After a reasonably pleasant 22 hour train ride where the beds were comfy and we were lucky enough to only be sharing with one man who was quiet and slept the whole night. It went surprisingly quickly considering it was a bit late too. Getting drinks was fun. I went to the dining car and pointed to some water, then tried to ask for orange but really shouldn’t have bothered, everyone was staring and getting involved and jabbering to me in Chinese. Instead I got a bag for the water!! So needless to say I gave up on the orange! We ate two meals on the train of rice, veggies and meat – exactly the same dish both meals.
Beijing is huge!! A sprawling city full of high rise buildings and the pollution is supposed to be the worst in the world. We were quite lucky when we were here as the skies were blue and there seemed to be very little smog. It was very cold though but I didn’t find it as much of a shock as North Vietnam – better prepared I think! The temperature usually rose to the mid teens by the middle of the day though and the temp went up from 13 to 17 during the 5 days we were here – so definitely not as bad as it could have been.
The language barrier was still a problem but slightly better as most signs were also in English and the metro is easy to navigate and extremely cheap (just under 20p for a ride anywhere in the city!). They are always busy and no matter what time of day you travel you are packed on like sardines. However finding the hotel was still a problem even though we had the name and address written down in mandarin! We ended up consulting the map and directing him once near. We were still surrounded by plenty of smoking, coughing and spitting everywhere and anywhere; so it seems there is no escape! The Beijing locals have a very distinctive accent which is very different to the accent we had been used to hearing in the South. If you didn’t concentrate on the actual words they were saying you would have sworn they were Cornish!
There is so much to do in the city and just outside you could easily spend a couple of weeks here and still fill all your days but as you know we are not really city kids so 5 days was plenty for us. So I’ll break what we did up into days as this is easier.
Day 1: Drum and Bell Tower / Lama temple / Hutongs
After recovering from our overnight train ride we explored the local area around our hotel by foot. The Lama temple is a large Buddhist temple which is the most renowned Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet. The architecture was beautiful and it was busy with pilgrims lining up to pay their respects and burning incense. The drum and bell towers have both been used in the past to mark the hours of the day. Thy drums and bell we saw certainly looked large enough to be heard from quite far away! It was a very steep climb up both (our exercise for the day!) but we were rewarded with pleasant views across the city and over the rooftops of the Hutongs underneath. On the way back we took a stroll through the Hutongs which are specific to Beijing and are historic alleyways as the houses used to be built. There are still plenty of people living and working in the tiny alleys but not many left now due to the high rises that are built instead.
Day 2: Forbidden city / Tiananmen square
The Forbidden city, home to past emperors, is every bit as amazing as the pictures I have seen before visiting. Vast expanses of space (enough to hold 100,000 people!) in between halls, with living quarters at the East and West and the Imperial garden to the north. You could easily spend a whole day here exploring the rooms and exhibits.
We walked from here to Tiananmen square but we weren’t sure it would be open as there were government meetings being held and they often close it for security reasons. We were lucky that it was open but bags were checked on the way in and there was a large police presence. Very surreal to be there with Chinese flags flying and two huge screens showing Chinese patriotic footage. I was immediately accosted by 2 Chinese women to have my photo taken with them while holding their flag – not quite sure exactly why this was so exciting for them but it was funny!
Day 3: Olympic park
As a self-confessed Olympic geek this was very exciting for me! We saw the architecturally stunning and awe-inspiring Bird’s nest and Water cube.
We bought tickets to walk around inside the Bird’s nest where they had been holding a snow and ice festival in the last few weeks. Unfortunately we just missed this and they were busy clearing all the snow and ice away. I even managed to get my photo taken with one of the Olympic mascots!
The water cube now houses a water park so we gave this one a miss. There were so many tourists there – who would have thought that an Olympic stadium could still be such a draw 3 years later!
Day 4: Great wall
We decided to hire a car for the day to visit a less touristy section of the wall at Mutianyu. The drive was an hour and a half and I was a bit worried about how cold it would be when we were driving past frozen rivers! It was fresh up there but the steep walks (or climbs in some cases) certainly warm you up! A bit of a circus at the bottom when you arrive with no shortage of hawkers with great wall t-shirts, caps and keyrings for sale. Included in the price of the ticket was a chair lift up and a toboggan ride down! We were glad of this though as the chair lift got us up there in a fraction of the time and luckily left us with fresh legs ready for the wall.
We could have gone east or west so we chose the one that looked the steepest as we decided most people would be too lazy to walk it and we were right! It was a tough walk but worth every step as it was quiet and the views were stunning. It was a very clear day and this was definitely one that took your breath away. After passing a few watchtowers we came to a sign that said no admittance so obviously we walked past this. It was just a further section of the wall that was unrestored and not quite as safe to walk on. We walked on to the next very dilapidated watchtower and it was definitely worth it for the impressive views. We were the only two there for quite some time and it was a fantastic experience.
After spending about 3 hours on the wall we headed back for our toboggan ride which would have been great if we had not been stuck behind the two slowest and scared girls in the world! We kept giving them at least 50m gaps by slowing down, hoping that we could then go down the twisty run as fast as we liked. Every time there was a moment of exhilaration as the wind whistled through your hair and then we would catch them up again! Our shouts of ‘faster’ and ‘come on, hurry up!’ seemed to make no difference – what a shame! This might have been a blessing in disguise as you very quickly reached speeds of over 30 mph and there was no health and safety!
Day 5: Beijing zoo
As we are in China and we won’t have time to visit Chengdu we decided our visit would not be complete without seeing some Panda’s so we headed to the zoo that has been so successful in breeding them. They were worth seeing, very cute and sleepy with one even sleeping up a tree but much smaller than I imagined. We don’t normally like going to zoos other than our very own as the conditions are often not very good with small enclosures and animals that don’t really need to be kept in a zoo and the rest of the zoo just confirmed everything we hate about these places unfortunately. They had some amazing animals in there – giraffes, elephants, gorillas, lions, tigers, zebras, etc but it made us both sad to see them cooped up, looking quite miserable in some cases and showing clear signs of going mad. This left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth especially as no one else seemed to care and were just knocking on the glass and making stupid noises at them! We also may as well have been in one of the cages for the amount of blatant stares we were getting, I thought for a moment that we were one of the exhibits!
Day 6: Train misunderstanding
Our next plan was to travel to Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, although we think it may have been totally the wrong time of year to go. Our hotel had booked the train ticket for us and even though I checked with the girl twice which station it was leaving from we found out when we arrived at that station today that it was the wrong one! By this time we were so fed up of struggling with the language that we went back to the hotel with a grump, got a full refund and got them to book plane tickets to Yantai instead, which is where we will be going to Kung Fu school. So here we are in another noisy hotel in another Chinese city and starting training at the school on Monday. Another adventure begins!
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