Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

We hadn't managed to get to Shanghai in time for the total solar eclipse, but there would still be a fairly full eclipse visible from Beijing, so we had decided to view it from Tian'anmen Square; it was nearby, it would be interesting because of all the people there, and there was enough space that tall buildings would not block our view of the sun.

The pollution was terrible

In the morning we had a look outside and the pollution was the worst we had seen it. We discussed trying to get out of the city where the air should be clearer, but we hadn't really got up early enough to realise any alternative plans, and we just accepted that we were stuck with the plan we had. We had to get within about fifty metres of Tian'anmen Square before we could even see it, but hopefully the sun would still be visible through the fug. There were plenty of people in the Square but most of them seemed to be waiting for tours of the Forbidden City to begin.

We could hardly see across the Square

Serve the People!

Our arrival was a short time before the start of the eclipse and there was no sign at all of the sun. Even the other side of the Square was partially obscured. Given the conditions I didn't expect to see anything until near the maximum of the eclipse, when I hoped we would at least notice it becoming darker. We waited and people-watched. As time passed, it seemed like it might be getting darker, but it was so gradual that our eyes were adjusting to it and it was hard to be sure there really was anything to notice.

Looking back towards the Forbidden City

People watching in Tian'anmen Square

The yellow troupe

Just after the time for the maximum of the eclipse had passed and we were starting to give up altogether, a troupe of yellow-clad youths seemed to be moving in formation to music. I couldn't see clearly what was going on, so I got up to take a closer look, planning to take a video clip of whatever was going on, and left Joanne sitting and paging through the Lonely Planet. I had just whipped out my camera, as I was close enough to video the dancers, when I noticed people all around me going oooh and aaah and pointing to the heavens. I looked up and there it was: a not quite full solar eclipse, which I immediately snapped a couple of photos of. I thought of whistling or shouting back at Joanne, but then remembered all the security forces around and thought better of acting in such a prominent and individualistic way in Tian'anmen Square, however when I looked over I could see everyone around her was looking up and pointing at the sky too, so she would obviously have seen it too. The whole time we were in China people stared at us, even in Beijing where they see lots of tourists. Often they asked to have their photo taken with us, and that day was no exception.

They took a photo so I thought we should too

I took a couple more shots and walked back over to Joanne; nobody runs or jogs in the Square. Did she see it, I immediately asked, but my confidence had already subsided as she still seemed engrossed in the Lonely Planet.

Charcter in the Square

Inevitably the response was “see what?”. The eclipse had long since sunk back behind the Beijing soup and Joanne had seen nothing. She was devastated: “All this time waiting around and I miss it!”. We waited a bit more in case it broke through again but, when enough time had passed that there would no longer be much to see, we gave up and headed off in the direction of the opticians where Joanne planned to get some cheap glasses and contact lenses; we had heard the prices are a fraction of what you pay in Scotland. Just as we were about to leave the square, I spotted the sun peeking through again and alerted Joanne. It was still fairly eclipsed, but it was well on its way to the end. Joanne cheered up that she had at least seen something of the eclipse, if not the relative spectacle I had witnessed.

The eclipse as Joanne saw it

At the opticians, with some difficulty, we were able to establish that the very reasonable prices on display were for everything, not just the frames. It really was a bargain, however I admonished Joanne for simply agreeing to the ticket price as the girl from the hostel who had given us the directions said we should definitely get a discount off the advertised price. But at 240 Yuan it was still a great price, I'm told. After a bit of coaching from me, she also chose a pair of polarising sunglasses and this time asked for a discount, claiming grounds that we had already bought something. They were very obliging and dropped to price from 120 to 70 with no argument. We were asked to come back in 45 minutes when the glasses would be ready.

Girl working at a tea shop we couldn't afford

Joanne's birthday was the next day and she had chosen to attend one of the famous Beijing acrobatics shows as a birthday treat, however she suspected the one they were selling tickets for at the hostel might be a bit touristy, so we were now hunting a theatre the Lonely Planet had recommended for a more authentic experience, partly in the hope it would be cheaper too.

Engrish

A muggy half-hour walk brought us to the theatre, where we discovered that the cheapest tickets were a bit more than those the hostel was offering and, what's more, the hostel were offering transport there and back, which seemed like a large bonus now that we were both sticky with humid sweat. Just outside the theatre were women kneeling on the pavement selling pretty Chinese fans. I considered buying a couple then, so we had something to keep cool with, but the fact I had not yet bought anything for Joanne's birthday made me see sense and I decided to return alone later.

On the way back to the opticians we decided we should really take more advantage of the cheap prices, and get another pair of glasses for Joanne to post home, as well as a replacement for the dodgy spare pair of Joanne's sunglasses I had been wearing since I lost mine. Maybe to save us all embarrassment after our clumsy haggling earlier, this time we only had to ask what the price was and they dropped it considerably, and I walked away with a new pair of polarising sunglasses for 70 Yuan, and Joanne secured a second pair of glasses for 200. This meant another wait, so I took the opportunity to offer to pick them up after some shopping I had to do. It turned out Joanne had expected me to do any remaining birthday shopping at a market we had planned to go to earlier, but I was sure I would be fine locally.

Front Gate

As soon as Joanne was out of sight I began the march back down the road to the theatre. The opticians was off a main street, just south of one of Beijing's few remaining city gates, which seemed to be a brand new shopping district that wasn't even finished.

No fun!

It seemed so new and artificial that it had more the feel of a film set rather than a real place for real people. Most of the shops weren't open yet, but those that were are clearly pitched at the high-end and tourist market. There were tram tracks and stops on the street, but no sign of any overhead power supply; if the street had not been so obviously new I would have assumed that they were vestiges of a defunct transportation system, so had they constructed this artifice of a street with built-in romantic nostalgia? It seemed possible considering how fake everything else about the street was. At the bottom of the street a sign confirmed that it was not to be a fun place: a four-by-five grid of signs prohibiting various behaviours would probably have been smaller if they had listed instead what was allowed; spending money and supporting the Chinese economy exclusively, I would think.

Top of the strange street

I couldn't get over the pollution

Green eggs (but no ham)

After a rather misjudged “shortcut” I ended up back at the theatre. Of course the fan-selling women had gone. I really could have done with one myself by that point too, but I needed to press on, so I made my way all the way back to the vicinity of the opticians, picking up a cute Buddha's Eyes key ring, allegedly made from yak bone, from a Tibetan shop on the way. Then almost across the road from the opticians I noticed some fans in a shop Joanne had described as “a junk shop” earlier. She had really wanted a fan, so I went in anyway. Although I was conscious of Joanne's description, the shop seemed to have some really nice stock and I found myself piling several items on top of pretty fan I had chosen. None of it was very expensive but since the dive trip in Thailand was meant to have been her present, she was only expecting token gifts anyway. Very pleased with myself, I collected the glasses and headed home. As I passed the top of the fake street, I tram pulled along side me, drawing large crowds of onlookers. Another one was sitting ornamentally behind gates at the other side of the street. They must be powered by an onboard battery but, judging by the trouble they had moving the thing even at a crawl, they are only going to be used for “fun rides”, in keeping with the rest of the street, rather than for anything real like transport. On the way home a downpour started, leaving it mercifully cooler afterwards.

The tram appears at the top of the fake street

Back at the hostel we realised that the cheaper acrobatics tickets the hostel were selling was actually to the very same place we had visited earlier.

written by

The Happy Couple on July 22, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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The morning of Joanne's birthday, we had just ordered our breakfast when I thought I heard a couple at the next table asking for “two free breakfasts”. The previous day I had noticed a sign up saying “Free breakfast not on the menu”, but we had decided that it meant that there is no free breakfast, although we had considered the other possible interpretation; after all there was no free breakfast on the menu. I went up to the desk to ask what it was all about. I as told it was only for class A rooms, whereas we were staying in a class C room but, I complained, we only moved into the cheaper, shared-bathroom, room for the extra two days we'd had to extend our stay by when we discovered we were stuck in Beijing. He flipped back through his ledger and said that since we had booked over the internet, only class B rooms are available, and that's what we had been in before. He pointed to the price advertised behind the desk and said “Class A”. This was actually the price we had paid for days three and four of our stay; we had originally booked in for only two days in case we didn't like the hostel or we could find a cheaper option, and when we discovered how nice the hostel was we asked to extend our stay by two days but had been surprised to discover that we had to pay more when booking direct, when it is usually cheaper to book direct. Suddenly I saw: it was dearer at the desk because it then counted as a class A room, entitling you to free breakfast. I explained all this to him and he demanded to see the receipts for days 3 and 4. I objected that I didn't know where they were, but he seemed unable to find any trace of the middle section of our stay. Luckily Joanne was able to find the receipts. In China you always need to keep your receipts: without your deposit receipt, you can't get your deposit back, and without receipts in general there never seems to be any proof that you have paid; in this case, apparently, because their ledger system was a shambles! They made some excuse about a new girl having taken the money from us; apparently they each have their own ledger book and system of notation: either they couldn't find hers or couldn't understand it. Nonetheless we came away partly victorious with four free breakfast vouchers. We had already eaten breakfast, but I didn't care: I was having my free breakfast!

After second breakfast we were joined by Sue, who had just come from her free breakfast, won after a battle of her own: she was in a class B double room, but only because they were not able to provide her the single room she had booked, and since she was paying the full class B tariff, she argued that she should at least get a breakfast for the extra money she was spending. As we talked we heard a murmer of “free breakfast” spreading round the room. Soon there was a queue of people at the desk and everyone on both side of the desks was looking rather agitated. “See what we've started”, Joanne said. When we returned later in the day the “Free breakfast not on the menu” sign had been taken down.

Qilin at the Summer Palace

17 Arch Bridge

We were going to the Summer Palace that morning and Sue asked if she could join us, so we all took the hostel's advice and took the 20 minute walk to the bus stop next to where I'd seen the tram the previous day. The bus would drop us off right at the palace, avoiding the “very long walk” from the nearest metro stop.

Annoying bird whistle vendor

What a nightmare the bus journey was: it took about two hours for a seven kilometre journey, for all of which we were standing and being wrenched around by the drivers terrible driving and very heavy brake foot. By the time we reached the palace I was in agony.

Lotuses growing in Kunming Lake

My back had been giving my low-level gyp almost since the start of out trip; not surprising since my bag started out over thirty kilos, and there is a lot of taking it off, lowering it down, lifting it back up, putting it back on, lifting it up to go on top of buses, and that sort of thing; but it had so far held out and not deteriorated into a full-scale back problem. It seemed the bus journey had finally done it. I hobbled around the Summer Palace with the other two for a while but I wasn't enjoying it much.

The Buddhist Fragrance Pavillion

It was clearly a very pretty place, but the Beijng pollution was taking the sheen off the beauty again and, as with the Forbidden City, there were loads and loads of other tourists, many of whom were children with those annoying sliding bird whistles that annoying vendors everywhere inside were constantly demonstrating to sell them. It was an enormous site, full of places called things like 'The Garden of Eternal Peace and Tranquillity'. “This tranquillity is a lovely idea. Shame it's ruined by all the noise” quipped Joanne. When we saw boats on the lake it was clear what we should do, so I bought a couple of cans of beer, purely for back-pain-relieving purposes of course, and we went out on a pedal boat. Much more peaceful, and the exercise and sitting seemed to help my back a bit, or maybe it was just the beer.

Dragon boat on the lake

The bus journey there had taken up so much of the day that by the time our hour was up it was time for us to be heading back. The walk to the subway was a bit longer and we were harassed by rickshaw drivers the whole way, an experience reminiscent of SE Asia and India we had so far been spared in China. In fact apart from the “student” con artists, there isn't much hassle as a tourist in China.

We got back just in time to change before the minibus took us to the acrobatics show. I should say at this point that I wasn't that excited about the acrobatics show; for our last night it was a choice between that or a Kung Fu show, which I would rather have seen, but it was Joanne's birthday so it was her decision. The Kung Fu wasn't going to be a real competition anyway, just a demonstration, otherwise I would have ensured we made it to that on a previous day.

Honest we're really spinning them

The opening act featured some difficult balancing by one girl and lots of other auxiliary girls who didn't do much more than roll around the stage. Oh – and they were all spinning innumerable plates; it was obviously fake though and I felt quite embarrassed watching it. I was just thinking that the act would actually have been quite good if they hadn't bothered with the silly plates when one of the girls dropped a plate. Immediately I assumed it was to prove that the plate spinning was actually real, then noticed that the other three plates on poles held by the same hand were now all hanging limply, not spinning, but somehow still clinging on the the poles. Quickly the girl saw what they were doing and chucked the four sticks away off stage. The group of four sticks were obviously a unit as well; I wouldn't be at all surprised if the spinning was motorised.

Honest they're not stuck together

Guy running up a pole

After that I was feeling quite cynical when the second act started. This time it was a contortionist, who was balancing piles of wine glasses, but the glasses were obviously all stuck together and it was clearly fake again. Her act was very impressive, but totally ruined by the stupid balancing. Her finale was to take each glass in turn from her forehead pile and pour out the liquid to gasps all around, supposedly proving not only were the glasses separate, but she had been keeping all the liquid in all along. During this finale, though, one of he helpers who was collecting the glasses as she removed them, kicked over one of the piles of glasses that had been removed intact. Of course the tower fell over as a unit and no liquid spilled out. I suppose the head pile must be the easiest for the contortionist to keep a good check on.

Unicyclists

I did manage to shake off some of the cynicism and enjoy the remaining acts, some of which were quite entertaining, but every time they brought an element of balancing objects they were obviously cheating and I found it embarrassing. There was no need for them to do it: the acts were perfectly good without going that extra distance. Joanne enjoyed it more than I had, and neither she nor Sue had noticed all of the cheating, so obviously I'm just too much of a cynic to be looking out for that sort of thing.

Balancing act

To top off Joanne's birthday we had decided to go out for a hot pot, which we'd been told was a local speciality. The Lonely Planet recommended a couple of cheap places, but instead we asked at our hostel if they knew of somewhere locally. Unfortunately they must not have realised we were staying at a hostel because we were cheap and we were directed to a very expensive hot pot restaurant. Ah well, we decided, it's a birthday so we can splash out and ordered the beef option. We were a bit disappointed that they didn't give us any instructions, leaving us a bit confused about what goes where when, in fact the only service we got after ordering was five minutes after our food arrived when the waitress appeared out of uniform and told us we had to pay as they were closing. We were permitted to stay and do what we could, but being novices, we really made a meal out of it. A bit of a disappointing end to a nice day. At least she had loved all the presents I bought.

Disappointing hot pot

The next day, after sharing the remaining three free breakfasts, we had only one thing to do before getting an afternoon bus: get to the post office and post home Joanne's extra glasses and a few little things we had bought. We asked the staff in the hostel for directions and they showed us on the hand-drawn map behind them. It wasn't too far, so we would have loads of time to spare. When we arrived at the spot, however there was no post office. We tried asking some passersby, but could never be completely certain we were being directed to a post office, which we couldn't find, and not just a post box, which we did find. Eventually we gave up and went back to the hostel. This time they went online and called up Google Maps: look there's another one here, they said pointing at a map with only Chinese characters on it. When I complained that I could tell where it was, they went back to the wall map and showed me. This one was even closer, so we couldn't understand why they hadn't sent us there in the first place. Ten minutes later we were standing, holding our bags of things to be sent, outside a Post Office Savings Bank. Back again to the hostel. This time one of the staff kindly offered to take us to the one marked on the map. It was not where the map had said it was, but once we were there, what a contrast to the useless, slow, Indian postal service. We stood and watched as our fragile items were expertly and thoroughly wrapped until the girl was satisfied she could bounce each one on the counter without any danger of it breaking. This took a while though, and we were nail-bitingly fearing what Indian-style delays might be involved in the actual sending, but it was fast and easy.

Excellent service, but what a carry on it had been to get there. We had to get a taxi to make it to our bus in time.

written by

The Happy Couple on July 23, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

a travel blog by The Happy Couple

Forbidden City and the Great Pall of China

Beijing, China

It Really is Great!

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Descent from the Great Wall

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Hotel Beijing

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Spectacle: Total Eclipse of the City

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Joanne's birthday

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Arrival in Shanghai

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Drinking on the Bund

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Museum and Free Beer

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