Beijing, the capital of China was a must visit for us, although I would have been more than happy to skip China altogether and stay put in Japan (due mainly to my love of Japan, but also to my doubts of what China had to offer) but as we were there, there was no doubt, we were going to visit Beijing.
We didn’t get off to the best start, with us spending a lot of the night that we arrived searching for the hotel we’d booked, down every hutong (alley) in Beijing – which turned out to be horrible anyway (Hotel Beijing Shindom-Zushikou by the way, DO NOT stay there, not that you’d ever find it!) Tip: If you’re on a backpacker budget in Beijing, head to the backpacker street, Da Zha Lan West Street, Qianmen, near Tiennanmen Square, the street opposite McDonalds – we stayed at both Leo Hostel and Inn365 during our stay and both were more than adequate and private rooms are available if you really want (but at an extra cost which we didn’t think was worth it so we stuck to the dorms).
Anyway, first night fiasco over, we checked into our new hostel and headed off to see the sights starting with Tiennanmen Square, the largest public square in the world but most famous for the massacre that happened in 1989. The scale of the place was impressive but I didn’t really get a feel of the tragedy that had happened which I was expecting but I think it was a case of cover-up, as we noticed throughout China, everything’s a bit Disneyland, like a giant pair of rose tinted spectacles had been put over the place, the bad stuff is covered up with a shiny new facade, or maybe they’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
…And around the Square.
We took a day to visit the Summer Palace, a beautiful place, especially on a gloriously sunny day. The Summer Palace is a collection of buildings including the temple of Buddhist Virtue, the Hall of Jade Ripples and the Cloud Dispelling Hall. it’s easy to lose a whole day wandering in and around all the old buildings, besides the lakes and walking miles through the pristine gardens. The place is huge, set on about 720 acres (about 3/4 of that is taken up by the central Kunming Lake). The lake is a bit of an obstacle when trying to wander around, make sure you’re wearing some comfy shoes because you’ll be doing a LOT of walking! But you do get to sit down to watch some Chinese Opera!
We fancied a bit of ‘traditional Chinese entertainment’ so got our tickets for the ‘Shaolin kung fu show’, a dramatised theatre show telling a story of a kung fu legend! It’s a bit cheesy and the ‘actors’ are dubbed over with dodgy American accents (with Mandarin subtitles on a screen at the front of the stage) but it’s a decent enough show. The rules are a bit strict though, they really don’t want you to take photos so you’ll be sat watching the show and then suddenly there’ll be a laser beam pointed across the room because one of the ushers thinks someone’s got a phone/camera out!
Other food we sampled or just looked at during our time in Beijing… We did notice a distinct lack of wok cooking during our time in China, maybe that’s just a westernised idea of what Chinese cooking is about.
One of the places we chose to eat at had quite a variety on the menu – here’s a sample of some of the more dubious items on offer…!
Consisting of nearly 1,000 buildings set on 180 acres of land The Forbidden City was so-called because no one was allowed to enter without the emperor’s permission, obviously things have changed…the place was overrun with tourists! Matt hired one of the audio tour headsets (that had little lights on it that lit up once you’d visited a particular place). I think a lot of the detail can be lost in these kind of places, to the untrained eye, the buildings all look very similar and unless you’re an expert on Chinese history, the signs at each building only tell you so much, so as much as I hate to admit it, I think the annoying expense of the audio guide is probably a good idea in order to get the most out of the experience (note: I really don’t like audio guides, they seem to go too slow for me!)
The piece de resistance of any trip to Beijing is of course The Great Wall and it really was a sight to behold. The trickiest bit of arranging a trip is choosing who to go with as each tour place seems to offer to take you to a different part of it, as the worlds longest human-made structure (over 4,000 miles) obviously there’s no way you’d ever get to see it all so you have to pick a section! We chose to go on a trip arranged by Leo hostel called the ‘Ancient Secret Wall Tour’ offering to take us to a quiet part of the wall where no other tour groups go and no sellers hassle you. We were impressed, apart from our group (10 people) we only saw a few other tourists (that’d made their own way there) and of course the obligatory workmen repairing/re-building the wall! We drove past a few other parts of the wall on the way to where we were heading (Simatai Great Wall), once we arrived, we had a quick blast of information from our guide and were left to ourselves for a couple of hours. We broke away from the rest of the group to investigate ourselves, it was a very hot day and the wall is very steep in places, water is a must! After spending just a couple of hours there, the sheer scale is apparent, we were on a tiny section of wall and the effort it took to walk up and down the steps and slopes took it out of you. It’s a wonderful place to visit, and really does complete a trip to China’s capital.
Jingshan Park is a beautiful park in the centre of Beijing City, with a vantage point to watch a lovely sunset (it’s known to be a good place to watch the sunset and it was busy up there!) be warned, no matter how lovely and green the parks seen you must STAY OFF THE GRASS, for some bizarre reason, you aren’t allowed on the grass pretty much anywhere in China!
One huge bugbear of this park, and one we noticed around China was the fact that you have to pay to get into a park and then pay extra to see anything in that park (like seeing inside any of the small palaces/buildings-which don’t have a lot in them anyway)! WHY?! I don’t understand why they would want to pay for the staff at each of the ticket booths when could just charge a little bit more to get in and not have staff stuck in booths all day, and it makes you feel like you’re paying more than if you just paid for it all at the start even though I know you’re not.
We sampled some strange food in Beijing (or at least looked at them on the menu!), but being in Peking (Beijing), we had to treat ourselves to a [pretty expensive] Peking duck, yep, the western favourite of crispy duck and pancakes… We opted for the Quanjude restaurant after reading good reviews online although we didn’t account for the fact that restaurants close really early in Beijing, we went to the first branch and it was closed but luckily, one of the workers was there and told us that the other branch a couple of streets was still open and she walked us there…it was only just still open, we had the whole place to ourselves! To be honest, the meal was a bit of a let down, especially for the price..
Here’s some more photos taken wandering the streets, markets and Beihai park in Beijing.
