Beijing..the longest blog yet!

The Gate of Heavenly Peace at Tiananmen Square

Finally we're in Asia! It's so refreshing to be out of Europe and into the land of unknown. We got into Beijing at 5:30am, welcomed by a nice fog...I mean smog. You couldn't even see 30 feet in front of you. We caught a cab to our hostel after bargaining with the cab driver for a few minutes, at first he said 200 to get to our hostels and we said 100, he said no. Ok, we walked on...he ran after us and said ok ok. This is the funny thing about China, you have to be comfortable with the fact that you will get ripped off. When we got to the hostel the owner Joe said that really we should have paid 20 ha! Oh well, there were three of us, (we brought along Clement to our hostel), so it's not that bad.

Kitties! Lots of kitties at the Chinese box in Beijing

The Chinese box hostel is where we stayed and it is a pretty quaint place with about 5 cats. They nap all over the place and love the attention from all the guests. We decided despite the time changes and the early morning getting off the train, not to nap when we arrived. We thought this would help us deal with the jet lag quicker (no we didn't fly but the time change from Moscow is about 5 hours). To jumpstart the morning, we had a delicious traditional Chinese breakfast, a tomato noodle soup with scrambled eggs, sooo good! After our breakfast, we joined some other travelers who were going to see the Summer palace and the Beijing Zoo. The kicker was that instead of using buses or the metro, we got a sweet boat ride to the zoo! The zoo houses so many animals, Pandas, Lions, Tigers, Lions, Elephants...you know standard zoo. The only reason we actually went there was to see the giant Pandas, but then we got sidetracked and stopped in at a number of other exhibits. To be honest it was very sad and depressing. Ewa lost it a little bit when we entered the Big Cats Exhibition. The beautiful animals were put in small concrete cages that were barren, nothing for them to do but sleep or walk around in a circle distressed. There were so many beautiful cats, leopards, lions, panthers, tigers...some clearly not taking well to being locked up in such a small space. There were baby white tigers who were just laying there doing what cats do, sleeping. Some tigers were scratching at the metal door at the back of their cage furiously trying to get out, others like the black panther were walking around in circles panting. It was a sad sight and a reminder that modern zoos are keeping animals caged only for display for our selfish reasons, and that the animals would be better served by us making a reasonable attempt at real animal conservation, by providing as close to a natural habitat as possible. The images that we remember looking back at the zoo, remind us of our desire to work on or at least visit a real animal sanctuary / rehabilitation project during our year vacation.

At the summer palace, on a wonderfully clear day

From the Zoo, we took another boat ride to the Summer palace. The area of the summer palace has been used by emperors from around 1111 AD, and continued additions over the years added to the beauty and size of the Palace. The Palace was largely destroyed in the war of 1860 and restored on its original foundations in 1886, only to be destroyed at the beginning of the 20th century again – it is a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges, and about 294 hectares in size. At this point we were all a little bit delirious and out of it from the lack of sleep and the long day. There is so much to see and then it all starts blending together, at one point we got lost, but managed to find an exit and flag down a cab. But, as we find out, getting into a cab in Beijing doesn't mean the cab will take you anywhere. You show them the address where you want to go, and if they don't know where that is they tell you to get out! Haha. So this is what the cab driver did, after trying for a while longer we finally got one. Trying to take a bus in Beijing can be daunting, the city is enormous and unless you want to spend your whole day in traffic then taking a cab is the better option (although if you are in rush hour traffic it's often faster walking).

Eating the river!

Before heading to the hostel, we were famished and needed to grab a bite to eat. We wandered around the streets for a while, before settling into a small restaurant that had a hole in the middle of the table. We figured that we would get to stir fry our own meal. Sounded great. We ordered some veggies, beef, chicken and noodles and waited in anticipation of our meal. The servers came out, and placed a big bowl of cloudy mystery water on the induction heater. We stared a little bleary eyed trying to figure out for sure what we were supposed to do. The lady told us to put the vegetables into the “river” for 4 minutes. Hmmm… OK, sounds great! So, after a few quick comments between us and Clement, into the river went all our veggies. An hour later, and a few orders for seconds, we were very pleased about our dining experience in the river! We would be back! That night, we had no energy left to join the big rambunctious group of people heading out for the night markets. We were off to bed for our big day 2 in Beijing!

We were up a little late, after a much needed sleep-in and after another great tomato-egg-noodle breakfast, we were off on bus 22 to Tiananmen square! The gate of Heavenly Peace, which separates Tiananmen square from the forbidden city, was constructed in 1417, and to this day is the worlds largest city square with 440,000 m2. The square didn’t seem to us to be anything too spectacular, however keeping the significance of the square in mind regarding the protest which saw hundreds of Chinese die in pro-democracy demonstrations in 1989 does alter your view of the area. The whole square was under renovations to prepare it for the huge National Day celebrations that were planned for Oct 1st.

We continued on through the square into the Forbidden City. The complex is truly amazing to see. It’s like the Louvre in so far as there are too many things to see inside within the space of one or two days. We spent over three hours walking around trying to take it all in. The three hours was just long enough to walk through, and make a few detours into the side buildings off of the main temples. The Forbidden City began construction in 1406, and it was estimated that over 1 million Chinese were working on it during the 14 years it took to complete. There are many rooms and display cases filled with artefacts and various relics.

After our wandering around the city we headed back to the hostel to freshen up before our night out on the town to see the kung-fu show! As it turned out the show was amazing, filled with crazy stunts and great acrobatics. There were even a set of three kids (probably around 6 years old) who did a half back flip, landing on their head, swinging their feet to continue the motion, and completing another half flip again to land on their feet. They would do several of these in a row. It almost didn’t seem real some of the things that they were able to do. However, despite the show being great, it was overcast the people who organized our night out. We paid the hostel 280 Yuan each for the show, which included the transportation and the VIP tickets. We were picked up by the mini-van and the lady who arranged the tickets. We stopped once to pick up more guests. Once we arrived at the show, Ewa asked her for a suggestion for a place to eat after the show. WELL, they would take us to some place. They tried a lobster fancy looking place, but we said we just wanted typical Chinese. So, we went across the street and had a pretty decent meal. But, we didn’t eat alone. We were joined by the lady and another Chinese man, who was picked up at the second stop. After the meal, when the bill came, they told us it was 55 Yuan, and after we paid, and everyone walked out, we realized that we paid for them to have supper. Strange, but as it was only about $9 Can, we didn’t object too much. When we arrived at the show, Ewa was taken by the Chinese man and they went into the theatre. I was held back by the lady for about 5 minutes, which at the time we didn’t know why. Then, we played musical chairs, as directed by our two Chinese hosts, moving between 4 sets of seats. First in the “VIP” area, only to be kicked out, and subsequently kicked out of other areas, before settling in our assigned seats in the back right corner of the theatre. Definitely not VIP seating. The best part is that there were only 3 tickets, but there were 4 of us. SO, the Chinese lady ended up on the lap of the Chinese guy. After it was all said and done, (and we managed to observe a few things, them cuddling a little more than strangers would, people talking about ticket prices) we came to the realization that we over charged about 800% for the tickets, and we paid for these two to have a double date out on the town for free. We weren’t even mad, just amazed! After our little run-around we were off to the hostel again for an early night as we had to be on the bus at 05:50 the next morning for our long drive out to the great wall!!

Hiking the great wall from Jinshanling

We signed up for the long hike of the great wall-10 km of the wall and 2 km of mountain to get to the wall. The start point was at the furthest of three sections of the wall near Beijing,140 km outside of the city. It took about 4 hours to get to the destination and luckily we both managed to sleep most of the way there. Once we got to the wall the tour guide told us which way to go and said it should take about 4.5 hours to hike the 10km. The wall was awesome, since this part was the least touristy you really had the chance to enjoy your surroundings and the hike. There were no crowds, only a few vendors selling “water, beer, coke” at the towers. It was really worth it to take the bus that far out and have some isolation instead of going close by and being hounded by vendors and feeling claustrophobic because of all the other tourists. It took us only 3 hours to finish the hike but we were going at a good steady pace, up and down the steps. Because this part of the great wall is not visited as often it is also in a nearly original (read crumbling and difficult) state at some parts, which only adds to it’s charm. Some parts didn’t even have steps left, or the stone was falling out from under your feet. After the hike we took a zip line down to a little boat which took us the rest of the way to where we were meeting our guide. We all had a buffet lunch and were heading back to the city.

The creepy crawlers at the Wangfujing night market

After relaxing for a bit after getting back we went out to see one of the night markets with Clement and Benji. The night market has very many different Chinese snacks: scorpions on stick (still alive), starfish, crickets on a stick, sheep’s penis, dog, cat, silkworms, as well as ‘regular’ more western style food. We both had noodles haha. One of the strangest things was the drastic change in the smell, one second it smells so good and then the wind changes direction and you have to stop chewing because the smell is awful, we are still not sure what that particular smell is, some type of food being grilled. We didn’t even bother trying to talk each other into eating anything that we weren’t comfortable with…there was no way that was going to happen. After the night market we were all a bit hungry since we hadn’t eaten much and we went out for dinner at a small restaurant near the hostel. We were the only white people in there and got a few stares but the owners were very nice and hospitable, even handing out cigarettes to Benji who didn’t have any left. We were joking that they would end up on the bill, but it didn’t really matter, it is very cheap to eat in Beijing if you stick to the local restaurants. We had 5 different dishes and a round of beers and it cost us only 60 which is about 10 dollars Canadian…for 5 people!

The next day we decided to check out a different type of market - the silk market. The silk market is a building 6 stories high filled with vendors selling anything you can imagine, clothing, bags, watches, jewellery, sunglasses, electronics, souvenirs etc. The vendors are incredibly pushy, we have never experienced anything like this. They are constantly yelling at you “Hey Mista”, “Lady you want bag…good bag” but all at once, 10 different people are accosting you as you are walking down a narrow row of vendors. Luckily we were there only for fun and really weren’t looking to buy anything so it was funny. They grab your hand and wont let go, leading you to their stall, they joke, they yell, some of them will even steal the hat off your head to try to get you to come to their stall. If you want to buy anything here, you have to be prepared to barter, and barter hard. You ask them how much they will give you a hugely inflated price, so you counter with about 10% of what they want, because they are ripping you off. Sometimes just walking away from the stall after you touch or look at something is enough for the vendor to drop their price by 80%. We bought a couple of things and were out of there, walking out onto a quiet back alley we walked in silence enjoying that no one was yelling at us anymore.

We started feeling sore from yesterdays great wall extravaganza and decided to go for a massage. Clement was going anyway so we went along with him to the Dragon Fly. The place was very nice, candles, aroma therapy and not too expensive. We enjoyed our well deserved treat, an hour oil massage. After the massage we spent the night at the hostel having a few drinks and enjoying our little peaceful space in Beijing. The atmosphere at the hostel was always great. A good mix of people, and well arranged to allow for people to hang out, have some beers, relax watching TV or on the free internet. That night with the crowd, Chad was finally feeling talkative and settled into a few hours of debate with the other backpackers and found himself crawling into bed in the wee hours of the morning. Our last day in Beijing was pretty lax, we relaxed in the morning and went for another massage at the dragonfly, this time a two hour massage. The first hour was a Chinese massage and then another hour of head and shoulder massage. Chad really enjoyed his massage, Ewa on the other hand has a less than perfect one: the masseuse was way to hard and then the funniest part was during the head massage he actually fell asleep haha not once but about 4 times at different parts of the massage, oh well. We went back to the hostel, had some dinner and went catch our train which was leaving at 9:20 pm to Shanghai. It was a bit sad to leave the Chinese Box and everyone we met there, it was an awesome place. The owner Joe even gave us Chinese charms we could put on our backpacks, so sweet. We were really wondering what the trains would be like in China. We booked a soft sleeper, 4 berth cabin and when we got there we were pleasantly surprised at how great it was. They even had a western style toilet and on the other side of the train the normal squatter, which was awesome because Ewa was really wondering how you would successfully pee on a moving train using a squatter. Shouldn’t have worried! The train was pretty new, it didn’t smell, the bathrooms were clean and nice, the cabins and beds were comfortable. Each bed even had a flat screen TV. The train we took wasn’t even the fast luxury ‘Z’ class trains, but it was by far the best train we’ve been on yet! Chinese trains are a very pleasant surprise indeed!

Random shot of the pollution in Beijing

We found Beijing to be a friendly and unrushed city. There are over 17 million people living here and as long as you put your trust in the cabs (none of which have seatbelts for the passengers) and watch carefully for cars, busses, motorbikes you don’t really feel rushed or in danger at any time. Pedestrians do not have the right of way, and cars sometimes don’t even stop at red lights. The traffic is bad and the pollution makes it hard to breathe, but the city has flair. The Chinese people, especially the men, like to clear their throats and spit, a lot, but less than we thought. Perhaps it is a dying tradition. Another strange observation for Beijing is the babies and toddlers wear pants that have a hole in the ass. These baby outfits are actually manufactured with a hole so that the child can relive itself at any point, and not mess their clothes. Apparently, babies should not have to “hold it”, because it’s not healthy. That however doesn’t mean that the stroller, or the parent’s arms, or the floor of the city bus are spared. We watched once as a small boy proceeded to drop off a surprise diarrhea into his stroller and the efforts of his mom to try to clean up the mess. Maybe it’s better than the billions of added diapers into the environment?? Another thing we’ve noticed is that some Chinese people have no problems simply staring at you (the white people) in a confused curious manner. They are not shy about it either and even when you stare back they only continue to stare back. It can be a little unnerving. It’s a bit strange walking down the street and people staring at you, some even stop you and want to take a picture with you.

Only 11 hours on our mid-range Chinese train and we would be in Shanghai!!

Us with Clement in Beijing

written by

ECRadventure on September 28, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: ECRadventure's Travel Blog

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