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Published: March 8th 2010
Recently we were blessed with a week off from university for the Chinese New Year. The majority of exchange students jetted off to the Philippines to work on their tans. I didn’t so much see the point of this when it was only going to wear off by the time I flew home. Instead Ben and I booked a trip to Beijing; the heartland of modern China steeped in thousands of year’s history. This had been the centre of activities for thousands of Chinese emperors and more recently the place from Mao and his communist party have ruled China. There were so many reasons why I was excited about visiting Beijing and indeed having a proper excursion into the Mainland. There were so many interesting aspects of our train journey, wider observations of China and impressions of Beijing that I could have written about. This really is only a sample of what I could say about this trip.
I’ll quickly start by saying that the night before I left a few of the exchange students who hadn’t flown off to the Philippines went to Victoria Harbour to watch the Chinese New Year fireworks. Fireworks were invented in this part of
Arrival at our hostel
Very welcome after the "lose in Beijing" nightmare.the world and they really know how to put on a display, it has to be one of the most impressive fireworks displays I’ve seen with rockets bursting into all sorts of Chinese symbols such as flowers and Tigers. The sky was flashing in a vast array of different colours with bright flashes illuminating the Hong Kong skyline. We arrived later than we would have liked and our view was limited to say the least, but we still saw enough to make the experience memorable.
The next day we set off for Beijing. I did take a certain amount of interest from the train journey. It was an opportunity to meet a few interesting travellers, relax at times and watch Chinese countryside and small towns and cities do by. I was struck by how bleak the countryside of northern China appeared, I was expecting a far greener and lush environment. As it was, there were plains outside, with barely a sign of life in sight for miles. I was also struck by the uniform nature of every piece of civilisation I passed. Every school, home, factory and farm looked exactly the same, like it had all been centrally planned
Street outside our hostel
Lots of atmosphere and decorations due to New Year. by the same people. The other big observation was the sheer number of Chinese flags we passed; you could barely go 100 yards without passing another one at times. Clearly a patriotic country.
The train itself was more than satisfactory. We were booked in the hard sleeper class, which was very cramped at times. However, the beds were comfortable and clean, more so than any other sleeper train I’ve been on. The facilities were good enough if you walked down to the soft sleeper end, so altogether I had no real problems with spending a total of 48 hours in these conditions over the week.
Beijing itself is vast. It’s a great expanse going for miles and miles, all packed with apartment blocks, factories and small businesses. Throughout the trip we only got beyond this great metropolis once when we visited the Great Wall, a journey which underlined the sheer size of Beijing as we passed through it.
We had two unexpected perks throughout the trip. Firstly, the weather. I was expecting Beijing to be bitterly cold. It largely wasn’t. Every day it was clear, bright and sunny. So long as you were in the sun it
was not a problem at all, sometimes I even felt hot. Going out at night was a different story, but most nights were spent in the bar at our hostel. Secondly, the pollution and smog. I had been expecting a horribly polluted city with every breath you take reducing your life expectancy by five minutes. This could well be true most of the time, but we were lucky enough to visit in the Chinese New Year meaning that all the factories had been closed down for about a week. I barely noticed any sort of smog. On the flip side of this, all the sites were heaving with local tourists when maybe they wouldn’t have been so much at other times. Whilst the air pollution was not a problem, it’s still a very dirty city with litter lining many of the streets. In China it’s clearly not considered rude to spit in the street, and you can barely go 10 seconds without hearing the sound of somebody clearing their throat behind you. It all contributed to a filthy city, and convinced me that Hong Kong has to maintain a sense of autonomy to stop it turning into this sort of
Tienanmen Square
China's iconic flag in front of Forbidden City complete with Mao's portrait. state.
Upon arrival in Beijing we got massively lost for a long time. I won’t go into great details, but I was partly to blame. It made our arrival at our hostel even more rewarding. I’ve never stayed at a better place than this incredible hostel. Our room was very comfortable, clean, well heated and had a half decent view from it. You could see the edge of Tiananmen Square from it and we were often treated to home fireworks displays in back yards. They didn’t quite match up to the ones over Hong Kong’s harbour, but it’s clear that the Chinese know how to put on a good display. These small displays happened frequently throughout our time there, and on both train journeys. Sometimes people didn’t even wait for night and you could just hear the noises, a bit of a waste. My doubts about the safety were confirmed the night there were kids in the street outside our hostel throwing firecrackers at each other, later on throwing one in my direction as I crossed the street. There were 4 or 5 police officers just standing and watching the entire episode.
Downstairs, our hostel had an awesome
In front of Forbidden City
Cheap Chinese flags - lost :( bar/restaurant popular with travellers from all over Beijing. It was a great place to meet people and relax in the evenings, with massively helpful staff. These staff would in the morning often give us free coffee to see us off and give us helpful advice and directions to all the tourist attractions. Their food was awesome. At the end of a long day they did the best hot chocolate in the world when you got back, and at nights it was £1 a pint. Top marks. Our first night was spent down there after our long train and “lost in Beijing” episode, but we got a relatively early night and prepared for Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City the next day. Myself and Ben had met a Finnish guy named Eero on the train who joined us in our hostel and would be with us for the rest of the trip, making a group of 3, which was a good number to travel in.
After an early get up and a full English breakfast (our hostel wasn’t bad at that either) we were leaving for Tiananmen Square, about 10 minutes walk from our hostel, at around 9.30. Tiananmen Square
Inside the Forbidden City
Architecture such as this for miles. is enormous and you get the feeling that it’s really at the hub of Beijing, a landmark at the centre of it all. The Chinese are massively security conscious; we had to pass our bags through scanners just to get into a city square. Following that, the square was littered with PLA Guards in their fancy green uniforms. They marched in any odd direction with no real drive, keeping an eye out for any form of dissident to quash no doubt. I made my best effort to sneak up behind one for my picture to be taken with him but failed miserably as he swiftly turned direction and walked away with real purpose. Quite what purpose I’m not sure, he stopped again only five metres away. He had a good, dirty, look right at me in the process and I decided that repeating my efforts was probably not a great idea.
Tiananmen Square has a few landmarks in the middle. Firstly there is Mao’s memorial hall, which had a massive queue of loyalists ready to pay their respect to their hero. There was also a pillar monument in the middle; the Monument to the People’s Heroes. At one end
of the square, opposite the Forbidden City, is a symbolic Chinese Flag flying high above the whole scene. It’s possibly the most symbolic flag in China, with its raising and lowering sessions every day watched by hundreds. As just stated, one end of square faces the Forbidden City with its massive portrait of Mao overlooking the square. At the other end is some sort of gate, Wikipedia it if you must. On the west was the Chinese Government Building, known as the Great Hall of People, overlooking it all and looking rather grand. On the east, there was the equally impressive looking National Museum of China. The great expanse in the middle of all this has a real buzz and atmosphere about it. It was not, as I feared, a tourist attraction but a lively meeting place for Beijing residents. It was only as you walked towards the Forbidden City that hawkers tried their luck selling you tourist tack. I bought a Chinese flag for 50p; devastated to leave it in a taxi later that day.
Next up it was time to head towards the Forbidden City. Back in the day, entering the Forbidden City without invitation would cost
Chinglish Exhibit No. 1
"Attention Security". ...??? you your life. Today, 40 Yuan (£4) will suffice. Following the theme of Beijing, it’s truly vast. It barely exaggerates when referring to itself as a “city”. We spent hours getting lost in there, literally. The amount of wealth, extravagance and grandeur on display was a joke. Every old temple, residence or political hall was effectively a palace, built in a way reflecting your traditional image of old Chinese civilisation. All sorts of dragon carvings and colourful paintings, as well as the slanted roofs created breathtaking exteriors. You could have a look inside and it appeared equally impressive. The emperor would have one such palace to sleep, one to get dressed, one to meet his guests, one to eat dinner, one to play with his toys and relax, one in which to meet his concubines and so on. I imagine that during its prime, half the wealth in China lay behind its gates.
Following hours of wandering around inside this bizarre world, we had the chance to climb the hill behind it and look down upon the entire city from above. Definitely worth a look. We grabbed some food, walked back around the outside to Tiananmen Square to watch
the flag lowering ceremony. It involved 20 - 30 guards armed with bayonets marching across the road from the Forbidden City into Tiananmen Square and doing a little song and dance, before one man pushed a button and the flag came down. A lot of resources to use just to push a button.
We walked back to our hostel and chilled out for the night. I got beaten at chess multiple times by Eero, as I did throughout the entire trip. It was hardly a fair game, he’s been playing nonstop for three months in Australia. There was a pool club across the road, where we went and had a few games. None of us were anything special but my luck was clearly in so I had a 100% record at the end of the night. I was perhaps a bit more competitive than the other two; apparently it’s not normal to cheer out loud when playing pool. We booked our trip to the Great Wall for two days later; I was already dying from the anticipation.
The next day was possibly my favourite, as we visited the Summer Palace. How this isn’t mentioned in the same breath
Chinglish exhibit No. 2
"Be civilised tourists"
"No not sit by and throwing waste into the chassis" as the Forbidden City is beyond me. The emperors used to try and escape the heat of the Forbidden City in the summer time, to another palace complex out of town. This place was far more open than the Forbidden City, with lots of open gardens to walk around and the immense Lake Kunming in the middle. All the palaces and temples could be described in similar ways to those in the Forbidden City, insanely extravagant. The Summer Palace also came complete with a massive, sophisticated theatre built at request of the empress amongst other things. It seems that this place was built more for leisure than the Forbidden City, where much of the formal business took place. It’s also memorable for an excellent Chinglish sign, with one building names “The Temple of Timely Rainfall and Extensive Moisture”. Chinglish signs were commonplace around Beijing, with the English making sense but not quite being right.
One of the highlights from the Summer Palace was that the lake in the middle had frozen over. Many tourists were taking the opportunity to walk across the middle and save some time. Naturally we followed. It seemed like the lake had in fact dried
Flag lowering ceremony
Back on Tienanmen Square up too, as where the ice was broken there was simply a load of slippery mud, as opposed to freezing cold water. Stakes lowered a little. It was great fun working our way across, jumping from one block of ice to the other. It felt like playing Super Mario for real. After this excursion we climbed up the largest palace on top of the hill and got to see the view of all the parks and gardens from the top. In the other direction, we got to see again the enormity of Beijing. It never appears to end.
After the journey back we tried to find an indoor market known at the Silk Store and after too long we eventually found it. The others bought some fake clothes but I stocked up on them last semester in Shenzhen and saw no real need to add to it. Still, it was in a different part of town and we got to see the more modern Beijing with sleek skyscrapers rising up around us and flashy shopping malls for the wealthier people to enjoy. It showed a different side to the city, a side I’d more expect to see in Shanghai.
In hindsight, of course China’s capital city would show this side too.
The day ended the same way as the day before; in the bar at our hostel. We were due to be picked up at 7.30am to the next day to be taken to the Great Wall, but a South African guy names Charlie decided to buy us drinks until 2.30am and we also met a load of expats from South Korea taking a holiday as well as loads of French students, so it ended up being quite a late one. Not regretfully I have to add.
So we forced ourselves out of bed at 7am the next morning. Our tour guide did his job but he wasn’t one of the friendly sorts who made a real effort to get along with us. He clearly had commitments to do a lot of favours to various friends. I was really not impressed when he made us stop at some Jade factory and shop on the way. I WANT TO SEE THE GREAT WALL!!!!!! After a very boring load of information about what was effectively sexed up stone, we were shown around the shop. £150?! I can buy a
Chinglish exhibit No. 3
"Temple of Timely Rainfall and Extensive Moisture" fake carving for £1 and 99% of people outside of this room won’t be able to tell the difference! I was too polite to actually say that, of course. It wouldn’t have been a proper blog update if I didn’t moan at some stage.
After that we were eventually driven to the Great Wall. My expectations were so high; it could so easily have let me down. It certainly didn’t. We went to one of the best maintained areas of the wall and probably as a result one of the touristiest. That didn’t make the walk easy, the “steps” seemed several feet high at some sections. As we climbed up and up we slowly left the crowds behind us and saw some breathtaking views. We could see the wall going on and on, snaking through the mountains. My only regret was that we chose a route that led to a dead end after a couple of hours. I honestly could have spent a day trekking along, further away from civilisation into the middle of nowhere. It must have been a formidable barrier when it was in use, running along the ridges between the mountains. It was hard to actually
Crossing the Lake
Towards the main Palace complex imagine it in use as it’s all so peaceful now. Even today building a wall of this size and magnitude would be a great feat, let alone hundreds of years ago.
The surrounding countryside was very different to what you see in most photos. As it was the winter, the hills were rather bare, just as the countryside we went through on the train. I can imagine it look even more spectacular in the summer when all the leaves are out on the trees, but it’s an incredible sight whenever you see it.
Our tour guide wasn’t finished with extras once we got back. A stop at a silk factory and a tea house on the way back were much more interesting and enjoyable than the pointless jade stone place. I still didn’t spend any money at them, of course. We also got to have a quick look at the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium. It looked very impressive and painted a different side to Beijing once again.
We got back to our hostel absolutely knackered. I didn’t even have the energy to go downstairs to the bar. Instead I sat in my room reading my book before turning
View from top of hill
Looking down on Summer Palace and gardens. on the only English channel on the TV. They were talking about the Dalai Lama’s visit to Washington. I never knew that the Dalai Lama was not a religious leader, but in fact, “A dissident hiding under the guise of religion who has spent his entire life trying to undermine the happiness of the Chinese people and the progress of the revolution.” Western media has clearly lied to me. We had enough time to grab some Peking Duck - delicious. After that it was time for bed before the journey home the next day.
We were seen off from our hostel with free coffee and lots of bottles of water for our long journey. The staff all came and said goodbye to us individually; I was going to miss the 365 Inn. We stocked up on some food, boarded without too many issues and found an empty carriage to sit in, which we shared with some American travellers we met. I’d had a lovely time in Beijing, but I also felt ready to go back to Hong Kong. I was looking forward to the end of people blatantly pushing you out of their way, and the end of people
spitting on the street every 10 seconds. We’d spent just the right amount of time in Beijing.
I loved every second of it, but I was definitely ready to leave and head back to where I now call home. It’s a truly fascinating city with so much to see which is perfect if you have 4 or 5 days available. You could possibly spend a little longer and visit sights such as the Temple of Heaven and the Ming Tombs. At the same time, the manners of Mainland Chinese people and the dirty nature of the city could well put me off travelling the Mainland more comprehensively and equally left me happy enough to leave when I did.
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Many thanks from the epicfireworks team
Great post. Many thanks. The Epic Fireworks Team.