lot of research and picked everything carefully, from hotels and activities, to when was the best time to go. We chose to travel there in late September. The weather in Autumn is the best, and it's low season for tourism. Since we were going to be jumping to several other countries and places, we chose to carry all our things in backpacks as carry-ons (to avoid it getting lost on connecting flights.)

Arrival

When we first arrived in Beijing it was already night time, and it was slightly chilly. We left the terminal with our back packs in search of a metered taxi and do our best to communicate where we needed the driver to drop us off. It was a little hard at first. For this reason I always choose to stay near a landmark, so we can use a map and base our location on that point of reference. In this case we were going to be staying near the Drum and Bell Tower in the Hou Hai district. So we pointed to it on the map and showed the driver where we wanted to go. He nodded, then we drove off. We felt a little bit of nervousness and excitement as we passed through the massive city of Beijing. The airport was a 40 minute drive with traffic.

In the Hou Hai district, we were going to be staying in a Hutong. A Hutong is an old quarter with traditional Chinese homes and alleys. At one point Beijing started modernizing itself and knocked down many of these old quarters, so now they are rare and tourism has actually helped preserve them. People take rickshaw tours around the Hutong to get a feel for what old Beijing was like. It was a great experience staying here, we wouldn't have learned what we did about the Chinese culture by staying at the Holiday Inn or Marriot. We experienced what the people do everyday, it was really cool! It was pretty hard to find our guesthouse (The Apricot Tree Hotel) in these old alleys. We crossed paths with an Italian architect who helped us find our guest house the night of our arrival. He had been living in China for 2 years working but was telling us why he wanted to move back to Italy, explaining that China was a hard place to settle into because it's almost impossible to develop friendships with the Chinese. I thought this insight was very interesting, but I took it with a grain of salt. I was happy when he talked about how safe Beijing is, and that we would have nothing to worry about while we walked around day or night.

Day One

After finding the guest house and getting some much needed rest, we woke up the next day with lots of excitement to visit Beijing. We used the metro to get around. The Metro system in Beijing is pretty great and straight forward. We took the blue line around and started our tour of Tianamen Square. This is the largest square in the world, and I kind of got the feeling that Beijing prides itself for doing things BIG and holding BIG records. From the moment we got on the Metro I realized a lot of people were staring at us, in particular me. I had read in my research that the Chinese stare at tourists a lot, like really stare. I wasn't the typical tall foreigner with blonde hair and blue eyes that the Chinese really like to stare at and photograph, but they were still staring at me more than they were staring at Victor. It turned out that they thought I was pretty! They said it several times, and I blushed and thanked them "Xie Xie!" I got a big confidence boost, although I'm generally shy. My husband liked that I was getting so much attention, and he constantly pointed out who and when someone new was looking at me or saying I was pretty 😊

Tianamen square was a quick visit, we simply walked through and passed the long lines that were forming to go inside and see the mausoleum of chairman Mao. The lines were so long that they wrapped around the square several times, mainly these were Chinese tourists. Next, we were going to visit the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace museum, which also holds the title for BIGGEST palace complex ever. It was the palace of many dynasties and emperors in history, and as the title implies, was forbidden for anyone to enter without special permission from the emperor. It was built in a special way that made it more difficult to climb over, but anyone who was caught trying would be killed. It's truly a beautiful complex inside with lots of pretty decoration and gold colors, gold is an imperial color. It's also super huge, you can walk and walk all day and still not get to see everything in one day. We aimed for 2 hours but stayed for 3. My biggest advice is to try to walk in the opposite direction from the large crowds and tour groups so you can get better pictures and also the crowds will overwhelm you and often push you as they are trying to pass you.

(Note: A month after we visited Beijing, Tiananmen square was hit by a car-terrorist attack, which killed 5 and injured 38. Take care in large tourist areas)

Good Advice:

Once you are done walking the Forbidden City, walk across the street into Jingshan park, you need a couple yaun to enter and once you pay go up the hill and you will be rewarded with stunning 360 views of all of Beijing. My favorite is the panorama of the Forbidden City complex, but equally as stunning is the Bei Hai park with it's glimmering lake.

Here's a scam you need to be fully aware of when you are walking around these sites. It's called the tea-house scam. A Chinese student will approach you and ask if they can practice English with you or if you'd like to see their art work. As charming as they may be, be very careful, cause they will get you to continue the conversation at a tea house of their choosing and before you know it you will be charged an arm and a leg for that tea! And before you realize what hit you, you fell for the tea scam. You may be thinking to yourself: "duhh... I would never fall for that", but it's alarming how many people report on travel message boards that they've been fooled. Go ahead and search for the "Beijing tea scam" online and see how many hits you get! We were approached by a nice lady in Jingshan park about joining a free tea ceremony, as soon as I heard the words "free tea" I grabbed Victor by the arm and we sped away. Nothing is "free" and if it sounds too good to be true, it is. Inform yourself of all the scams before you visit Beijing.

One more scam to look out for is that you aren't getting fake money. Apparently there are counterfeit Chinese Yuan currencies in circulation. If you get change back from a store, or take out money from the ATMs, double check to make sure all your bills are real. How do you check to make sure they are real? There are actually a ton of YouTube videos explaining how to detect the fake ones. It's hard to explain, but you are supposed to feel the texture of the hair on Chairman Mao and it should be rough. There are a couple other tricks to make sure they are real, also make sure you are getting the right amount of change back every time you use the Yuan. Keep a cheat sheet money conversion with you so you know how much you are spending of your own currency. We did a pretty good job with it, but ended up with 1 small bill that was fake. So I kept it as a souvenir for my scrap book.

Culturally the Chinese spit... like A LOT. They spit so often and so loudly that you can even hear it from your hotel room, even with the windows closed! But we had informed ourselves about this custom really well before the trip... we knew we'd encounter this everywhere we'd go in China, so we just ignored it. You probably won't get used to. Bottom line: It's gross, but since you can't escape it, just think happy thoughts and ignore it!

All that site seeing will develop your appetite. We walked the rest of the way to the Hou Hai distric and found a nice spot near the lake to have lunch. We sat at one of the patio resteraunts and ate our first Chinese dumplings and fried rice, it was delicious! We also got a chance to people watch and from that patio we saw a lot of interesting characters. It's surprising how much you can learn just from people watching, like peeking into stranger's daily life. Rickshaws carried people away leading them to the charming hutongs. I really like the Hou Hai district and would definitely recommend everyone go there when they're in Beijing for a nice relaxing stroll and good food, especially the area around the lake.

Day Two

On our second day it started much like the first. We got up and got ready for the day's site seeing. We decided to take it easy and visit the Lama Temple, which is a very important temple for Chinese Buddhists. According to the map it was walking distance from where we were staying, so we walked along side traffic and then through some pretty parks. In the parks, we discovered that there are these unique wooden/plastic devices used for stretching and exercising, which I loved! On this walk we also noticed more and more that older people stayed with the children. We wondered if they were retired grandparents that were babysitting, or if they were the actual parents. I wasn't very prepared to see kids randomly peeing on the side of the roads though. Personally it made me feel uncomfortable mainly because I don't think it's safe for little girls OR boys to be pulling their pants down in public and peeing right there in front of people. They are exposing their "private body parts" to people who could mean them harm, people like pedophiles and kidnappers/rapist. Maybe I'm just being over protective, or maybe I watch too much news. Either way, this is a cultural aspect of China, so be prepared to see that!

As we continued our walk to the Lama Temple we saw many little shops selling essence. I didn't realize until we got there that the people of the Buddhist religion use it to pray inside the Lama Temple. I loved seeing the prayer and religious aspect of the Chinese culture. I learned that you take the ensence and burn it, and then you kneel and place the essence to your forehead and pray. The whole complex is very large with many beautifully decorated Buddha monuments and sacred statues, some of which were forbidden to photograph. There were bright colors of red and yellow everywhere. This temple also houses the largest sandal-wood Buddha ever at 80 feet high, there's even a Guinness World Record certificate plaque in front to prove it. In one of the halls, 60 monks were coming together and suddenly fell into a chanting pattern. It was pretty random to us at first, but more and more people were coming to see the chanting monks, and we realized we were actually witnessing something very important. We stood by quietly, listening. These are special monks who live at the Lama temple and have daily prayers here, they were going through a whole chanting routine and it was quite mesmerizing. I later found out that the Dalai Lama is actually head of the sect here.

After visiting the Lama Temple, we went in search for the perfect roast duck. Luckily Victor remembered the name of a very famous resteraunt, one that was shown on the Anthony Bourdain "No Reservations" episode in Beijing. It's called the Liqun Roast Duck Restaurant. And funny enough, you DO need reservations to eat here lol It turns out this place was also visited by ambassadors, political leaders, famous singers and actors, like Jet Li. But what was even more shocking is that its literally a hole in the wall! It was pure luck that we found it because it didn't look like a restaurant at all. It looked more like the back entry of a public kitchen on a crumbling side street. And the inside was just as strange. Everything was very old and falling apart, there were even cob webs hanging from the light fixtures. Either way, you have to respect a place that is known for its delicious food and not for its elaborateness, and the old aspect of it just adds to its charm. When we got the roast peking duck it came in sections. First there were celery sticks, little vegie snacks, and then came the duck which was carved right in front of us by the chef. You are supposed to roll it into a tortilla and eat it with dipping sauce. It was juicy and aaaaaamazing! No wonder this place is famous... so glad we found it!

After purchasing some traditional souvenirs, we took the metro down to a place referred to as "Ghost Street." This is known as the "place to be seen" in Beijing. Cars even double park to get in. What it is, is a long street full of restaurants which are lit up by beautiful traditional red and green lanterns and flashy digital lights. The ladies hosting at these restaurants wear traditional Chinese silk garments, and it gets packed at night with the very well dressed part of society. Some of these places were blasting club music to get your attention. I think most of the people were shocked to see us there, it's frequented mainly by the locals.



Day Three & the Race to The Great Wall of China!

Upon returning to our guest house that night, we got some really sad news. It was being shut down and investigated because of some problem with the owner's license to operate a hotel/guest house. The police were detaining him while they sorted it all out, which would take weeks! It was so bizzare considering it was one of the best reviewed guest houses listed on Tripadvisor and Agoda for the past 2 years, we had no idea there would be an issue like this! We didn't have much time to think so we ultimately decided to stay at a youth hostel that was right down the street. It wasn't that bad, Victor actually really liked it. You need to go with the flow when you're traveling and these things happen. The only thing that worried us was that there was no way to get in touch with the owner, who had booked our last minute tour of the Great Wall with a small private group to see the Mutianyu side (the remote side we were looking forward to seeing). So we came up with a Plan B to do it ourselves, and visit the Badaling side of the Great Wall by train instead. We had basically been going everywhere on our own anyway, so at first it wasn't a big deal.

BUT to our dismay... It was rough day. It was one of the hardest travel experiences we've ever had. Not many people decide to visit the Great Wall by train, on their own, with no tour group... at the very last minute. We were pretty much the only foreigners at the station (although Victor remembers there being a couple more foreigners), and NOTHING was in English. The workers only spoke Mandarin, so we did a lot of pointing and guessing as to what train ticket we needed. There were trains going to Tibet at this station... imagine if they misunderstood us and gave us a ticket to Tibet! That thought was scary. We had nothing to lose, so we just went for it. The race to The Great Wall of China was on! After an hour train ride through the city and out to the beautiful mountains where we saw glimpses of the Wall, we finally arrived at the Great Wall train station. We ran out in search for entrance tickets but that took a long time too because there were hardly any signs telling us where to go and no one there spoke English. Worst of all, the workers there didn't seem like they wanted to help us, just annoyed we were there. So we relied mainly on other tourists that spoke English and knew more than us to help us and point us in the right direction...eeeh!

It was a little crazy, but when we finally reached the top of The Great Wall we let out a sigh of relief. Here was the reason we had flown all this way for. The Wonder of the World, The Great Wall of China! Yes, finally! It was so great, I thanked the heavens we made it safely. We dedicated 3 hours to walking the steep steps and taking lots and lots of pictures. We were worried that because this was the closest section to Beijing it would be packed, but it looked like most of the crowds had gotten there early and had left right around the time we arrived. It reminded me of the time we reached Machu Picchu, which was in the late afternoon when everyone was going back to take the train to Cusco.

We took our time on the Great Wall, and really tried to take it all in, absorb the grandeur of it all. While we took pictures we also kept pausing to really look at it. We kept thinking how cool it was that we were here, and that we made it all this way on our own. The mountains surrounding the wall were gorgeous, and the cascading effect of the wall going up and down was just breath taking. I kept repeating in my head a famous Chinese proverb/phrase I had once read: "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man". I also kept thinking about the history of this place, and how the Chinese had built it during the course of many centuries and many different dynasties to keep the nomadic Mongols away and all other intruders, but it still ended up being breached at one point or another. A lot of people died in its construction, due to harsh work conditions. That part must be very hard for the Chinese to accept, since it was their ancestors who paid the price with their lives in order for this Great Wall to exist.

It eventually dawned on us that we had no idea what time the Great Wall park was closing, and we had hardly seen any people in a while. We started looking for the official exit, but again, there weren't many signs or directions around in English. The sun was setting, so we had to quicken our pace and get the heck out of there before we were closed in at this world wonder. The race OUT of the Great Wall was just as frantic as the arrival! We sped down a row of stairs, which felt like it took us 10 years to go down, and finally after much confusion we got to the exit. There were only a few official workers left, closing the gates and the surrounding gift shops. Holy cow, that was a close call! We got back to the train station but no one was there, the next train was coming really late at night... so we looked for other people that were in our same situation (and there were a few) and negotiated a shared ride back to the city. It was a crazy day! But everything worked out in the end. One hop on and off the metro, and we were back having a meal near our hostel. Victor ordered noodles and I ordered an egg soup, something hot to calm our nerves lol! We had an early flight the next day to go to our next Asian country, Thailand, and we were really looking forward to it.

Conclusions!

In the end, we had an amazing time in China. It's an experience we learned so much from and that we will never ever forget. The language barrier proved to be a challenge, but we thought the Chinese were very nice. This is an amazing country that we hardly scratched the surface of! We still had so much to see, but sadly not enough time. If I ever came back I'd love to visit Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Chendu to see the Pandas. There are Pandas at the Beijing Zoo... but I boycotted going in since it has a reputation for keeping their animals in really sad, small, and dirty conditions, which is horrible and obviously not good.

Consider traveling here only if you can face the challenge of it culturally... Yes, China is a challenge! So many times I have read that people leave China unhappy... that the culture was either "too difficult or too strange" or that the Chinese attitude is "too dry". My verdict is that I loved it all, and I'm glad they are different and do things their own way, what fun would it be if we were all the same? There are a ton of things I loved about the culture. Like the random dancing/exercise the ladies did in the parks, and tai chi. I love that Beijing is relatively safe, especially to walk around at night. Then there's the cool hot water fountains in public areas so that people can warm their Ramon noodle containers. Yeah the spitting is gross, but who cares? I mean, I'm sure we do things that are obnoxious to foreigners too! lol Yes the squat toilets are difficult to take at first, but you are just visiting, so just accept the differences. There's also this misconception that most of the Chinese speak English. Victor and I hardly encountered anyone who could speak English, so be warned, you need to learn some basic words or take a Mandarin phrase book with you. Even the lady at the "touristy souvenir shop" that encounters foreigners every day didn't speak English. So this will go a long way: Nihao is hello. Xie Xie is Thank you. Boaqian is excuse me/sorry. Shi is Yes, Bushi is no. And Zaijian is goodbye!!

Zaijian! 😊

Thanks for reading!

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Photos

Beautiful Colors
Lama Temple

Artsy
At Lama Temple

A Clean squat toliet.. yes I had to use these!
... trust me, most of these were too awful to photograph!

Comments

[sam]

traveller
such a lovely sharing

[jim]

Really nice sharing!