Beijing, China

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Visiting Beijing, China was quite an experience, especially when coming directly from Tokyo. Gone were the really welcoming and polite Japanese people always “bowing” their thanks for everything. Gone were the immaculately clean streets . Gone were the good ole’ ramen noodle shops and sushi restaurants on every corner where you could get a great meal whenever you wished. And finally, gone were western/traditional toilets. Everything about China was sooo different from anything we’ve ever seen (or smelled)! Many parts are pretty nasty-smelling, especially when walking on a street that has a public restroom as the Chinese toilets are essentially holes in the ground without any sort of flushing mechanism. That was hard to get used to. So was hunting for good food. Many restaurants in Beijing serve only exotic dishes—fried scorpions, jellyfish soup, chicken gizzards over rice, duck intestines stew, etc. Most of the time it grossed us out, but sometimes we got a really good laugh at the English translations on the menu, like “the fluffy mutton ears fry the eggplant casually.” But we really did love our Peking Duck dinner out at one of the famous Beijing roast duck restaurants and hate to say it, but we went crazy over breakfast at McDonalds a few times. You’d think we were out to brunch at one of the nicest restaurants in NYC the way we were raving about the coffee and hash browns 😊 Beijing has a lot of historic points of interest and we were really impressed by all of them, especially the Forbidden City (the Imperial Palace) grounds. All of the buildings were so beautiful, ornate, and colorful. We also loved the buildings in the Temple of Heaven park and even the old pagodas in Bei Hai park. And inside Bei Hei park, the 3 lakes were frozen over and they sectioned off areas for people to slide around the ice on these tiny 2-foot plastic sleds with ice picks to project yourself. We had a blast on these things and made friends with these little 10 year old Chinese girls that wanted to practice their English. They were really cute and smiley. And finally, we have to mention our most awesome experience which was walking the Great Wall of China. When we got there it was snowing, which made it really beautiful and picturesque though freezing freezing cold.

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Photos

Great Wall of China
Top of the Great Wall of China. An amazing sight to see

Great Wall
One of the many long strips of stairs along the Great Wall. We took a cable car up to the top and then walked around, vs climbing up the 1600 steps

More Great Wall
Another cool vista from the Great Wall. You can kind of see how it winds around the mountain

Bei Hai Park
Near entrance to Bei Hai park, a beautiful public park with colorful pagodas and gateways, great gardens and 3 lakes

First Lake in Bei Hai Park
In front of the first lake in Bei Hai park. Really pretty and really popular spot for both the Chinese and tourists

Ice Sledding
Ice sledding in Bei Hai park. These teeny sleds were way too small for our western buts but it was lots of fun

New Friends
Our little Chinese friends. We think they had a crush on Anthony b/c they followed him around on the ice for awhile

More Bei Hai Park
More Bei Hai Park...

Forbidden City
Forbidden City from outside the palace walls

Wangfujing Street
Wangfujing was a major plaza (pedestrians only, no cars) with lots of shopping and a few restaurants.

Streets of Beijing
One of our least favorite things about Beijing were the 10-lane highways running through the middle of the city. It made it pretty unpleasant to walk around b/c of all the noise and pollution

Outdoor Market
Went to a great outdoor market our first day in Beijing. They had lots of great Chinese crafts including lots of jade jewelry, chinese pottery, wood carvings, handmade pipes, etc

Peking Duck
Peking Duck dinner out at Quanjude, a famous Beijing restaurant off of the Wangfujing strip. They carve it right by your table and give you little pancakes, scallions, and hoisin sauce so you can make little duck wraps. So good!

Street Meat
We were adventurous one time in Beijing and ate the street meat at this street fair. They have all sorts of crazy stuff there, we played it safe with the cabbage dumplings and they were really good.

Cloissone Factory
We visited a cloissone factory where they make beautiful Chinese pottery. There are about 6-7 steps in the process and the final product is so beautiful. They sell the pieces to high-ranking Chinese officials and overseas to restaurants, museums, galleries, etc

Forbidden City
The buildings inside the walls of the Forbidden City were so beautiful, even the details in the ceilings

Panda Garden
The panda garden at the Beijing Zoo had 3 adorable pandas. They played and climbed trees and were really fun to watch.

Pedi-Cabs
The pedi-cabs/rickshaws of Beijing were really funny-looking and were all over the place. We stuck to the real taxi cabs but it was so hard to find a cab driver that could understand where we wanted to go, even when we had the hotel circle a destination on a city map

Temple of Heaven
Anthony in front of the Temple of Heaven. It's inside a really pretty park and was loaded with Chinese tourists, there on holiday. The Chinese get several weeks off leading up to their New Year (the lunar new year on Feb 14) and tons of families were there vacationing and seeing the sites with us

Temple of Heaven- the plaza
Main plaza in the Temple of Heaven park. Filled with pagodas and flags.

Comments

[Marty Massimo]

China
Victoria thought China looked like a very fun place to visit based on your photos. I'm thinking after she reads about the food and toilets, she may change her mind!! We really enjoy reading about your travels.