A city of surprises- Beijing

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I remember trying to dig my way to China when I was little, I used to love making mud pies and my Dad (like so many others I'm sure) told me that if I kept digging I'd get to China, so of course I dug my 5 year old little heart out...for about 30 minutes or so, then I gave up. It was way too much work and I had no idea what was there anyway, so I decided I didn't even want to go to this strange land I'd just heard of. Little did I know that 20 years later I'd be in China and that there is actually an easier way to get there. Was it worth the wait? You bet!

Since I'm living in Japan I figure I should take the opportunity to visit some surrounding countries while I'm here, so in 2008 I went to Korea and in 2009 I decided it would be China. When trying to decide where to go I asked a few people and many of them had been to Shanghai and recommended there, so that was pretty much the reason why I didn't go there, and chose Beijing instead, I like to be different. Plus, the Great Wall is near Beijing and that was at the top of my China list.

Japan and China have a long history together and they have a, shall we say friendly rivalry (or perhaps not so friendly at times) and therefore I'd heard some unflattering things about one of Japan's biggest neighbours. I like to keep an open mind but certain things like the stereotypical "Chinese person" and how bad the air would be did get stuck in my head. Were they confirmed? Read on!

We had decided to go in October which turned out to be perfect timing, we managed to avoid the national week long holidays at the beginning of the month which I can imagine is a crazy time to travel in Beijing, especially this year since it was the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Our trip to Beijing didn't exactly get off to a good start: our flight was delayed 2 hours in Tokyo due to strong wind at Beijing airport and then halfway through the flight our pilot tells us one of the three hydraulics on the plane was out, but of course not to worry. I have no idea what the hydraulics actually do on a plane but I do know that you don't want to hear about anything failing when you're mid-air. After a very bumpy landing with emergency vehicles standing by, having to get a truck to pull us to our gate (it turns out hydraulics have something to do with taxiing on arrival), going through immigration and customs, and getting a taxi into the city we finally arrived at our hotel around 1am, bone-tired and hoping this wasn't a bad omen for the rest of the trip.

Bicycling Beijing

The first day we decided to battle the cold and windy air (and traffic as it so happened) on a bicycle and we rode around the city on our hotel-borrowed, rickety and slightly uncomfortable two-wheelers. That day we jostled with a few million other people riding their bikes on the streets of Beijing and it was a pretty exhilarating (and I won't lie, at times stressful) experience. But nonetheless highly recommended. As there are so many bicycles a lot of the roads do have bicycle lanes, however I wouldn't exactly say everyone abides by the road rules. Taxis, trucks, cars, buses, pedicabs all vie for space on the congested streets, swerving in and out of each other, cutting off the unexpected foreigner on an unstable bicycle at every turn (and bus stop). Definitely not a time to let your mind or eyes wander too much.

Our first stop was the Forbidden City. We left our bikes amongst a sea of other similar looking ones and managed to skip the long lines of people waiting to get in by paying a local a little extra for some pre-purchased ones. The Forbidden City was definitely a sight to behold, it just seemed to keep on going and going and going. We started at the southern entrance and made our way to the northern entrance, all in all probably taking over an hour. I read that somewhere in the Forbidden City is constantly being repaired due to its large size. Crazy.

So of course walking that distance we were just getting further and further away from our bicycles which meant we had to walk back to the southern entrance around the outside. So the pedicab drivers, upon seeing two foreigners walking somewhere, decided we must ride with them as we couldn't possibly walk that far. We managed to avoid most but about halfway we were accosted by one of them, who was very persistent, blocking our path and so after confirming it would only cost us "3" we gave in. At first it was pretty fun, as he was quite friendly and he told us about some of the places we saw along the way, but soon enough I knew we were way too far south ,much further than we needed to be. He kept assuring us that we were close "Not far, not far". He then proceeded to give us a tour of some small alley at which point I knew all was not right. And sure enough next thing we knew he had dropped us off in some random street with the Forbidden City nowhere to be seen, demanding we pay "300" syuan. We argued of course, but he wouldn't listen so we gave him 100 and walked away with him muttering what were no doubt Chinese profanities.

Turned out we could walk to Tienanmen Square from where we were which is at the southern end of the Forbidden City. So after walking through the famous square and gawking at the huge portrait of Mao Tse Tung we were finally reunited with our bikes! Hallelujah!

Next pit stop on our Beijing bicycle excursion was Jingshan Park, where we clambered up to the top of the hill where there was a small observatory overlooking the city, Beijing just has this old, traditional feel about it, especially when viewed from above. The lack of tall, modern skyscrapers definitely attributes to this I think. Across the road from Jingshan park is Beihai Park and to the north of that is Qianhai Lake. Actually Beihai Park is predominantly a lake also and at the southern entrance there is a small island called the Jade islet that has a big white dagoba (which kind of looked like a huge white bell atop the hill in the middle of the island) that was apparently built for the Dalai Lama's visit back in the 17th century. It was a really pretty place to walk around, with all the trees, flowers, temples and statues, of course all surrounded by the water of the lake. After exploring that we maneuvered our way through the ever increasing late afternoon traffic up to Qianhai Lake which was one of the coolest places in Beijing (in my opinion anyway). Along the shores of the lake were heaps of trendy bars and cafes, all getting ready for that night's business, setting up outside tables with beautiful, bright silk cushions and an abundant amount of candles or table lamps beginning to glimmer in the early evening. So beautiful! After choosing one of the restaurants we spent the rest of the evening watching the sun go down and enjoying a delicious variety of Chinese food, before heading back to our hotel (where, I might add, we were pretty glad to give back our bicycles and thank a high power that we were still alive).

Foreign Food

Within walking distance of our hotel was the Wangfujing shopping street, which is an area full of top brand name shops and restaurants, but very close by is the Donghuamen Night Market and Wangfujing Snack Street. These places were lined with street vendors that sold a variety of different foods, some delicious looking and smelling but most quite strange and mysterious. Amongst the gourmet snacks on offer were lamb and beef kebabs, cicadas, grasshoppers, snakes, starfish, seahorse, kidney, chicken hearts etc. all offered on an easy to eat skewer and soups with who knows what inside. Definitely not for me but a very interesting thing to observe nonetheless. The atmosphere was pretty cool too, with all the vendors trying to sell their food to passersby, yelling in Chinese and what English they knew, promising the best price in all of Beijing.

Summer Palace Woes

We took a trip to the outskirts of the city to the World Heritage designated Summer Palace on our second day (by taxi this time). Actually we mostly used taxis for the rest of our trip and although the drivers didn't speak a whole lot of English, we had a very useful card that our hotel gave us with a lot of sightseeing places written on it in English and Chinese. Point and smile became our main form of communication. The taxis weren't very expensive at all, and although Beijing has a subway network which is quite convenient also, we found the taxis the best way to get around.

The Summer Palace was used by the Emperors during the scorching summers in Beijing and it is a really beautiful place. It's pretty big too, but the majority of it is made up of the man-made Kunming Lake in the middle, and Longevity Hill on the northern shore. The rest of the grounds are made up of palaces, temples, pavilions and bridges and just a vast array of pretty gardens. We spent the whole morning exploring and taking pictures of the lake and traditional Chinese buildings. Longevity Hill has a big pagoda on the top and we hiked up the mountain to get a beautiful view from the top. And then that's where the trouble began...we lost our camera.

I am ashamed to say that it was my fault, I'm pretty sure I put it down to get something out of my backpack and forgot to pick it up again, and then walking away. We only realised it was missing when we started our descent to an area at the back of Longevity Hill and although we retraced our steps it was gone. We thought at a big tourist place like that there might be a lost and found office so after making our way back down to where some of the shops and restaurants were I tried to ask someone if there was. However with my non-existent Chinese and their little English there was very little communication and then a lady in the shop started yelling at me in Chinese and then calling some police officers over. I have no idea what she thought I was saying or did but there was some serious misunderstanding going on. The officers started to march us back to the other side of the Palace until we found someone along the way who could speak English and explained everything to them and us, at which point they then took us to a lost and found office where we eventually got to fill out a form for our camera. But we were told in pretty honest terms that our chances of getting it back were slim to none. Needless to say I was very upset that we had lost our camera, but more importantly all the photos of that day and the one before.

Lights, Camera, Duck!

So what did we do about this most unfortunate event? Well, buy ourselves a new digital SLR camera of course! In fact Ryan had been talking about buying a new camera only the day before, (just a coincidence do you think?) and since we plan to do a lot more travel in the near future we had discussed getting a better quality one than the small point and shoot one we lost. So combine that with the fact that we were in China and had heard that you could buy relatively cheap ones there, the first thing we did after taxiing it back to the city was hit up a camera shop. In hindsight we probably should’ve done more research before actually buying one, but we were a little excited and we wanted to just get it so we could still take photos of the rest of our trip. We did look at a few shops and got some prices but we ended up buying a Canon 1000d. It isn’t the latest model however it had everything we wanted and was relatively cheap, so we took the plunge and have been very happy with the results since!!

To end that fateful day we went to a Peking Duck restaurant by our hotel for dinner, a meal that we just had to try whilst in Beijing! The whole dinner was quite an experience! We went to one of the more well-known restaurants in town, yes it was a little touristy, but this of course meant that English speakers were on hand ( and to be honest, I had pretty much had enough miscommunication for one day) and because it was within walking distance to the hotel. We were seated in a hug dining room with Chinese style tapestries and decorations and a waiter explained the menu to us so that we could sample the famous food. After ordering a lady came over to our table with a cart that had a delicious looking, steaming duck on it and proceeded to cut it in front of us. We were given a plate of meat and some pancake like things which you filled with some vegetables, duck and sweet sauce, rolled it up like a burrito and ate like that. It was my first time to try duck and it was pretty delicious!

“He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man”
Mao Zedong

The next day was the highlight of our trip to Beijing. In my opinion anyway. We had hired a car and driver for the day to take us to The Great Wall of China!! I had, as I always do, done a lot of research about the best area to go to. After reading up about it I decided that I wanted to go to one of the more undeveloped areas of the wall, the places that were less touristy and still had a lot of the wall in it’s original condition. These areas were, naturally, further from the city centre so we woke up early and were driven 3 hours by private car to the start of our 10km trek. We went to a section of the wall called Jinshanling and walked to a different section called Simatai. Our driver was really kind and helpful and showed us how to buy tickets, walked us up to the start of the ropeway that took us to the top where our trek began and showed us a map of where to walk. He told us that he would be waiting for us at the other end, and he managed to do this without speaking a word of English! Really nice man!

So off we went to walk the wall. All in all it took us 4 hours from beginning to end and it was a truly breathtaking and exhilirating experience! Although only 10km a lot of the wall was quite steep and rocky so we took our time and enjoyed the scenery along the way (OK, OK and to take a breather from the steep slopes). Some of the wall was in quite good condition and we could walk it really easily but other sections were in ruins, almost completely eroded away. It was surreal! We kept thinking that this wall had been built over 2000 years ago, it’s just amazing, can you even imagine what it must have been like back then? Along the way we came across a fair few persistant locals trying to sell us their goods and other groups of travellers, however there were times when we were alone and couldn’t see another soul in any direction. Those were my favourite times and exactly why I chose that area, it made for some gorgeous photographs!

At the end of our trek we came across a gorge with a suspension bridge that we had to cross to get to our meeting place, and at the other end of the bridge was a flying fox! To get down to the parking area where our driver was waiting we took the flying fox that traversed across a beautiful lake, it was unreal! A truly exciting experience. However we were definitely exhausted and very glad that true to his word our driver was waiting for us. I really recommend hiring a driver and heading a little further out to this area of the wall, it was so good and we weren’t under any time constraints, or taken to other tourist areas/shops by a tour company trying to get our money. We organised it all through our hotel, they made all the arrangements for us. If I remember correctly it was only about $200 for the day (not including entrance fee to the wall of course) and if you have more than one in your group, a very reasonable option!

Déjà vu

As we didn’t have any specific plans for our last day in Beijing except to do some shopping we decided (or actually I decided) that I wanted to go back to some of the places we went to on the first day to take photos, since we lost all the ones we had taken. Not the most ideal situation I know, but photos are one of the most important parts of travel to me and besides we had our new camera this time! We headed back to the Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, Beihai Lake and Jingshan Park. We did it in a much more orderly fashion this time, instead of weaving our way back and forth, so it took much less time and actually it was pretty interesting to see the places at different times of the day. For example, we went to Beihai Park just after it opened in the morning this time around and we were greeted with scores of people doing their early morning tai chi exercises, and old men writing Chinese characters on the concrete ground with water and their big calligraphy brushes. It was really interesting to witness this part of Chinese culture and something we would have missed otherwise.

Haggling Low and Flying High

I definitely need a lot more practice at haggling, that’s for sure. During the afternoon we went to a couple of different shopping places where we were told we could find some cheap designer goods. So off we went with money in our pockets, no experience, and hoping we would get some bargains. The hotel staff told us what to expect so we were kind of prepared…but I was horrible. Ryan was actually pretty good at it though. I would have said yes to their second price but Ryan managed to get them down quite a lot. I didn’t actually go there with anything in particular that I wanted to buy, and I was walking around taking interest in a few different things. Not a good idea, they were very persistent and if you showed any interest they didn’t want to let you go. However, we did manage to walk away with a handbag, a wallet, a watch and some clothes. It was a lot of fun, but I have to say that it’s more stressful so I’m glad that I don’t have to do it in Japan.

To conclude our trip to China we decided to see an acrobatics show on our last night. It was pretty cool. The beautiful performers, male and female, dressed in bright costumes and with colourful make up, and an ability to contort themselves into very unnatural looking positions managed to get more than a few gasps from the crowd. It definitely put a high to the end of what was a fantastic experience.

China turned out to surprise me in more ways than one in only 5 short days, and I only got to see the capital city. I now know that I have to go back and see the rest of what this mystifying country has to offer.

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