China Whirlwind: Part Two

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Friday, October 4 - Tuesday, October 8

Tianjin and Beijing, China



Following our epic adventure on the Grasslands and in the Desert of Inner Mongolia, my friends and I decided to cut short and return to civilization a little early. This turned out to be one of the best decisions of the entire trek. It was a royal pain in the neck trying to coordinate five last-minute plane tickets... but air travel being as exceptionally affordable as it is in China, we made do with what we had available. By 5pm on Friday, the lot of us were comfortably situated in Annie's new apartment in Tianjin.

Tianjin City

One thing that surprisingly lacked over our couple of days in Inner Mongolia was meat. Believe it! In the land of a million sheep, we didn't eat more than a chunk of lamb each (I'm... not entirely sorry about that. I actually can't stand the stuff). But all of us being the carnivores that we are, we needed something of substance to eat. We decided, therefore, to avoid the local Chinese restaurants, and headed to Tianjin's famous Italian Walking Street where we... ate... German food. Right. So, we sat for a bit at a German Beer Garden-style restaurant, enjoyed some German brews and some meaty German food. We then decided to part ways for a bit. Some of us were hankering for a bit of exploration time, while others were looking for some relaxation time. Rachael and I traipsed around Tianjin for a few short hours and managed to find the town's massive pedestrian street, complete with an incredible food strip. Food strips in China are not to be trifled with. This is the stuff of Travel Channel legend... the places where you can find any kind of meat, as long as it's attached to a stick. There's more to come on that later, but she and I wandered about finding a few more small snacks and generally soaking in a genuine Chinese city atmosphere before deciding to rejoin the group in a slightly more Westernized locale. (Photos of this walk-about will be accessible later).

Huang Ya Guan Great Wall

The real perk of the change in plans was our trek to the Wall. Rachael and I had been planning to get to the Great Wall up in Beijing. It's a must-do when visiting Beijing, and so it seemed logical that we would wait until after the actual holiday to do this thing. However, the 5 of us decided to take the risk of heading to a tourist destination during a major Chinese holiday... something that normally comes with a full package of 6,000 of your closest Chinese vacationing friends. What we found, however, was a completely vacant stretch of Wall lined with the second-most-stunning mountain views that I have seen in this country. Wow.

The Wall at Huang Ya Guan has gone nearly untouched since its construction back in 557 (yeah, there's no 1 in front of that number... 1400+ years ago... wow). Some safety bars and whatnot have been laid to keep people safe, but because this section of the Wall is less well-known, it is not nearly as run down and trampled as that at Badaling that I experienced back in April. This stretch of wall is absolutely breath-taking.

Because we were nearly alone on this Wall, the five of us made the most of the fresh-air walkabout that we experienced. That is, within the 2 hours that we were given by our cab drivers before we absolutely had to be off the thing and back in their vehicles lest we should be left behind. On that aside, that was my first "Black Cab" experience and it was not much of a happy one. Boo-boos were made and we got screwed over a bit. But, it comes with the territory and we made it work for what it was. Anyway, back on the Wall, we naturally got goofy and took advantage of the empty-wall visuals to take a number of fantastic photos. Rachael, of course, pulled a Rocky and ran up a lengthy stretch of stairs leaving us all in the dust... And therefore all of us, even those in the best of shape, came down off the thing feeling healthily exhausted from a good day's work.

That night, Taryn and Lee had to head back to their respective China-hometowns in order to return to work on the 6th... Rachael and I took advantage of our completely unbooked schedule to linger one more day in Tianjin.

Tianjin City Part 2

Rachael and I trekked around Tianjin on our additional day to just see what we could see. Tianjin is an interesting city in that it has a remarkable Western influence. The entire city is laid out to mimic various major Western cities such as Chicago and Paris. We explored the side streets and found ways to collect little trinkets along the way. To finish our time in Tianjin, we met up with Annie for a street food dinner before heading to the train station for our next destination of Beijing.

Beijing

I did a much better job trekking around Beijing on this my second time there. As it turns out, (and this shouldn't be a surprise) Beijing comes alive at night. Rachael and I, after spending a day at Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, discovered the great Night Market at Dong Hua Men directly downtown. There, we witnessed people eating scorpions on sticks (like I said... night food markets are not to be trifled with in China), and spent several hours and a few dollars bartering for Beijing wares. We had fun with this for awhile, but it was about the time that Rachael experienced her third shopkeeper arm-grab-and-restrain tactic that we decided we were done. I'm not sure why she appeared to be so grabbable, but that's how the folks decided they were going to get her money. And it kind of worked. Sheesh.

The second day, we decided to head to the Olympic Green and pretend to be Olympians. This inspired us so much that we decided to set out in search of the exciting "largest Nike Action Sports Store in all of Greater China." What we found was a shopping mall... not of Nike products but of... shopping mall products. And, upon further inspection, I found this fun tidbit of information that Rachael ought to appreciate: "The store is located on the fifth floor of Joy City shopping center in the Xidan district, the heart of the city’s skateboarding community. At 110 square meters, it’s Nike’s largest action sports store in Greater China. " (http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/apparel-news/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=120519) Yeah, Rach... the one we found was it. Ouch. 110 square meters is about 360 square feet, thereby making this not a very big store. At all. Bummer face. Anyway, we got amazing Peking Duck out of the deal and found a... really big mall in Beijing.

We decided to cut that leg of the trip a little short, too, in order to head out to entirely new territory: Xi'an and the Terracotta Warriors.

More to come on that in Part 3!

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Photos

Great Wall Jump
Annie, Jessi and Taryn

Must-Do Pic
It wouldn't be an adventure with the three of us without this picture.

Empty Wall
Check how empty this Wall was!!! That is UNHEARD OF in this country...