Beijing

2/1/08 - 9/1/08

Although we didn't arrive in Beijing until the afternoon of the 3rd of January, I have used the date of the 2nd of January because it did only take about two hours on the train until we were officially in China...it just took another 22 hours to reach Beijing and get stamped in.Both of us have travelled on sleeper trains before, but not for this length of time or in this level of comfort. Firstly, it was not an open carriage like the previous trains to Delhi and Chiang Mai - this time we had a small compartment for four people, with duvets, two pillows each, curtains, a table, a spittoon and even a little plastic flower display on the table. All in all a better class of sleeper train than we were used to, and even better that no one joined us, and we had the carriage to ourselves.

After leaving Hong Kong it was pretty much dark so we didn't get so see any of China until the next morning. I spent some of the time before we crashed out catching up on a couple of blogs and Jemma spent it doing something close to her heart... sleeping. We did fill the rest of the night amusing ourselves with the 'Beware of Nipping Hand' sign which we decided should be in a Harry Potter film, and watching DVD's, a luxury we now have after picking up the laptop in Hong Kong. Dinner involved a trip to the dining car and a possibly bad choice of fried shrimp and rice. Up to now fried shrimps have been a pretty reliable choice: deep fried and shelled. Not this time. These babies had shells, legs, heads and were coated in a very messy sauce which made shelling very entertaining... luckily we had baby wipes to hand, and made the best of it.

When the morning came we got our first proper glimpse of China.There were miles and miles of frozen rice fields and lines of thin trees.Apart from the odd road and truck there wasn't anything else for hours. This was the only real perspective we got of the expanse of China.

The province of Beijing is apparently about the size of Belgium but it didn't feel like long between seeing the first of the outskirts to pulling into the mammoth Beijing West Railway station.Going through passport control after spending 22 hours in a country was a new concept but only as new as trying to buy a map, get rid of a beggar, stop a public argument (between aforementioned beggar and random do-gooder), and explain to a taxi driver where you need to go. Especially if none of the above people speak any English - although everyone chattered to us in Chinese as if we understood them perfectly.Eventually we got sorted and were on our way to the Jade Garden Youth Hostel. We both realised that if the same things had been going on earlier on our travels it would have scared us...now we are getting a bit more experienced, these sorts of things seem quite normal.

Jade Garden Youth Hostel was far more than a youth hostel. Anywhere else it would have been a mid range hotel.This was a relief for us especially after the ever so basic New China Guest house in Hong Kong.We have a restaurant, a cafe, a bar, an internet cafe, a travel agent and best of all a kettle in our room. Now this may not sound like the correct order but this is the first kettle we have had in our room since we began the trip.All of a sudden we remembered what it was like to not have to go hunting for a nice cafe before your first cup of tea in a morning.The Cafe does nice rice as well. All was looking good for China.

The location of the Hostel was also just as described in the reviews. On the first evening we took a walk over to Tiananmen Square - this was literally only about ten minutes walk from the Hostel. It was also when we realised just how cold it was. It was cold from getting off the train but most of the time we had been either in a taxi or at the hostel. Now we were out in the evening and it was freezing - I think it was about -2 at that point but before we left Beijing it dropped down to -4 and was getting colder... bear in mind we've pretty much acclimatised to 20-30 odd degrees!The made to measure winter coats from Hoi An were definitely a good decision and worth carrying through two weeks of 27 degree heat. The free scarf and hand-warmers that came, randomly, with the laptop were also a very handy gift from the men at HP.All togged up, we walked around the square, which was closed to the public after dark by the soldiers on permanent duty, and took photos in front of Mao's portrait. By the crowds of other people doing it, this was apparently a very popular thing to do.

On our second visit to Tiananmen Square the next morning we got to see the full size of the square. It is the largest public square and Trafalgar would have fitted into one of the corners - see http://www.thebeijingguide.com/tiananmen_square/index.html . It was also full of tourists, most of who were Chinese, and had soldiers on every corner and marching round. It didn't feel oppressive or anything but you knew that after the pro-democracy riots of the late 80's they were taking no chances on anything like that happening again. We walked all around the square and visited the gate tower which was from the original Beijing walls.The walls were mostly demolished during the Cultural Revolution in the 60's and would have made Beijing a completely different city. It was a welcome relief from the wide communist streets to see the gate tower with the traditional Chinese architecture.

The wide streets were in complete contrast to the old quarter of Hanoi, although Beijing would have been similar if the government had not demolished the walls and traditional hutongs (small alleyways). Some hutongs still exist next to the wide boulevards, again in a complete contrast. These have been tidied up over recent years and renovated. Some of the properties only a couple of kilometres from Tiananmen Square only got an inside WC within the last year. They are also hidden behind big grey walls. This is a traditional colour as the clay creates grey bricks so not a governmental policy, and the entrances are very ornate and traditional, although the walls give Beijing a very military and formal feel.

The Forbidden City was - as described - a whole ancient city of undamaged and unchanged Chinese architecture. It covered about 720,000 sq m, and was the traditional home of the Emperors over the last 1000 years.It had more ancient temples than we had chance to see even though we were there most of the day, and the temples and walkways just kept coming,all with brightly coloured details and walls. The roofs had the interlocking tiles that we had seen first in Hanoi and had small procession of Dragons on the ridges.One of the main temples was covered up for renovation and by the brightness of some of the details it looks like a lot of work had been done over the last few years. We assumed that this was due to the Olympics as a lot of things; such signage in English and hundreds of shiny public toilets had obviously been changed or installed quite recently. We couldn't decide if we felt it was best to leave it or refurbish sympathetically.By the time we were leaving, the Forbidden City was practically empty and this gave the whole place a slightly spooky feeling as the sun went down.

After avoiding the touts and 'helpful' university students (an elaborate con involving an art exhibition and most likely the eventual extortion of cash), on the way out we watched a group of soldiers practicing their marching.They are trained to march to a step of exactly 75cm when they enter the army. Even the ones who were off duty and just walking past have the same step it is drilled in so much.Another group were playing football so I guess that the ones practicing marching with no coats in -2 degrees were in trouble for something.There were more soldiers carrying out the flag-lowering ceremony in Tiananmen Square when we got out. By this point it was starting to get really cold again so rather than watch we walked back towards the hotel to get warm with some tasty food in the restaurant.

We again picked up a walking tour from the Lonely Planet, although officially it was a bicycle tour. We decided it was a bit cold for cycling anywhere, so chopped out the bits we had already done and headed off to explore.It started round the outside of the Forbidden City, past the corner tower which looked spectacular with the frozen moat in front. The park that was next had a stunning view from the pagoda at the top of the hill that overlooked the Forbidden City and the smog gave it a very calm hazy look.Hopefully the photos will look as good as they did on the camera. There was also the first graffiti we had seen in China. This was not the standard spray paint that you may see at home but very delicate writing carved into Bamboo stalks... what made it graffiti rather than art was because under one piece there was a, not so delicate, Chinese equivalent of the 'I Love Gertrude 1955'.Even this looked good in Chinese though. The walk took us through some more hutongs and joined up with a lake, which was completely frozen and hundreds of people were ice skating or just walking on the ice.There were even people pushing themselves around with ski poles on small chair sledges. Everyone was having a great time and we sat and had a drink outside just to watch for a while.

The Drum and Bell towers that we got to next were again original parts of Beijing walls.We missed the bell tower because it was a bit late by that point, but we climbed the very steep steps into the drum tower and watched a brief drumming display on two-metre diameter drums and got a great view all the way back to the park we visited earlier. After another warm up stop in a nice cafe, we headed through some more hutongs.During the day the hutongs can look quite drab and messy. At night, with all the lanterns outside, they looked so warm and cosy.I am not sure why we didn't stop but we carried on going until we got to the main shopping street of Beijing.This really could have been anywhere with the western shops and McDonalds. We didn't really go in any shops as it was strange to be walking up Beijing's Oxford Street but we did go in one 'tourist' shop that sold the must have souvenirs of huge Jade Dragons and jewelled globes that were nearly as big as me.We didn't buy anything from here, only because the postage would have been too much of course.

One of the highlights of our visit to Beijing was definitely the trip to see the Great Wall. We opted for a trip to the Mutang area which was a little further away but, according to the guide book, a less busy option. We would have preferred to get there ourselves, as from previous experience the guided tours are a bit pricey, but after some investigation we decided that the small cost saving was outweighed by the ease and time at the wall by taking the tour.There were a few downsides to the tour that we experienced such as the bus was late, we didn't get quite as long on the actual wall as we'd been told, and the guide had a slightly annoying high pitched voice, but all in all it was a good choice.

We arrived after about two hours or so, on the bus with all five other people on the tour, and were greeted by a big car park and overpriced tacky souvenir stalls.The guide then told us that there was a chair lift to get us onto the actual wall.With dangling legs and Jemma getting a little nervous we arrived at the Great Wall and it certainly lived up to its title.

It's a great wall - not an OK one or a pretty good one - it's definitely great.As far as we could see, it stretched in both directions perched high on the tips of the hills with the occasional tower. It was taller and wider than we thought it would be. Other places we knew about before visiting had been smaller than our minds had built them up to be... not in this case. Put the sight of the wall together with the emptiness - we were the only people on some bits and even in the busy parts there were only a few others - and the scale of the surrounding mountains, this certainly was the highlight of China and one of the top spots of the trip so far.

We walked around one and a half kilometres before we had to turn around, but in that time we had covered a number of stretches of the wall and numerous watch towers. The slanting steps as it manoeuvred over the peaks were fun and the views along the wall from the towers were fantasticThe clear blue skies made it cold although it was not as cold as we expected, and according to the guide we had the best visibility for a few days.

At most of the towers locals were selling drinks and the obligatory post cards. It is sometimes annoying when places like this have small scruffy looking stalls, but I suppose everyone is entitled to make a living and they weren't too intrusive. It did give us a chuckle as we imagined them travelling every morning carrying a small drinks stall on a chairlift about 50m above the ground.

On the way back from the wall we got talking to some of the others on the tour. Bob and Emily were both teaching English in South Korea but doing some travelling while they were on vacation. We found they were going to Vietnam next so we discussed our experiences and thoughts about this. To our surprise, far from running away with shouts of 'help! I am being harassed by a couple of strange englishers', they were interested in our sound advice and by the end of the trip we arranged to have dinner with them later. Although we arranged to meet at their hotel at 8ish we didn't arrive until 9.30pm. It looked a lot closer on the map! But luckily the Tibetan restaurant we went to was nice and the conversation and beers were good.Bob and Emily were due to be on the train to Hong Kong the next morning so when, at 2.30am, we headed for home, we agreed to try and meet up again when we got back there.

One surprise added bonus of the trip to the wall was the toboggan run back down to the car park. It was definitely more fun that the chair-lift and was a good way to get the seriousness and grandeur of the wall out of your head. It was about 1500m on a steel tray with a brake lever in between your legs. I thought it would be good to get a video of the run down so fixed my camera to my chest facing outwards. All good in theory until we watched it on the bus home and realised that it was perhaps not the best angle... by this I mean that yes, there was a view of the slide and Jemma on her toboggan in front but in the middle was the brake lever being sporadically moved up and down so that I could brake for the corners. You think about it for a while... so that one will not be going on the blog. We also went past the Olympic Stadium on the way home. I am glad we saw it as I had already thought about getting over there but decided it was not going to happen.

The final couple of days in Beijing were taken up by visits to the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. Both of these were traditional residences of Chinese Emperor. The Summer Palace was, as it said on the tin, was the Emperors residence during the hot Beijing summer. It was mainly a lake surrounded by a number of covered walkways and various temples and houses. Again, all the architecture was very detailed and bright. We spent most of the day wandering around and beside the lake. We even watched people just heading directly out onto the lake over the ice until they were just small specs on the horizon.We were going to try it but all the teachings of our early lives came in to force and we both got scared about one metre in.Just a couple of photos to prove we went on the ice were deemed sufficient. I assume it is so cold for so long in Beijing that frozen lakes and things are common and everyone knows when it is strong enough!

The Temple of Heaven has grown into one of the landmarks of Beijing. It consisted of a park with a series of temples running through it. The main attraction was a circular three-story Pagoda where the Emperor would pray before a sacrifice to ensure a good harvest. All the other temples seemed to be linked around either eating a feast or praying for one. It was a spectacular Pagoda and with the bright sunshine on the detail it really stood out. By all the photos of various leaders or dignitaries that had visited, it was obviously a favourite place for the government to bring people.One of the most unexpected things we did see in Beijing was at the Temple of Heaven Park... as we walked in through the gate, and past the tour groups all wearing the same colour caps, we saw a crowd of people and decided to investigate. When we got there we found ourselves surrounded by groups of locals all singing, dancing, playing cards, knitting or doing what looked like Thai Chi with a table tennis bat and ball.None of it appeared to be for money and they all just kept to their little groups doing whatever they were doing. We watched a singing performance with what looked like an old tramp doing the accompanying dance, by the looks on all the faces I would say that was pretty normal, and tried to get sneaky videos on my camera of the Tai Chi table tennis people, as they whirled their bat around balancing the ball - and all in unison with the music.

After a tasty meal of Chinese pork dumplings, our final evening was taken up with a visit to the small night market quite close to our hotel. It wasn't much really, just about 30 food stalls, but the first thing we noticed was that the stallholders were all wearing the same uniform. This was closely followed by us noticing the strange delicacies on display. We could handle the bugs, we have seen those before, but the starfish, snake meat, centipedes and a whole stomach in a tray were new to us.Sadly, we didn't sample any of the delights. Apparently it was a state run attraction, hence the uniforms, and was designed to show tourists some of the more unusual foods in Beijing.Along with the few other western tourists around we appreciated looking at the delicacies if not experiencing them directly but the Chinese tourists were enjoying them immensely by the look of it.

We were both sad to be leaving Beijing. The chaos in the station, and the great idea of putting immigration as far away from the main station concourse as possible, nearly meant we didn't. But sitting on the train we both felt like we had left a place unfinished. With this in our minds we boarded the train and watched DVD's as we sped through China back to Hong Kong. With only the snoring of the small Chinese man keeping us awake for a while, we both said goodbye to China and agreed we would be back.