Beijing

I just returned from a week trip to Beijing. We had a holiday break because it was the People’s Republic of China’s 60^th anniversary. I went with 7 other foreign teachers. All in all it was a great trip! Beijing is a beautiful city and a breath of fresh western air from Wuhan. Here’s my trip day by day:

Train Ride:

Pip (one of the other girls) and I went a day before everyone else because our schedules permitted it. We left at 3pm on Wednesday afternoon and took an overnight train to Beijing। The train had somehow mysteriously sold out before tickets even went on sale, so we were only able to buy standing tickets. When we got on the train, we headed strait for the dining car so we could sit down. After about 2 hours of sitting and not ordering any food, they tried kicking us out, but we played the confused foreigner card and it bought us some time. Then one of the staff who happened to speak English came up and asked to see our tickets. He asked us if we wanted to buy a bed, which we immediately agreed to. It didn’t cost us any extra money than it would have originally, and we slept like babies the rest of the way knowing that we could have very well been sitting for 17 hours on the cold hard floor.

Day 1:

Pip and I arrived in Beijing on Thursday morning, and went to our hostel. It was the day of the official anniversary, so we were hoping to drop our stuff off and head strait downtown to see the big parade. We found out when we got there, though, that people weren’t actually allowed to watch the parade, unless you were an invited dignitary or member of the government. They had blocked off most of downtown too. Since our hostel was right downtown, they had e-mailed us a few days before saying they had to move our reservation to a sister hostel more on the outskirts of town for the first night. So we had to watch the parade “for the people” on a TV, since no “people” were allowed to watch. It was still pretty amazing though! Pip and I spent the rest of the day exploring Beijing. I instantly fell in love with the blue skies, clean air and cleanliness of the city (very different from Wuhan)! I found it odd that the sky was so blue, because I had heard that Beijing is actually quite polluted. But then I found out that they had sent rockets up into the sky with dry ice a few days before the anniversary celebration, which made it rain and then cleared up the air for a week. And sure enough, a week later it was grey again!

Waiving the Chinese flag!

Day 2:

We moved from our first hostel to our second hostel, as the downtown area had opened up. Our second hostel was great! Right downtown Beijing, just a walk to Tiananmen Square, great rooms, staff, restaurant full of western food options! I found out how fun hostel stays really are. You meet young travelers from all over the world! We met a girl from Wisconsin, boys from Texas and England, and a girl from Denmark who had the most insane stories from her travels all over the world! She was currently at the beginning of a 4 month trip through SE Asia and S America! After we checked in, we went to Behai Park. It’s a park with a temple, a big lake and paddle boats that you can rent. We then went out for Peaking duck which is a Beijing specialty। I liked the duck alright, but don’t think I prefer it over other dishes.

Behai Park

Day 3:

The Great Wall day! We arranged a tour with our hostel to hike 12 kilometers of the Great Wall. We were driven 3 hours out of the city to the Jinshanling part, and then hiked to Simatai. I chose this one because it’s the oldest part of the wall you can see, and I wanted a challenging hike in a non-touristy area. And boy did I get it! There were some parts that were so steep and uneven I didn’t think I could make it. An unfortunate part of the hike was that there were still crowds. Not a lot, but enough to have a hard time getting pictures without people in them. But there was one point about the middle of our hike when we had broken away from the crowd, and there was a cool breeze and I just though “wow, this is amazing!” I loved it. I felt like I was a part of ancient history being on the wall. By the end of the hike, I was exhausted!

Day 4:

I took a solo day to go see the Olympic stadium. It felt good to cut away from the group for a day, and show myself that I could do it on my own. The Beijing subway made getting around amazingly easy! I loved the Olympic Stadium. I’ve probably never seen so many Chinese people in one place before in my life, but it was still great. I think I was more of a novelty as a white person in Beijing than I am in Wuhan. Everywhere we went we had people coming up to us wanting their picture with us. There were a few time I was admiring a cute baby, and the next thing I knew the baby was in my arms and parents and grandparents were snapping pictures left and right. After the Olympic stadium I went to a temple. It wasn’t really anything special, but not crowded which was nice.

Olympic Stadium

Day 5:

We went to a Tibetan Buddhist temple called the Llama Temple. It was beautiful and so colorful! Visiting temples in China is sort of like visiting Cathedrals in Europe, they’re amazing but sort of all blur together after a while. This one was great though because we got to see the monks walking around, and there was a 3 story tall Buddha! Most evenings we spent back at our hostel restaurant/bar. It had so many western food options I felt like I was in heaven! Real coffee, eggs and hash browns, pizza, sandwiches! I had been having such strong food cravings back in Wuhan that they were keeping me up at night sometimes! Most of the group went back to Wuhan the night of day 5, but Allison and I stayed for a couple extra days. We went out to night snacks that night at this famous night market just down the street form our hostel. Normally in Wuhan, night snacks (street food) are dirt cheap, but here it was obviously very touristy and much more expensive. It was still really delicious though, and I tried little octopus on a stick! We also went and walked around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, which was beautiful at night.

Llama Temple

Day 6:

Allison and I meant to wake up early to try and beat the crowds at the Forbidden City, but the week of sightseeing had caught up with us and we slept through our alarm. We decided to go to the Summer PalaceSummer Palace is a lake with beautiful bridges and few buildings. It was a 60^th birthday present from one of the late emperors to his mother, and a definite status symbol to say the least. It is a nice place to go if you want a romantic, long walk around a lake, but not a good place to go at the end of a long week. It took us 3 hours to just walk halfway around the lake (the bridges cut it in half, thank goodness!) and we didn’t opt to pay to be able to get into the main building, what I believe is the “palace”. It wasn’t the highlight of my trip, but what I did enjoy about being there was imagining living there in the ancient time and just how beautiful and spectacular it must have been. instead, in hopes of the crowds not being as bad. But we were wrong. There were people EVERYWHERE and a million snack shops and souvenir stores. The

The Summer Palace

Day 7:

Once again, we slept through our alarm. But this time we really didn’t care, because we were exhausted. Neither of us really cared much to see the Forbidden City, the last sight on our agenda, but we knew we “should” so we did. We both ended up really liking it! The Forbidden City is so huge that the crowds really didn’t seem that bad. It’s just a huge, walled in city that the Emperor used to live and rule from. It’s just incredible how big it was for one person! And there were a lot of little museums showcasing Chinese art and calligraphy that I enjoyed a lot. After the Forbidden City, we rushed over to a famous shopping market to shop before we had to catch our train. It was incredible! I was in heaven. 5 floors

of clothes, shoes, bags, jewelry, anything you could possibly want at dirt cheap prices! I only had a little bit I could spend, so I haggled like crazy. This one lady screamed at me “nooo” when I told her the price I wanted to pay for a sweatshirt. I started to walk away and she grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I went up a bit higher, and she screamed again, so once again I walked away and she pulled me back again. This went on for a while, until she finally agreed bitterly. I loved it, it was so fun! Then we caught our train and slept soundly the whole way back to Wuhan.

Tianamen Square