Blogs from Beijing, China, Asia - page 16

Hey everyone! Upon arriving in China, it is quickly apparent that there are two major issues that you will find yourself talking about with just about everyone. Whether the person you are speaking with is young or old, male or female, college educated or not, 空氣污染 (kōngqì wūrǎn - air pollution) and 婚姻／談戀愛 (hūnyīn/tán liàn'ài - marriage/dating). 空氣污染 Over the weekend, it seems the pollution has decided to come back - this time worse than ever before. Previously, the snow and rain have kept the pollution to manageable levels, and have come often enough for the AQI (air quality index) to creep up too much. However, while the past week was very very very cold (reaching -12°C or about 10°F on Thursday morning), there has not been much precipitation. Over the weekend the AQI began creeping ... read more

Hey everyone! As I mentioned in my last post, last week was our independent travel week. However, since I stayed in Beijing, I didn't really do anything particularly noteworthy, other than a failed attempt to visit the art district, and eating 火鍋 (huǒguō hot pot) so spicy it felt like a hole was burning through my stomach (but it was soo tasty - totally worth it). Mostly I tried to stay indoors this week, due to a mix of bitter cold and air pollution so thick it could be mistaken for brown fog. On a different note, one of the things I have noticed while I am here is that racism and stereotypes are not just something that the US struggles with. Being a more homogeneous society, racism in China is definitely less obvious, but it ... read more

after eight hours of bum numbing flying we finally arrived in beijing. first thing was to negotiate the marvels of 21th century chinese public transport, which using our extensive knowledge of mandarin chinese and the international language of mime was surprisingly easy although we weren't sure if everyone was staring at us because they thought we were famous or just a pair of complete tools....after a short walk to the hotel from the subway, we checked in and then ventured out into the madness of beijing. first stop the temple of heaven. an unbelivable structure made of beautifully decorated wood surrounded by swarms of identically hatted tourists being herded by flag bearing tour guides.the park it's self is also very beautiful full of cypress trees and cats, we saw a lot of the park as we ... read more

Hey everyone! On Saturday we (finally!) made it to 長城 (chángchéng, the Great Wall). Even I'm impressed that we have been here for over two months and have just made it to the Great Wall! I'm glad we made it though, because it was just as beautiful and amazing as everyone says it is. We went to 金山嶺 Jīnshānlǐng, a part of the Great Wall that is less popular with tourists. I thought it was less popular because it is a three-hour drive outside of the city, but I didn't realize that there was more to it than that. It turns out that the portion of 長城 that we visited is known for being incredibly hilly. It ended up taking us four hours to hike through 15 towers of the Great Wall; when I use the ... read more

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Leaving Shanghai was easy enough. We took the Metro to the train station, and hopped onto the super fast train, which is basically the Chinese version of the Shinkansen in Japan. We had booked our ticket in advance through www.chinatravelguide.com which we found was an easy to use, English speaking travel company who can assist foreigners in buying tickets etc, for a very small fee. They'd booked us 2 seats on the 1500km journey which only took us 5 hours direct to Beijing. Before the high speed train, this journey would've been an overnight sleeper train jobby. The journey was fine, despite being sandwiched between a family with small children who were making the long trip back to Beijing. Despite the other carriages being very quite, we seemed to have landed the ... read more