Busy Beijing in the national holidays

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So Beijing, the city associated with some big wall, renowned for its duck and celebrated for successfully hosting the Olympics. Contrary to my previous post our first contact with Beijing life was in a store fully loaded with our backpacks and thirsty. It seemed expensive at the time but we thought nothing of it till we purchased the same items later elsewhere. We had experience alien prices and been taken full advantage off; we were new to the town/country and didn’t know the going rate and it seemed she could tell, from here we have learnt our lesson.

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Our hostel was situated next to a park with stone tables and chairs for people to play cards or Chinese chess on and several ping pong tables set up always in use. We stopped and watched each time we passed, the locals are amazing and loved show boating to the westeners watching. We even had a go to their amusement and our embarrassment.

China has a ‘National Holiday’, I think it’s the first week in October, this year it was the 4th - 7th, they get a whole week off work! Most Chinese prefer to travel domestically and explore their own country which means that domestic travel is a nightmare. Millions of people moving around the country jamming up the transport and making it very hard to get the ticket you want or leaving you resorting to a standing ticket. Tourist attractions are worse than ever with tour groups wearing matching hats and guides raising umbrella’s or flags in the air. It may be worth avoiding visiting a in the holidays although every 5 years they have a full military parade through the square, the next one is in 2014 and I might just have to come back for it.

I can appreciate architecture and art but I’m a bigger fan of natural beauty and history. Some people and guides say you can spend a whole day in The forbidden city but for me personally it took a few hours, half of them trying to find the way out! After a while on a hot day all the buildings looked similar and I was bored. The sheer size of it was very impressive and the history that went with it but a walk through was enough for me. We moved onto Tienanmen Sq which is massive, being the national holidays it was swarmed with people and props being put up for the celebrations.

The Summer palace, a place of beauty, relaxing and tranquility; not in the national holidays. I saw a sign saying the previous day they had 14,000 visitors and expected 25,000 that day. The smog was very bad, as the photo shows you can barely see a few hundred meters over the lakes. All of this contributed to a rather disappointing visit of the palace. So my advice here is if it’s smoggy save the palace for another day.

The Great Wall, there are 3 main sections to visit, Badaling; I have been told not to go here as it’s turned into Blackpool pleasure beach. The wall has been fully restored with all the tourist tack that goes with it. I went to Mitianyu which is a mix of old and new. It does have a chair lift and slide, the wall it restored but there are bits past the admission where you can see the wall in ruin, this was my best bit of the trip as well as the slide. There is also a further section, Jinshanling, it has a 10k hike and I hear the wall is in bad condition, this would be worth it if you have time. I went through a hostel tour which cost slightly more than I wanted. In hindsight it is possible and cheaper to arrange it yourself, we just did the tour for convenience as it was an early start. The wall is very impressive, to think of the effort to build the wall in modern times is even baffling, some of the sections are on ridiculously steep and the wall has a fair thickness; I guess that’s the power of numbers.

The night market, everything you don’t want to eat is available here. I tried dog meat, snake skin, snake meat and scorpion. Baby scorpion was the best being crunchy and tasting like crisps (I hear the big ones aren’t nice), dog meat looked like it has been shaved off the dogs back with a potato peeler (top left in photo), I don’t think it tasted too bad but my eyes had already made up their mind. The snake skin was slimy yet scaly, a weird mix and not one that I want to try again. The snake meat which I’m still unsure if it was; I thought it was be a flaky meat like chicken, but it was more like fish and almosts bursts in your mouth as you chew it. It wasn’t Roy’s favourite food after entering his mouth it made a quick exit.

As said in my previous post definitely rent a bike, you see so much more and have a lot of fun at the same time. Roy and I covered a lot of ground and enjoyed getting some exercise other than walking. We even tried the classic Chinese style of one sitting on the back rack which was interesting. Another tip is make sure the bell works! Not that the locals pay any attention to it it’s still fun to ring.

Go get lost, I enjoyed strolling down the hutongs with no clue where I was going. The people are all laid back, you see shop owners sleeping in the middle of the day. You almost feel rude waking them to buy something.

The drinking in Beijing was fun, I discovered a lot of foreign students study here, especially from America. Make sure you pick the right place, some bars will charge 40rmb (£4) for a beer and next door it may be 10rmb (£1). Also remember to take your address for the cab ride home in Chinese but even here that might not be enough as we found some illiterate drivers and others that used a magnifying glass to read the text. This slightly worried me because if they couldn’t see a piece of paper how could they see the road!

We visited the Olympic park with the intention of getting there before sunset so we could see the building with and without their lights on. Unfortunately after a bit of hassle and the bus taking longer than we though the lights were on already. The park is nicely kept but has a slightly weird aura as all the roads are closed off leaving a ghostly feel to the pedestrian area. The buildings are spectacular, we wanted to have a swim inside the ‘Cube’ so we paid up. Walking around in side was very clean, modern and spacious, they even had a water park (£20 entry though). We saw the main pool but it had been drained so we were to swim in the training pool. Bit of a blow but we persisted, so we handed our ticket to the staff to be told you need a swim test, or deep water test to them otherwise you have to swim in the shallow section which was about 1.0m deep, this costs money, then you need a passport photo for your certificate, more money, then you need a swim cap, yet more money so in the end we said sod it and left. I read people would swim there to drink the water as it is meant to be very pure and myths of it giving you life etc, to oust these people all these rules now apply.

Peking Duck, the town is very famous for this so we thought a trip here isn’t complete until we had demolished a duck or two. In all honestly I wasn’t that impressed, I’d had it at home and for some reason had the idea it would be miraculously different, it wasn’t. As with duck the meat is very fatty, we paid a reasonable price for ours, they can range from 80Y-200Y (£8-£20) so the quality may vary to what you pay.

I enjoyed taking the Metro, I like to try an use it in most cities to see how they differ, the Beijing metro is very clean and efficient, not to forget cheap. Names are in English and trains have led’s indicating where you are, what direction you are going and even what side of the carriage to get off.


The Lama and Confucius Temples, these are a stones throw away from each other. Approaching the Lama you get wafts of incense in the air, after paying an entrance fee, of course, you go through an endless number of buildings with places to pay your respect to Buddha. In the grand finale there is a huge Buddha statue at 26m and carved from a single peace of sandalwood, unfortunately you’re not allowed to take photos inside and there are people on watch to make sure the rules are adhered too. The Confucius temple has a different feel, more spacious as it has bigger open areas, almost with a nature feel hearing birds singing in the trees.

So now most of the sights in Beijing had been done, it was time to move onto our next destination, Xi’an; home of the Terracotta Army and time to experience our first Chinese sleeper train

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