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Published: March 30th 2011
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I have left out day 3 of my visit to china because of the ridiculous hangover I had from the night out before, it was brilliant on the streets of Beijing in and around the karaoke bars enjoying the talented and less talented acts on offer, I mean seriously one girl singing should be on the X factor she was absolutely brilliant and gave one of the best covers of Beyonce I have ever heard! The day consisted of buying tickets for our journey onwards to Shanghai on Wednesday, we decided to buy the soft class sleeper train, there are six of us so 4 can have their own cabin which will probably be the three girls and Dave, leaving me and Tinman together in a cabin with two seats, the automated ticket machine seemed to suggest that the tickets were being bought quick time so those two seats will probably go. Who knows who will get them, but the security and a more comfortable bed means that the £73 we paid is money well spent.
Day 4 started early again, but after the previous day of purchasing train tickets with a hangover in Beijing’s main train station and the huge
language barrier encountered it was a welcome day of sightseeing with a sense of normality (and no headache). We set off for the first temple, with our location in Beijing this walk was only around 15 minutes but allowed us to see the city from a new direction as we have only headed out towards Tiananmen and the main train station. We walked as I said for around 15 minutes, our tour guide knew this route very well we would have had no idea without him as a group. When we arrived at the Confucian temple and Guozijian Museum we were greeted with crazy buildings covered in great colours and history, it was a great opening to the day it shows how religion and major city can go about their way in a sort of harmony. Inside is relatively small and leaving enough time to see all sights inside takes around 40 minutes, but there is a small museum which has numerous exhibits to see mostly in Chinese but there are some with English translations, they are very interesting and provide a backdrop to the establishment.
Moving on from the first temple we visited we turned left and headed
towards the Yonghe Gong temple, now this place was fantastic and I was amazed at how many people actually visited this place. There were thousands of tourists but the huge majority of the people inside were religious Chinese people. The smell of incense was prominent and dominated the air, all around there were shops selling this stuff, it’s a nice smell but can be over powering but you can’t take away the importance of burning the incense at certain stages of the religious process. Within this temple there were monks patrolling going about their duties, it was a cool experience seeing monks so comfortable with so many people swamping their place of worship and living quarters. You could see how emotionally attached some people were becoming by visiting this place, it was a moving experience seeing so many people worship and the customs attached to this. It was a nice change of scenery from the previous days of visiting the more built up areas of the city and changing this for the open and very green places of worship.
From the second temple we proceeded to get the train from the nearby station to the Temple of Heaven, now
the subways I have to say are fantastic. They are very frequent, clean and well managed, it is easy to obtain tickets from the automated machines because they have an English option however it is a little confusing if you have no idea which line your station falls on. The fare is 2 yuan which is extremely cheap compared to English equivalents and the English trains in comparison are rubbish to the Beijing subway. Although it is a squeeze at times on the train there is no hassle between fellow commuters although there are gazes as the English travellers board the trains. The temple itself was fantastic, it’s a brilliant walk along the park way seeing the architecture and amazing colours that drape the fronts of the buildings. There were people along this walk playing cards and other Chinese style games, I don’t know what games these were but they were cool to watch the sheer pace of the game, compared to England I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people enjoying themselves without a beer in hand.
After we had spent close to two hours inside the actual park containing the temple we decided to get a
cab back to our hotel, we were warned previously to make sure the meter in the cab is running and not to accept fixed fare prices this saved us close to a fiver in English money compared to our friends who opted for a fixed price. I think the Chinese taxi drivers see English people as a £ sign or a $ sign and think they can make a quick buck or two. Be very careful and always go on the meter it’s so cheap and often a very quick way of getting to where you want to, although we did find it hard to actually find a taxi that knew were we wanted to go, so always get a card from reception with the address on it in the Chinese language.
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