Beginning in Beijing

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So I'm in Beijing. The Mongolian tourism slogan is “Land Of The Blue Sky”. Beijing's is “Land Of I Guess There Must Be Sky Up There Somewhere”. No, it's not really that bad; I never really noticed any pollution issues this first day. First surprise on arrival: the airport is so big that you have to take a train from the international arrival terminal to the one where the baggage claim is! That was a little confusing. After some initial hassles at the airport with one not-very-informative Tourist Information Counter and one very helpful Some Other Tourist Information Counter, I took the express train into the city for 25 Yuan (and not the limousine car for 500 Yuan which the first Tourist Counter tried to get me to take with the claim that there were no trains or buses from the airport to the city, to which I pointed out the signs for trains and buses from the airport to the city!), then caught another couple of subway trains for just 2 Yuan to Nanluoguxiang (try saying that fast!) from where I somehow managed to find my way on foot to the Downtown Backpackers with only a vague idea of where it was in relation to the station. In case you're wondering there are roughly 5 Yuan to one New Zealand dollar, so for less than 50 cents you can subway your way across the city as far as you want.

The Nanluoguxiang street where the backpackers is was the next surprise. It was like a cleaned-up boutique version of Khao San Road in Bangkok, not at all what I expected, and packed with tourists (mostly Chinese tourists apparently) brandishing all manner of cameras, through which weaved bicycles, motorbikes, rickshaws and the occasional car or truck. After checking in to the backpackers and booking a couple of intercity trains for Xian and Shanghai for the next legs, I headed off to the supermarket to fetch some bottles of water and things. In the entrance to the supermarket was a little pet area, with tubs full of dozens of baby red-eared and Reeves' turtles (many already floating upside-down), goldfish, fiddler crabs, land crabs, jars of fighting fish, and tanks of gouramis and parrot cichlids. Inside the supermarket the tins of spam and mackerel were in locked glass cases, presumably to combat rampat spam thefts.

I had been going to head to the Summer Palace to try my hand at Chinese birding, but on the map I was given at reception I noticed two large lakes called Houhai Lake and Beihai Park which were within easy walking distance. They looked just right, and the girl at reception said that yes there was a park around them with trees. I think the Chinese and I might have different interpretations of what constitutes a park with trees however. Houhai Lake turned out to be a fully concrete-rimmed reservoir, for want of a better term, surrounded by cafes and restaurants. I took a better look at the map and realised that what I had thought were little symbols for trees were actually wine glasses! Having seen only tree sparrows, common magpies and lots and lots of old Chinese people and tourists, I headed to the south end of Houhai Lake to try Beihai Park. What I found was a big wall (not a great wall, just a big one). You needed to pay to get into Beihai Park. The sign said 10 Yuan. I handed over a 20 and waited for change. The woman just looked at me blankly. I made it clear that the sign said 10 and she very grumpily gave me change. First day, already trying to rip me off!! Beihai Park was also not what I was after. I think the reason you have to pay is because of the buildings and temples in there. I walked round the west side of the lake first. You know those square holes in the paving in which trees grow, and there is gravel around the tree trunk? Here the gravel is all cemented in place around the tree and looks like it has been lacquered! It's just that kind of place.

I was very pleased to see a group of azure-winged magpies. For some reason I had always thought of them as having short tails, like a jay, but they instead have long tails like the regular magpies. Nice birds they are, really common here as well; I reckon I'm going to see them at every free park I visit. When I reached the road at the far end I walked all the way back the way I'd come and went round the east side of the lake. This was a bit better, more trees and grass (not a lot, but more than the west side). I could hear a crow cawing and thought it sounded like a carrion (Oriental) crow so I popped off the path to see. Two big black birds were on the ground amongst the trees. “Ah, crows,” I thought, but once I got the binoculars on them it was obvious they weren't crows. In fact they looked more like some kind of thrush, but what the heck sort of thrush gets that big?! I suddenly realised they were blackbirds! I mean, holy smokes, what sort of steroids are they feeding blackbirds over here!! I had heard Chinese blackbirds were bigger than European blackbirds but I didn't think the difference would be that huge! Whoever thought they belonged to the same species as the European one needs their head read!

First day in China was pretty trippy. People everywhere. Seriously: everywhere -- people. Also I was not enjoying climbing so many stone steps around the temple on the island in the lake – too much walking on the flat open steppe, that's my problem! I saw six people today wearing kitty cat ears on their heads; five of them were girls. I found a restaurant where I got a big plate of “noodles with meat sauce” (basically spaghetti bolognese) for 18 Yuan – about NZ$3.50. It isn't easy eating spaghetti bolognese with chopsticks. If I can get used to the over-abundance of people I think I will like China. Just have to hope some sort of zombie virus doesn't get released here though – the way the people are packed in it would only take about three hours for the whole of the country to become zombies.

The next morning I woke up with the whole area over my right cheekbone swollen up and my left ankle feeling like I had sprained it! It was as if someone had come in and beaten me up during the night but then left without taking my kidney! What's up with that? The best I could come up with is that I went sleep-walking and fell down the stairs but that's a bit of a stretch because I don't do that. Anyway, I pulled myself together and went off to the zoo as planned. I got there later than intended, at about 8.30 instead of the opening time of 7.30. Oh, also – it rained all day long. I don't know if that was the reason, but LOTS of the animals weren't out at all, so I totally missed many of the specialities I was after. However, possibly also due to the rain, there weren't really a lot of people at the zoo. In fact it seemed rather quiet! I did get to see all three of the snub-nosed monkey species they keep as well as the crested ibis, golden takin and some others, but I missed the black muntjac, red and white flying squirrel, etc. The zoo itself is a bit grim. It's pretty old (opened in 1906 or something like that) and is lumbered with an abundance of concrete and ill-mannered visitors. It is improving, but it has a long way to go to modernise properly. Almost all the cages are glass-fronted now, which is probably a god-send for the animals inside because it stops people throwing things at them, throwing food to them, and spitting on them (that's right, spitting on them). However unfortunately the glass, being very reflective and also very dirty, makes photography almost impossible.

The next day (today) was another day full of spectacular birding successes. Not. I'm contemplating giving up birding and just going and sitting in Thailand for the next three years doing nothing because of all the Fail going on in this trip! I started the day at the Summer Palace which I heard was good for waterfowl on the lake. The day looked overcast and there was a little drizzle when I left the hostel but that soon stopped. At the Summer Palace the air was thick and gloomy. It wasn't mist because I wasn't getting wet. I think it was actually a haze of pollution. Whatever it was I couldn't see clearly for more than twenty metres before things started to fuzz out. It was so weird, like walking around with a piece of cheesecloth over your head. You're trying to focus on things you should be able to see, and you just can't do it. Binoculars were useless because looking through them was as if the lenses were fogged up. I could barely see to the other side of the canals let alone the lake! There weren't any waterfowl to be seen in any case, except for some domestic-ish mallards. There were some birds flitting around in the tops of some trees as well: they might have been warblers or they might have been pelicans, I couldn't tell. I did discover the brilliant steamed buns with meat inside, best part of the morning! I didn't have a map of the area so it took me a little while to find the lake, and then it took me a LONG time to walk around it. I had rather under-estimated exactly how large it is! It was unbelievable how lacking in birds the morning was, even when the air started to clear around ten or eleven. There were of course the ever-present tree sparrows, common magpies and azure-winged magpies (I don't mind the latter magpie but the former magpie I'm starting to dislike with its annoying rattling call mocking me everywhere I go). Masses of barn swallows swarmed over the lake surface, but otherwise the only birds recorded were grey-capped pigmy woodpeckers (which are fantastic I must admit. I do like woodpeckers, especially the tiny ones!), some little grebes and a great crested grebe.

After a stop for the Palaeozoological Museum, I tried the Olympic Forest Park, getting there about 4.30pm. This area looks like it will be great for birding...you know, for someone who knows what they're doing! I had heard that this park too was good for waterfowl. The number of waterfowl I saw equalled exactly zero. Perhaps it is just too early for the migrants still? I spent an hour here, really just sussing it out for tomorrow, and the only bird worth mentioning was a black-browed reed warbler. The sun came out as well, sort of, through the haze that this city calls the sky. It was glowing bright orange. I've never seen a sun look so angry before, like it was about to start shooting mutating solar beams at the Earth. Tomorrow morning I'll be back here with a local biologist I know. Hopefully he knows how to find Chinese birds because I sure don't!!

For those interested in palaeontology, the Palaeozoological Museum Of China is absolutely outstanding. I only found out about it yesterday, and I'm so glad I did. The other museum in Beijing I was interested in is the Natural History Museum which I was also planning on visiting today. Their website's directions say to take the subway to Qianmen station. I did that but neglected to take my map of the city with me so once off the train I had no clue where to go next. I asked a few people, and was told I had to take a taxi there. That didn't sound right but I was at a bit of a loss what to do, so I went back into the subway and took the train to the Palaeozoology Museum instead. The other museum can wait some more. The museum is on three floors, the lower one for dinosaurs including several fully-mounted skeletons (the displays are a mix of real fossils and casts) and fossil fish, the next floor for more dinosaurs and birds, and the third for mammals. Really fascinating fossils here, although unfortunately everything is in Chinese apart for the scientific names. Still, there were fossils of Microraptor and Confuciusornis and Yanornis; bits of the ancestors of giant pandas, lagomorphs and tapirs; woolly rhino skulls; a whole case of fossil cat skulls; mounts of various proboscidean skeletons (including the 3.8 metre tall Stegodon huanghoensis – one of the largest elephants ever – which was staggeringly massive, and the smaller shovel-jawed Platybelodon grangeri); and even a real preserved coelacanth (the first real one I've seen). Brilliant place if you're ever in Beijing.

Photos of live animals (at the zoo) and dead animals (at the museum) to follow when I can.

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