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Published: January 7th 2007
Beijing - Part 1 of 2
August 20 - 25, 2006
Coming back to Asia after being in Australia and New Zealand for 9 weeks was a shock to our system. Amy had been looking forward to returning to Asian food and prices for awhile and although the prices did not fail to disappoint we never found our groove with Chinese food. We believe that to find the best Chinese food you probably need to be with someone who speaks Chinese. And the Chinese do seem to enjoy their food. Compared to our other Asian destinations we saw more than a few tubby paunches in Beijing (largely because in the heat men walk around with their shirts pulled up like Daisy Duke might).
Beijing is an enormous city with 15 million people who, judging from the stares directed at our blue-eyed Amy, have never seen a fair person before. The whole city is preparing for the 2008 Olympics so there is construction everywhere and many people are learning English. We have heard that the government is banning industry exhaust as well as people from using their private automobiles for as much as 3 months prior to the start of
the Olympics in order to clear the air pollution (which is noticeably terrible). During our almost 4 weeks in China we saw a blue sky probably twice and our eyes, lungs and noses can attest to the amount of grit in the air.
Sunday
The first readjustment we faced was getting used to the rooms in Asia again. Our hotel, the Far East International Hotel, was about the same quality we found in Vietnam but the price was about 3 times as much. We had such fantastic, comfortable rooms in New Zealand and Australia (that were fantastic values compared to similar rooms in America) that it was hard to readjust to an unsatisfactory shower, TV with only Chinese stations, and twin beds.
We arrived at our hotel about 8:30 in the morning after a long night of flying and a pleasant layover at the shining city that is the Singapore airport. We were so exhausted that we napped until around 3. We showered and headed out to wander the bustling streets near our hotel. The neighborhood is in one of the few remaining hutongs, defined as a “narrow alleyway” but one that resembles a slice of Times
Square, in Beijing which is a nice way to observe local life. Walking around there were many people out for a Sunday night and we noted again the difference between America on a Sunday night and pretty much the rest of the world that we have seen. Whereas most Americans hibernate on Sunday night by watching TV and getting ready to face the work week, in other countries people are out like it is a Friday night. Whether they are soaking up the last bit of the weekend or if with a 7-day work week Sunday is no different from any other night the people, mostly in family groups, are out in force.
We had dinner at a place in our hutong that we selected because it was filled with a lot of Chinese people rather than backpackers. Although it had a large Chinese menu with pictures, the English menu was much smaller and so we ordered pork dumplings, Beijing duck, stir fried broccoli and jasmine tea. We had not had a lot of quality vegetables in our diet since leaving Asia due to the cost so we ate the broccoli like it was popcorn. The dinner was good
although we discovered duck is no more appealing to us in China than it is in America. It is such a greasy meat, although it is much better wrapped up in a pancake and drenched with plum sauce (what isn’t?). After dinner we explored the area in the opposite direction from our hotel before retiring.
Monday
Our hotel had a relatively expensive breakfast buffet which we never tried, opting instead for the delicious street food that could be had for breakfast. This morning we had 10 dumplings for 50 cents and we learned the first of our Chinese food lessons - street food in China is some of the best you will find. After breakfast we spent some time at an internet café before heading to Tian’anmen Square. The internet café at the edge of the square would prove a reliable resting place near the sights and a break from the heat all week. We walked around Tian’anmen Square, a massive, barren slab of concrete that covers 40 hectares, but did not go into any of the museums adjacent to the square. The Great Hall of the People (Congress), Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the
Revolution all offer propaganda excursions that paled in the shadow of the Forbidden City, Mao’s Tomb, and the perfect people watching of the square itself. Tian’anmen is great for people watching because there are families crawling all over, posing for pictures in front of the national flag and the various sights.
From Tian’anmen we walked to the Temple of Heaven, originally constructed in 1420 and considered to be the high point of Ming design. The temple was the spiritual ceremonial and symbolic center of China for five centuries. The two kilometer walk from Tian’anmen along Yongdingmennei was supposed to be through an interesting shopping district but, like much of the city, appears decrepit and commercially lifeless because of the large scale of reconstruction. With brick walls lining both sides of the street the shops behind the walls appeared to either be quiet, empty or destroyed.
The long walk and the muggy August heat did not detract from the beauty of the Temple of Heaven. Even though a number of buildings inside the temple grounds were closed for refurbishment the centerpiece, the temple itself, stood shining and perfect. The current version of the temple was constructed when the original
Building Scaffolding
The bamboo scaffolds in Asia never fail to amaze us.was destroyed by lightening in 1889 and it definitely echoes the grandeur and architectural achievement of the Ming Dynasty.
That night we had dinner near our hotel and learned three more valuable lessons when it comes to ordering food in China. First, do not order chicken expecting the tender breast meat. The chicken is chopped up and cooked in a way that leaves large and unappetizing pieces of bone inside (good for the flavor but difficult for our sometimes picky western sensibilities). Second, picture menus can be deceiving. Amy found a picture that looked delicious and pointed to the picture asking “pork?” to which the server replied “dog.” As Amy could not understand her this exchange - pork? dog. pork? dog. pork? dog. - went on a couple of times before Roger stepped in to make sure we did not order it (we remain thankful for the server’s patience and understanding, as well). Third, English menus are of limited value when the dishes have names like (and yes these are the actual names from our menu) Hunan Flavor Iron Hammer, The Tough Mother is Abducted The Meat, Coke Chicken’s Wing, The River Embankment is Fried Small and Do a
Chinese Fashion Tip No. 1:
You need to look like you could sub into the game at any time. We frequently saw men young and old suited out like this. NBA action, it's faaan-tastic. Pot of Beer Duck. We were successful with our order of string beans, which were very good and, a dish with corn, peas and pine nuts strangely called Rice and Pine Nuts.
Unfortunately, Amy woke up at 11:30 to throw up but after that one experience our stomachs were pretty good the rest of our visit.
Tuesday
Even though the weather was perfect, a tough night for Amy’s stomach left us unenthusiastic for the full day demanded for seeing the Forbidden City and we decided to have a softer day. Before heading out we picked up coffee at the hotel and discovered the breakfast that we would eat for the rest of our time in Beijing. Down the street from our hotel there were a couple of street vendors who made a fried bread concoction with a little bit of egg that they then dressed with a brown sauce and a slice of lettuce. It was delicious and only 1Y (about 13 cents).
As you may know from reading previous entries, soft days for us mean shopping malls. If you aren’t feeling well or are homesick, a bright shiny mall with all of its consumer possibilities
Modern Beijing
Not Just Pollution! can perk you right up. We took the metro which is very easy to navigate (and cheap) to the shopping area. We started at the World Trade Center. This shopping center contained a grocery store with many imported items (presumably for the expats that congregate in the neighborhood) including Ben & Jerry’s for $10. We explored many of the shopping malls in this area and discovered that they are similar to fancy shopping centers in Thailand and other parts of the world. We were interested in taking in a movie but just couldn’t stomach the thought of Garfield 2 (without seeing Garfield 1 we are sure we would have been totally confused). We were excited to find an international book store but although it had a very large collection of manga and Japanese magazines it unfortunately did not have a large collection of English books.
We had read in our guidebook about a common technique used around Beijing where “art students” approach you and talk to you and then invite you to an art exhibition at their school. When you get arrive at the “school” it is just low quality art for sale. While we were at the mall
we were approached for the first time but it would happen quite frequently over the duration of our stay in Beijing. One of the conundrums we frequently face while traveling is whether people are genuinely interested in talking to us or just trying to sell us something and this was no different. The two girls we met were very friendly and eventually invited us for tea. We banked on the idea that they were not genuinely interested in getting to know us and so we said no but afterwards we felt a little bad that we may have misjudged them. That feeling evaporated when we walked away from the mall and two other girls ran up to us to make the exact same small talk as the previous pair.
We went to the “silk market” which is kind of a misnomer because it has stalls and stalls of fake sports and designer clothes. We didn’t buy anything because we did not need anything, though the sheer volume of goods was overwhelming. This market is reputedly where Russians come to buy clothes to take back and sell in Russia and we did see a lot of non-Chinese with huge bags
of stuff. While we didn’t price any of the clothes here we’ve been amazed that prices are cheaper than Thailand and Vietnam which we did not think was possible.
We had lunch at a Sichuan place and had stir-fried broccoli, shredded pork (Food lesson number 5 - you cannot go wrong with shredded pork), cold sesame noodles and buns. This meal was really good and Roger capped it off with a peanut buster parfait at the first Dairy Queen of our trip.
In addition to the fine food and the air-conditioning the malls also offered a respite from the otherwise ubiquitous Chinese sport of spitting. Outdoors, or in many cases indoors, the constant barrage of saliva and mucus being coughed up and noisily hacked out in public boggles the mind. The unending symphony of nasal plunging was so bad as to almost make Amy sick (though her iron constitution has been tested it had never been pushed so far as when the sounds were amplified by the snot-mines in the streets).
We bought some pirated DVDs in the hidden backroom of an otherwise legitimate DVD shop. We were surprised to discover that it is much harder to
find pirated DVDs of recent releases than in Bangkok. We went to two CD/DVD shops that had a massive selection of legal movies for very cheap but we balked at the possible incompatibility and lack of English language options on the DVDs.
The end of our day was spent at an internet café researching future destinations and then at McDonald’s, situated perfectly beneath the convenient location of the internet café, for the first of our semi-regular stops for fast food during our stay in China. We also realized the internet café we patronized was located next to an internet café that was exclusively for locals. What this meant is that we paid about 7x as much for internet as the locals.
Wednesday
Another day, another breakfast of hotel coffee and the doughy egg combination from the street vendor…. We headed to the Forbidden City and after obtaining our tickets and a headset (not headsets because we are cheap). We also spent awhile chasing down an ATM which we never found. We had wasted so much time at this point (it was now 11) that we thought about trying to come back the next day but after asking
a few people we realized our ticket was only good for Wednesday. While looking for a cash machine we were distracted by a guy trying to drive in through a palace gate he was not supposed to and we got to witness a dramatic verbal argument with the cops. We aren’t sure exactly what happened but it did not look like he ended up with a ticket (although we are not sure if money exchanged hands). We were trying to be subtle while watching because you never know when watching the police at work could make complications for yourself. While discussing a cash strategy a couple with their two little girls asked if they could take a picture with us. The little girls were adorable and knew how to say hello and goodbye in English, though we could not help but wonder why they wanted to take photos with us.
To enter the Forbidden City from Tian’anmen Square one must first pass through the Gates of Heavenly Peace, currently adorned with a large portrait of Mao. The city takes its name from the fact that for five centuries ordinary Chinese people were forbidden from even approaching the walls, though
common folks have been allowed inside since the communist takeover in 1949. Life inside the gates was luxurious for those virtuous enough to have been born to the right family. The largess of the emperors and their families is legendary and it is said that one meal for an emperor could have fed several thousand peasants. During the Ming dynasty concubines numbered 10,000. The only men allowed in the palace were eunuchs in order to ensure the authenticity of the emperor’s offspring. As in the shopping area and around Tian’anmen we were approached by more people trying to get us to go to an art exhibit at the Forbidden City.
We explored the Forbidden City for four and a half hours barely scratching the surface of an area that used to include 800 buildings and 9,000 chambers. The plan of the palace is essentially Ming and most buildings date to the 1400s. It was extremely crowded and everyone there wanted to get their pictures in front of everything. There was as much construction inside the Forbidden City as there were people (including the scaffolding around the most recognizable and important buildings - the most famous face of Beijing, the
massive and imposing Hall of Supreme Harmony, was completely boxed in and hidden from view). We had an expensive lunch at the Forbidden City that was not very good. We wanted to have Chinese food but we should have grabbed an overpriced sandwich at the Starbucks (yes, the Starbucks located inside the Forbidden City).
After the Forbidden City we went to the park across the street which has great views of the entire city. Or so we have heard because everything on the hill was closed. Of course, this didn’t stop the park from charging an admission price and not telling anyone until you hiked up the hill to find the Jingshan Houjie closed and its remarkable views inaccessible. This left visitors scrambling over the muddy hillside trying to get a view of the Forbidden Palace through the dense trees and foliage finding only partial panoramas at best.
As we walked back to the hotel from the Forbidden City we were approached by an enterprising young man named Ting offering tours of the Great Wall. While we would normally ignore such a sales pitch he seemed very genuine and carried a photo album that showed vast areas of
We're Where????
Tian’anmen Square the Great Wall with no people. He also told us in detail how each of the primary six areas of the Wall used for tourism are either rebuilt, covered in tourists or situated in flat, featureless landscapes. His sales pitch intrigued us and he had good reviews in his comment book so we took his card and agreed to look at his website and call him if we were interested.
After leaving Ting we were stopped by an “art student” we had met earlier. Instead of trying to get us to an art show he was trying to sell us tickets to a museum. Each student that had approached us in Beijing asked us how long we had been in the city and we think they ask in order to determine if you’ve already been hit with the art scam. Because we had been there over 3 days perhaps they realized we knew about the art scam and so they tried to sell us something different (we began telling the “students” that approached that we had been in Beijing for much longer amounts of time and generally their sales pitches ended there).
On our walk back to the
hotel we bought a chive pancake and some dumplings. We weren’t sure what was in the dumplings until after we purchased them but they were chive dumplings and we somehow ended up with 2 orders. Our light snack now consisted of pancakes and more than 20 dumplings - all for 5 Y (about 65 cents) - and a whole lot of chive.
Our evening was spent doing research for future countries at an internet café, doing laundry, talking to the tour office at our hotel and having an extremely mediocre meal in our hotel because we were too tired to venture out.
Thursday
A slower start than we’d planned meant we were just late enough to pass on making the walk to Mao’s tomb in time to enter during the limited hours during which it is open (again). We managed to get our morning coffee and the doughy egg street food Amy had come to adore before walking toward Tian’anmen. We spent about ninety minutes in the internet café researching options for China and for our next steps beyond China. Afterwards we made a quick stop in one of the two McDonald’s within shouting distance of Chairman
Mao’s tomb. We stopped mainly to use the bathroom but ended up meeting a pair of young men from Shanghai playing tourist as well.
Both men spoke terrific English and were very charming. They re-enforced our opinion that China is as passionate about professional basketball as they are about stir-fry, speaking in glowing terms about the majesty of Yao Ming and in detail about the players of the NBA (even naming half the members of the Denver Nuggets and lamenting the change in Kobe Bryant’s image following his sexual assault trial).
After a short lunch at one of our hutong’s larger restaurants we retired from the sticky heat of the day for a nap (Roger) and more research about possible destinations in China (Amy).
After dark we headed back out to wander the streets in search of food, finding a nice family restaurant for sweet and sour pork, dumplings, and a beautiful dessert of fried bananas. The bananas were coated in a thick but light batter and covered in syrup. Delivered with a bowl of water, the banana chunks were dunked in the water which immediately hardened the syrup into a brittle, crunchy glaze. The treats were
Sign at the Temple of Heaven
What got lost in translation? tasty and fun to eat, crunchy as you bit through the shell and then mushy as you reached the dough and the banana.
The streets of Beijing were very much alive as we walked back to our hotel. People were out exercising, chatting, playing games, and picking through piles of sale items. A rather large group of older women we passed en route to dinner were even line dancing in the sidewalk. On our walk back they appeared to have picked up several percussionists and some fans and were performing a more traditional dance/march.
Friday
We were supposed to meet our guide at 8 am and had planned on walking but we didn’t know where we were supposed to meet Ting. We knew it was a church but he had only written it in Chinese (and we were running late anyway) so we ended up taking a cab. The cab outside our hotel wouldn’t take us. We are not sure why but we assume it was because he was waiting for a fare to the airport. We have gotten turned down by cabs in many places around the world and we’re never sure if they are looking
The Sizz
As tempting as it was, we managed to stay away. for a shorter or longer fare than we have to offer. It took us awhile to find a cab but we ended up getting to the church right at 8 (though without having eaten).
We had expected Ting to be our guide but found the task delegated to his brother in law (a friend whom we would later find out is introduced as family because it makes people feel more comfortable). Our group consisted only of us and an English couple in their 50s. We drove until about 10 and then we made a scheduled stop at a grocery store to buy water and supplies for lunch because there would be no vendors at the Wall. It was a nice large grocery store but we really didn’t know what to get to eat so we ended up with weird sweets for Roger - crackers with chocolate, crackers with white filling and an orange Kit Kat - as well as some cheap fried things and bananas. Back in the van we tried one of the fried things for breakfast, tasty with a pepper and oniony flavor. Traffic was horrible, as it appears it always is in Beijing, and we arrived
at the Wall at 11:30.
As we neared the drop off point we passed a manned barrier and several signs which said the Wall was closed for renovation but we breezed right through. We’re not sure if these signs are routinely ignored or if some money passed hands. We drove off the main road and onto a very bumpy road until our guide parked and we started hiking. Amy was just wearing tennis shoes because the pictures he showed us of the walk appeared to be through brush but it was actually a pretty strenuous hike uphill (of course, we are out of shape) and we were quite impressed with the older couple. As usual when we feel improperly “outfitted”, we notice that our guide is hustling along in loafers.
After thirty or forty minutes hiking uphill we reached the Great Wall of China. We spent some time on the Wall, marveling at the route the wall takes up, along, and over steep grades and mountainsides, and taking pictures. We then hiked to a different section of the Wall where we explored for roughly a kilometer in each direction before stopping for lunch. The whole time we were
there we only saw 5 people other than us, all Chinese men who were not tourists, and our views of the Wall in each direction were rarely cluttered with a human figure. We were so awed by the experience we posted a short but timely note about it
earlier. The walk down was pretty steep which Amy never likes. Roger fell when the edge of the path gave way slightly and ended up with a scraped knee and a few blood droplets on his pants. The pants now feature a tear affectionately referred to as The Great Hole From China.
We slept a bit on the drive back from the Wall even though the road was very bumpy. The guide dropped us close to our hotel so we went to McDonald’s for a snack and to wash our hands before going to the internet café to do more research on possible destinations.
It was raining lightly when we walked home and a guy offered to sell us his personal umbrella for 2 Y. We passed, but we often wonder just how badly he must have needed the money. We were also asked for money by a mother
and her two daughters that were in their teens or 20s. It was very odd because all of the women were carrying either purses or briefcases. Sometimes it seems we are players in a game for some people in different parts of the world - when they see travelers why not ask for money and see if they get anything? We have had people in various locations ask us for money who looked like they were the last people who needed it (if you can afford a professional manicure you don’t need our help).
We walked back through our hutong and took a guy up on his furtive offer to show us some sale DVDs. He led us down a side alley to a kitchen in a very small house that was filled with pirated DVDs. His collection was not great but Roger was able to find some kung fu movies that appealed to him and because we liked the vendor we are sure we ended up overpaying.
Before going back to our hotel we stopped for dinner at a place where the lady out front had been inviting us in every day. After we sat down we
Starbucks
They're everywhere you want to be - including deep within the Forbidden City. realized that what looked like one restaurant was actually two and we went to her competitor in response to her offer to come in for dinner. We liked the restaurant and it was one of the best experiences we’d had at that point in China because the woman working recommended food by pointing out food that was already on a couple of other tables. She also offered to serve us a chicken and vegetable stir-fry without the bones so we jumped at that.
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Andrea
non-member comment
I told you that watching the copy of Garfield: The Movie that I bought you would be crucial to your enjoyment of world travel!