Bustling Beijing

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China is the World’s oldest continuous civilisation!!!

We arrive in Beijing rail station and are hit by two sensory overloads; first is the heat, humidity hits you like a cheap shot straight in face, second is the sheer amount of people - there is a sea of people, heads walking in numerous directions.

After a quick trip to the ATM we head to the subway, now Beijing Subway is pretty easy to navigate, once you find the entrance that is…. It is also very cheap too, 2 Yuan per journey - where ever you go! We finally find it after walking around in circles for about 10 minutes.

Beijing has airport style x-ray machines at the entrance of each subway, you put all bags on the carousel and then walk through a metal detector, some people mainly Chinese were pulled to the side and search - this happened a fair few times at various stops. Not good when your sweating and having to take your backpack off every now and then.

For two nights we were treating ourselves to a posh hotel (for Tony’s big 30 that’s just around the corner) so we headed to Guomao subway station and arrived at the Kerry Centre Shangri La somewhat sweatier than most of their guests.

We didn’t get up to much the two days we were there, just pottered around and enjoyed having hot water and a nice massive clean bed!!!!

So after 2 days it was time to head back to reality and to our next home for the rest of our stay in Beijing, Leo Hostel, $38 for a double room with ensuite. So we head back to the subway and alight at Qianmen subway station just south of Tiananmen square, we set off for what we thought was a mere stroll down the road to our hostel. As usual, we end up taking the wrong road; we are walking in the immense heat, for ages down the road heading away from Leo’s Hostel. After sending away a number of chaps on bikes, rickshaw type contraptions we decide the heat has won and we jump in one for what we believe is 3 Yuan (30p). Instantly, we realize we are heading in the wrong direction, travelling through a maze of hutong’s we pull up round the corner and the driver then tries to demand 300 Yuan (27 pounds sterling!) I give him 30 Yuan, a stern expletive and disappeared into the hostel.

We head out to Tiananmen Square - a name synonymous with death for my generation due to the violent deaths of thousands of students, workers and peaceful protesters whom were demanding the fifth area of modernisation of the Chinese regime - democracy, with global world order changing with the demise of the Soviet Union and the global failure of communism it would have appeared a good time to challenge, this protest was met with lethal force.

We enter the subway under the road to enter the square and have to go through another security check to enter the square. The square is massive and is home to Mao’s mausoleum like other communist leaders of this era such as Lenin and Ho Chi Minh, Mao was preserved and put on display. The square is reported as being the largest public space in the world and I can quite believe it. As you advance north you see the Chinese flag, there is a flag ceremony daily at sunrise and sunset and then the square is cleared of people. Over the road from the flag is the famous portrait of Mao Zedong - typically and consistent with the rest of our trip thus far the front surrounding the portrait is scaffold for restoration work, through this gate lays the Forbidden City but that will be for another day, the searing heat got the better of us and we set off in search of a cold beer!

We get up handy to tackle the Forbidden City before the arrival of the midday sun, the smog was immense today, on the approach to the Forbidden City walk through Tiananmen Square and you could not see the other end of the square as a consequence of the smog. Once entering the city you are hit by the sheer size of the place, it’s huge, you walk throw the first gate and you’re faced with a large court yard. As you proceed deeper and deeper into the City through more and more gates the grandeur of the place hits home, the opulence that the various dynasty’s lived in was of such a high standard. It is called the Forbidden City because it was forbidden for the public to enter and was the preserve of the ruling class namely the dynasty’s such Qing and Ming etc. Under Mao’s rule the city was opened as a museum.

We had bumped into Vanessa the fire starter in our hostel so she took us our for dinner to a tiny little local place where she ordered in Mandarin, no English menu around, the meal was yummy and dirt cheap too.

The next day we set off for the summer place, now every man and his dog will try and sell you a tour to this place, but it costs 2 Yuan each on the public bus and takes an hour - get the 690 bus from the bus stop near Qianmen subway station and get off at the last stop.

The Summer Palace was the summer retreat for the ruling class, until it was turned into a museum in the 1920’s. They made the 18km trip out of the city to escape the intolerable heat of the Forbidden City. The palace is approx 250 hectares in size and Kunming Lake is right in the centre of the palace, this is a huge manmade lake, in the surrounding hills are numerous temples, pagodas. As you walk around the grounds a reoccurring themes becomes apparent - ‘this temple was built in the 1500’s was destroyed by Anglo-French attacks in the 1800’s and was rebuilt’. As you survey the palace, teeming with people, tour groups today, you can’t help but wounder what this would have been like during the Qing Dynasty, for example, when you could walk about on your own, taking in the sheer luxury of the palace.

Next stop was the Temple of Heaven, this is a lovely little place to potter around, really easy to get to. Like everything else here its huge, there are some nice views of the city from the temple, they even have an echo wall, if you talk at the wall then someone the other side of the circular area can hear you - same as in St Pauls Cathedral in London, that’s if there’s just two people there, not much chance of that in China!!!! In the park there is a covered pathway towards the main temple, which has a whole manner of strange things going on and is a people watchers dream, people playing cards, badminton, juggling or simply dancing around.

Our time in Beijing was rounded off nicely with the worlds famous Peking duck, my god it was amazing, wanted to order more but didn't want to look like pigs he he.

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Comments

[Yolly]

Good!
It's even hard to an Chinese person to find the ways around Beijing (apart from the locals). So well done you guys!! And I;m glad that all the Chinese speeling are right! lol~ So which city you heading off next?