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Published: March 16th 2007
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We arrived to Beijing from Xian early in the afternoon after a more pleasant train ride than our last one. After another sardine bus ride, we arrived in the Qianmen area and found a simple hotel with a nice courtyard for a good price. The rest of our day was spent looking for a bank to exchange our traveller's cheques. Despite this being Beijing, only the Bank of China would take the cheques, nobody spoke enough English to tell us where one was and people just pointed us in the wrong direction just to get rid of us! Very frustrating! We spent our evening at the Wan Sheng theatre watching the famous Chinese acrobatic show. The show was unbelievable! How these people bend like that is beyond me!
On our second day we headed out to see the Great Wall. Again, the lack of English signs made it difficult to get to our destination on time or to even find the bus terminal to Jinshangling. And this place is hosting the Olympics in a year's time??? Geez! Better get crackin Beijing! As we wandered around aimlessly trying to find the bus terminal, a Chinese man found us first and
offered us a ride to the wall and back to Beijing for a fair price. Jinshangling is about a 2 1/2 hour drive out of Beijing and one of the less visited areas of the wall. Despite that there were plenty of other hikers on the wall and way too many vendors. These guys would hide in every tower and freak you out by jumping out of nowhere and trying to sell you stuff. Some even chased us several hundred meters on the wall despite us telling them to go away. They just wouldn't get the hint!
The hike from Jinshangling to Simatai was about 3 1/2 hours and we would have done it just that if it wasn't for a few complications along the way. As we could see the end of our hike, we reached the last tower. We saw two men which we thought were vendors but to our surprise were not. These guys were dressed in regular clothes (with the exception of the one with the commie coat) and acted as some kind of Great Wall officers. They would not let us though the tower unless we paid them an entrance fee. This is of
course on top of the one we had already paid at the beginning of our hike. Their argument was that we had now entered Simatai, so we had to pay another entrance fee in order to exit at Simatai. Ridiculous we say! So we waited for this other group of foreigners in the distance to catch up. Then....We raised a REVOLUTION! There were about 8 of us now and two of Chinese dudes. We told them we were not paying the fee and then we jumped off the wall and walked along side it trying to find another way past them. We jumped back on the wall and they continued following us all the way to the exit. We also had to pay another fee to cross a bridge to get to the exit. Rip off! Then we made a run for it! The Chinese went one way...a shortcut....and we went another. It was a race over who was getting to the exit first! We finally made it there, cut through a construction site and made it to the parking lot. The wall Nazis missed us! Ha Ha!Our driver picked us up moments later and we were safely back on
the road to Beijing. Phew! What a day!
On our third day we strolled down to Tiannamen Square and on to the Forbidden Palace. Tiannamen Square seems like a pretty calm place to take a stroll except for the hundreds of police and their mysterious vans parked throughout it. You know these guys are watching your every move. The Square was filled with foreigners and it didn't take long to run into a Korean man and his entire tour group who were all so happy to meet us. We got to impress them with some of our Korean and of course pose and say Kimchi for their pics. The highlight of Tiannamen Square was the ever imposing portrait of Mao hanging over the Gate of Heavenly Peace. What a contradiction!
On to the Forbidden Palace... This place is massive! I think we've been a bit "palaced out "after living in Korea but the size of this place does not compare. The only disappointment was all the renovation work taking place and covering the most important buildings with scaffolding.
The Temple of Heaven was our last sightseeing destination. This place was once the Emperor's summer retreat. Just like
the Forbidden Palace it is also massive but is surrounded by endless green space. Here groups of Chinese were gathered around playing games, singing and dancing to traditional folk songs. We walked around for what seemed like endless hours admiring the freshly restored goldwork on the buildings and elaborate architecture. The Temple of Heaven was more like an entire city than a summer palace. Talk about a summer cottage!
Our time here was cut a bit short for one last visit to the infamous Silk Market. This place is seriously dangerous! Six floors of way-too-much stuff! Bargain away...The strong-willed walk away with goodies at super cheap prices. Some of our best steals included brand name sneakers for under $15 a pop and a fancy silk duvet cover with pillowcases. Did I mention the boxes of stuff we shipped off at the post office??? Beijing is definitely an awesome place to shop for just about everything!
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Amanda
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Enjoy...
Enjoy Beijing... I do not recommend the opera... so do not waste your money going to that... From the sounds of it, I am glad that we had a private tour guide when we were there. The Forbidden City was under construction when we were there almost four years ago... so the renovations seem to be coming along rather slowly. Glad you are enjoying yourselves. Amanda