Beijing - China

Met by our city leader, this time a female by the name of Sparea. Not her Chinese name, but one given to her by a friend. Most Chinese do appear to have western names, and even on official documents it will ask you firstly for your name, and then Chinese name. Our stay here was for six days (two of which were the end of our tour - being over 9000 kms from St. Petersburg to Beijing) and allowed us to see many sights and also plan for where our travels would take us next. To begin with some useless facts, the population of Beijing is 9.4 million. Genghis Khan (remember him from Mongolia) marched into China in 1215, sacked the city (as you do) and proceeded to rebuild Beijing as his capital. But his Mongol empire fell in 1368. And that's that. Tiananmen Square was our first stop, the place where in 1989 over 2000 students and workers (all civilians) were killed and the famous pictures of the one student that stopped the army tank. It's huge! So they built a huge Mausoleum for Chairman Mao. In 1949 he declared the foundation of the People's Republic of China in Beijing. As in Russia (but the biggest one we have seen) people will line up to view this embarmed body (the line is huge but flows steadily) and pay to put fake flowers down as a sign of respect. I'm sure that the flowers are recycled! The Forbidden City / Palace Museum / Imperial Palace (all the same thing) is at one of the ends of the square. It is over 70 hectares and has 1000 buildings. It was erected by the Ming Emperor in the early 15th century and thereafter was the home of 24 more emperors. Our guide whisked us through here in a couple of hours, but you could have spent a lot more time here. We basically went straight through the middle, and to me it all looked very similar. Outside the opposite end that we entered we went to Jingsham Park. We climbed some steps to have a birdseye view of the city. Unfortunately it was quite misty and not good for photos. It was also very hot and muggy, making it slightly uncomfortable when you were just walking around, without exerting much energy. The highlight here though was partaking in a traditional tea ceremony. In tiny heated ceramic cups we tasted a number of teas. There was a really nice mixed one of some flowers and black leaves, and although Ian and I bought some tea to mix from a market, what we thought was the right one, wasn't. Bummer. The most interesting tea, not necessarily for taste, but to look at was a small ball (like a marble) that once in hot water uncurled into an amazing looking flower. This tea was supposed to help with losing weight if you drank about three cups a day. Not far from our hotel was the Houhai Lake. In the evenings the restaurants lining the shore were lit up with lights and was a pretty sight. Although we had some beers here, we usually kept to the cheaper areas around the hotel. For example, at the lake a small beer cost 25 RMB (close to 2 pounds), whereas, we were used to only paying 3 RMB for a very large beer. the exchange rate is 1 pound to 15 RMB. We were having some amazing feasts of Chinese food and a couple of beers for a pound!!!!! Also in this area was the Drum Tower, where we listened to the drums beaten at a fixed time to mark the time of day. It also had a birds eye view of the surrounding area. The local "hutongs" - living communities enclosed within a warren-like maze of narrow lanes, with the large city buildings on the horizon. We had the chance on our Rickshaw tour (Ian really wanted to hire bikes but we couldn't find them, so we resorted to someone else peddling), to go inside a hutong and see how the Chinese lived. It was a courtyard enclosed by buildings on each side, each of differing heights, dependent upon whom within the family occupied this area and whether they were male or female siblings. It was really lovely, but I doubt it it was typical, because when you look down some narrow doorways leading to other houses, they do not look neat, clean and tidy. The Acrobatics Theatre was really entertaining! 10 girls on a bike was pretty impressive, and I found myself ohhing and ahhing with the crowd. Recommended. The Temple of Heaven was yet another huge sight on 273 hectares. Should have taken a packed lunch. It was where the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties would worship heaven and pray for bumper crops. UNESCO in 1998 recognised it as "one of the human heritages of the world". By this time I had enough of large sightseeing things. So when we went to the Lama Temple it was a pleasant change, as it was small and compact. Here was an 18m statue of a Buddha carved from one piece of sandalwood, which is in the Guiness Book of Records. It was a tranquil spot. The Chinese like to burn incense outside each temple, and here they had huge handfulls of incense. It must take them a long time to get around the whole complex. Our 3 hour crazy bus ride to the Great Wall, 108kms from Beijing, and the Jinshanling part (there are other parts that you can go to), consisted of a 15 kms, 4 hour trek between this point and Simatai. It was knackering!!!!!!!!!!!!! But amazing!!!!!!!!!!!! There were parts that were really steep, no I mean really steep. Parts that you had to be careful where you stepped, and others that was an easier walk. At the end we opted for the flying fox over the river instead of walking down to the bus. Other areas of the wall, not so far from the city, gives you the options of cable cars and a toboggan. There were several sights suggested that we didn't go to in Beijing, which included the Summer Palace and the Mong Tombs. If you want the feeling of getting out of the city, although you are still in the heart of it, we spent some time at Liuyin Park. It was tranquil, with waterways, lotus, and weeping willows. It was actually recommended in a travel book we purchased on China. Get this - for some reason we hadn't already got a Lonely Planet guide book for China, or really hadn't thought about what we wanted to do when we got here. Upon trying to find an English book shop and get one, they didn't sell them. All we could find was an Intercontinental Best of China Book - so for those who don't recognise this, "Intercontinental" means a top hotel chain. Consequently it only has four and five star hotels, talks about airports and taxis, and not the practical side of getting between cities. It is though a lovely book of big coloured pictures and has much information about the cities and sights. The Night Market is a must. Full of interesting food on skewers, goats testicles, silk worms, maybe dog (I don't know). Ian ate a star fish which as you would think was crunchy and tasteless. There was other nice food that we had. We had met some great people along the way whose tour itineries were similar, and so we would bump into them often. Because this was the end of the tours we had arranged to meet up a couple of times for dinner and goodbyes. We had amazing food and lots of laughs. Each time finding it hard to believe that we had hardly paid anything for a night out. Our tour buddy Kym had left back for Perth. The Birmingham crew consisted of Lisa, Beccy and John. They had been doing last minute market buying and were leaving in a couple of days back to England. And we were about to start a new chapter traveling through China with our new New Zealand pals, Jason and Jacque.