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Published: October 30th 2011
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Photo 6
Being a local on the overnight train. Rocking the socks and thongs. Reading week is akin to a mid-semester break where lectures and tutorials do not run for the week, allowing the students to 'read and catch up'. For a large majority of exchange students, this is an opportunity to go abroad (well even further).
As usual, details of my trip were only finalised afew days beforehand and in leaving it so late resulted in a change of plans because seats for the train were already booked out for the whole month.
So here goes the story.
My original plan was to go to Tibet for the week, however that plan fell through. In planning for Tibet I ended up with a China Visa, so I decided to take advantage of that by going to Beijing. Other exchangers were mainly going around SE Asia, but being Australian, that area is quite popular and accessible, so I decided to go north and see the capital.
The trip begins with a 26 hour overnight train ride from HK to BJ, and it was actually pretty enjoyable. Even though I was booked into the high hard sleeper, which meant having to be acrobat to get to the top of the triple bunk, I
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The courtyard of my hostel. was fortunate enough to be in the same carriage as other students and english speaking travellers. Additionally, an American who had just moved to BJ, was able to give tips on where to go and give better local descriptions than my printed out google translate page (I had a selection of random words of chicken, vegetable, where to?, how much etc). This was then followed by somehow playing a drinking game involving cards with chinese people in the deluxe carriage. It was not a big night as I was in bed by 2am. By the time I awoke the following morning, I did some reading and stared out the window, the train had arrived in BJ. I was fortunate enough that my accomodation was in the same general direction as the others and hence the American was able to guide us to the metro stops rather than taking an apparently complicated bus system.
Walking out on to the street/plaza of the train station, I see my first sight of BJ. People occupying space with bags full of stuff, national guards walking in time, undercover guards keeping a look-out, men constantly smoking, men walking up to us letting us know
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Qi-anmen gate that he can take us to our accom (we decline), people talking in their normal shouting voice and walking and shoving you as they walk past.
To cut a long story short, after reaching the destination where I had to split from the others, I kinda got lost. In the end it took me 2 hours to find my hostel, largely because I got lost numerous times. I only had generic directions from the hostel on how to get there and a googlemap prinout that was lacking in street names. I was literally 20 m away from the hostel and then I took a wrong turn. Even asking at a different hostel did not help as I again took a wrong turn. Eventually I found the place just as it got dark. The lesson don't try and take a shortcut, however I did not learn this lesson until later in the week.
The next day a visit to the Forbidden City was on the cards. I thought it was just going to be a couple of large entrances and halls, but my gosh they wern't joking when they said it was a city!!
It was continous stream of gates(
that are multi-story ), 6m high red walls, numerous halls (i.e. one for the king to eat, one to get changed into formal wear, one to address the people, one to punish the people etc). Also the 'coutyards' are massive, at least 80x80 meters in area. After passing through a couple gates, I thought I was in the inner section, but I was surprised to find out that I was stil in the outer section. It had a stange mix of enclosed/ open only to those who are meant to be in the place. You could feel that living in the city would mean that you were of nobelness, but somehow also that there is a different world on the other side of the walls. Even with its importance it isn't an imagnitive place, it's got function, but no form. If I were a princess there wouldn't be much to explore or a place to "get lost in" (but I only went through the main section).
In short form:
After the Forbidden City, there is a park behind it. I felt more comfortable in the park as it finally was a place that had life. It
stil contained halls were the royals would do their royal thing, but there was always something different around the corner. Most notably was there was a hill. At the top you could see the vastness of the Forbidden City but also the North-South axis that BJ is built upon. However the smog was fairly thick so the view wasn't particualry attractive.
By the time evening came round, the pain of constant walking on concerte had taken its toll. Dinner was had at a random street stall where a lady boiled a pre-made soup. It was actually ok.
Next day:
After not being able to ride a bike in Hong Kong, this day was all about the bike. Guide books note the BJ is flat as a pancake, and once again they were right about that! Me also being cheap hired a rather old bike from an old lady. It was great to be able to travel faster than foot and made more exciting due to the constant battle to 'share' the footpath/ road with people, other bike, scooters, motorbikes, scooters carrying people or goods, and then once on the road the cars and buses. Getting
hit was going to happen at some point. But before that happened my chain slipped and literally wedged itself between the frame and the cassette. The back wheel barely moved even when forced and no ammount of pulling would let the chain loose (even when locals help). This resulted having to push the bike back to have it repaired. It was rather horrible as the wheel would make a loud noise and draw even more attention to me esp when I passed other hire stations. Once I got back to the place, the lady offered me another bike but the brakes were no good. Somehow I was able to communicate that I would fix the chain myself (Charades here) and she bought out her toolbox. 3 minutes later the chain was back on its teeth and even got an oil and brake adjustment.
Round 2: As I had lost time with the repair, I decided to head up north to the Olympic Stadium, home of the Bird's Nest and WaterCube. BJ has a North_south axis that the city is based on and then had concentric circles that radiate out and apptly named ring roads.
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