And we left Beijing

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To finalize the whole Beijing experience, I need to add that we did go to the Temple of Haven and we did find a good restaurant. After our not so great visit to the Great Wall, we kind of wondered around the Qianmen square, saw lots of slums being demolshed and a very cool dirty street with lots of food and stuff for sale. The street is parallel to the one which is currently under construction, as Chinese seem to build and rebuild a lot, and the cool street is half demolished itself. We found this restaurant (Jin Zheng Yang), which I probably remember the most in Beijing, right near Lao She Teahouse and according to the popular location and appearance we first thought it's just another tourist place. Actually, the place is not touristy at all according to the number of Chinese people who were dining happily inside. The staff was very friendly and sort of spoke English, they even showed us all the mushrooms they were going to cook for us. After looking at the menu, though, I couldn't really tell what was what, especially because most of the menu was in Chinese. So, we had to simply point at other people's tables to order. We learned there, that Chinese pancakes are actually not pancakes, but some kind of omelette, yum! The eggplant was not bad either, and actually most eggplants we tried in Beijing were great. Maybe it's the place to eat eggplants?

After the great lunch we made our way to the Temple of Haven. The Temple is alright, but the interesting part is to go watch the people playing a traditional Chinese instrument and sing. I think the instrument is called zhonghu or jinghu and has high pitch. It accompanied the singing that reminded me sounds of Chinese opera. The whole sound didn't make any sense to me, but I could tell that they played better than the guy in Harvard Square. Anyway, I took some pictures, so check them out. The players performed with much more enthusiasm when I hovered around them with my camera.

We were so tired at the end that we decided to stop walking and just get a cab from the Temple to Wangfujing. Well, this is not that easy as it's almost impossible to move on the roads during the rush hour. The traffic was just insane so we had to walk after all. I also started feeling the need for Western food and just a place to sit. This is when we found the Bread Talk. It's in one of the malls on Wangfujing and is a bakery chain which we saw later in many other places. Yum! Exactly what I wanted! Soft bread with yogurt. Then it was time to leave Beijing so we got back to the hostel, picked up our stuff and headed to the Beijingxi train station.

Oh, yeah, one note about leaving luggage in the hotels. I don't know if it's just me, but I kind of think that if you have 2 pieces of luggage, you should get 2 tags that certify that they took it for a day. Not in China. They give only 1 tag per group independent on the number. We just got used to it and nothing happened.

Katya

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Photos

At Jin Zheng Yang Restaurant
Notice the eggplant!

Amuseful and happy
Ok, I'm amused

Olympics store
The Olympics stores are everywhere. We first thought we'd see them only in Beijing but then saw them wherever we were in China

The cool street
It has lots of restaurants and food

Cricket
It's common to see these cages in front of the houses. Before noticing them, we couldn't understand where the sounds were coming from

Temple of Heaven
with lots of people

Clouds
These are on the lower circle of the steps

Fenix
They are on the second layer of stares.

Dragon
On the top layer.

Music in the park
Near the Temple of Heaven

Olympics ad
on Wangfujing

Portraits
This is a window of a shop on Wangfujing