Installment 2 of 4. This time it's about our crazy, rushed time in Beijing. Technically, we spent 5 days there, but we took 2 day trips, so we really only spent 3 days in the city itself.
We left Hong Kong in the early afternoon, so we arrived in Beijing at around 3pm. The flight was only about 3 hours. We landed in Beijing and followed the directions to the subway station mentioned in our AirBNB host's directions. In this case, he asked us to call a friend of his to come pick us up since he was on a business trip. The only problem was that we didn't have a working Chinese phone...so I had to ask a random person on the street to use his phone. The apartment that we were staying at wasn't far from the subway, but it would have been difficult to find on our own. You had to walk inside the apartment building complex and then through the maze of the interior of the building itself. The outside of the apartment building was a little sketchy and not that nice. I think that's mostly just because the buildings are a bit older than we are used to seeing in Korea. But the apartment itself was very nice. We had the entire second floor to ourselves, including our own bathroom and a kind of living room area. The friend who came to pick us up didn't speak much English, but our host came back a few days into our trip, and he was great and really helpful. By the time we got to the apartment, we really didn't have any time to see the sights. Instead, we grabbed some dinner at one of the many restaurants on the street between our apartment and the subway. The restaurant we ended up going into was actually on the second floor. We didn't realize when we walked in, but the first floor of the place was more of a lobby area. The maitre d brought us up to a beautiful ballroom-like restaurant with chandeliers. People weren't dressed too nicely, but we did feel a little bit out of place. We didn't know exactly what to order, especially because the menu at this place, and at many of the other restaurants in China that we encountered, was HUGE! It was really overwhelming to decide what to eat. We got some spicy fried chicken with dried chili peppers. The whole dish was super salty and dry. As you were eating, the salt made it feel like your whole tongue went dry. Not the best. We did have a good scallion pancake though. After our quick dinner, we went back to the apartment so that I could look at a map and plan a bit. As soon as we landed in Beijing and go on the wrong side of "The Great Firewall," we lost the ability to use gmail as well as Facebook. I knew that would happen, and yet, for some reason, it completely stressed me out. I needed ask mom to contact people for me, and once she did, I felt better. Also, the air pollution was way work in Beijing that Hong Kong. Gianni and I both had headaches from it our first night there, and at times, your mouth tastes like you licked a lot of stamps...not the best for your health, but probably okay for a short trip. They have regulations in place to try to decrease the air pollution. You have to have a permit for your car to drive in Beijing, and there are only certain days you can drive. Most people use electric motorbikes instead.
Notes for travelers to Beijing: Beijing is an important place to visit because of all the historical sites to see, but it was probably the least tourist-friendly city of the three we visited. There were signs in English, but the level of English spoken by people seemed much lower than that in Korea. In Korea, most people seem to speak basic words in English, but in China, it was hard to find people to help us if we were lost. We had to ask in hotels, and even then, we ran into problems at times. Be prepared for security checks as you enter the subway as well as many of the tourist sites. Also, if you are looking for a specific exit from the subway, you may only be able to get there from the actual train platform. Usually, staircases out of the subway tracks will meet on one main platform, but in Beijing, the staircases in some stations went to separate places. Look for your exit letter as soon as you get off the train. There are bike lanes for bicycles, which are popular in China, and motorbikes in Beijing and Shanghai. Just be careful crossing the street. I like the bike lanes though because they are way safer for pedestrians than in Korea where you can get hit by a motorbike anywhere you walk. Another important note is that the tourist sites all seem to close by 4pm in the winter. They might be open a bit later in the summer, but if you're going in the winter, plan to get up early and get things done before then. They also do not give directions in terms of rights and lefts. They use north, east, south, west in giving directions, so use a map or your phone's compass to help you get around and find other tourist sites.
Day 1: The Great Wall
Our first full day in Beijing wasn't really spent in the city itself. We wanted to visit the Great Wall on a weekday to avoid any major crowds. Our AirBNB host arranged a tour for us beforehand, which was really nice of him. We just had to meet at a nearby hotel at 8am, so it was a bit of an early morning. The tour driver didn't speak English, but we had a really nice tour guide who did. We were also surprised to find out that we were actually the only ones on the tour for the day, so it was a private tour! It takes about an hour to get out of the city to the Wall, so we talked about some of the history of it as we went.
The Great Wall is about 7,000 kilometers long. Parts of the Wall were built by the various factions that controlled different parts of China. Emperor Qin then united China, becoming the first Emperor of all of China. He ordered that the Wall be connected and expanded, and the project began in 221 BC. Fun fact: it was also Emperor Qin who built the terra cotta warriors in Xian, which we also saw, but more about that later. The most interesting part of the history of the wall, in my opinion, is that the Wall was made of local materials. China, being the large country that it is, has very different resources and materials depending on the area. Therefore, the Wall was not constructed of completely the same materials. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), parts of the Great Wall were rebuilt. I'm sure it is still a major task to upkeep the wall even today.
By the time we got down from the Wall, we were starting to get hungry. We had lunch in a jade gallery. It is a government sponsored jade gallery that is meant to have higher quality jade products than other places, like markets. It was a bit of a shopping trip, which would have to watch out for in a lot of the tours you take in Asia. Many tours will take you to shopping places and try to get you to buy stuff. This wasn't terrible because I didn't feel totally obligated to buy anything. Also, before getting to the gallery part, we got to see some jade carvers doing their work and hear about the different varieties of jade in China. Jade actually comes in a huge range of colors besides the typical green. There are blues, reds, purples, and also very light greens. Korea's jade is called white jade, but China has all these really beautiful colors. This jade gallery had a whole lot of really expensive things but also some things we could afford. We ended up buying a set of jade chopsticks with a dragon chopstick holder and a carved jade ball that contains 2 other balls inside it. The ball is called a family ball, and it is meant to represent the various generations of a family. It is a kind of family good luck charm. The gallery had some amazing statues and carvings that were amazingly intricate. Even though it was a shopping trip, I really did enjoy learning a little more about jade and seeing some of those beautiful art pieces. After taking a look around, we had lunch on the second floor of the building. It was a really tasty lunch of all kinds of different Chinese foods. They just kept bringing all kinds of vegetable and meat dishes. It was a good lunch.
After lunch, we visited the Ming Tombs. All the Ming Dynasty Emperors have their own tombs with small palaces, used for honoring and memorializing them, either above or below ground. We didn't see the underground palace, but we did see the tomb of the first Ming Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang. It was this Emperor who moved the capital of China from Xian to Beijing. Additionally, this Emperor and one of his important officials are responsible for opening the gates of China up to foreign relations in a way that it hadn't been prior to his rule. The Emperor also had an encyclopedia written about the Chinese dynasties. Apparently, the various tombs together look like a peach in an aerial view. The peach is a symbol for long life in China. You're not actually able to see the remains of the emperors at the tombs or anything like that. The tombs are basically just old buildings, and they have been turned into small museums that provide information about the specific emperor's life and achievements. In the tomb we saw, there was also a massive statue of the Emperor, which, I believe, is right above where the Emperor is actually buried. One of the interesting parts of the tomb was a large tablet with an inscription in several languages. We saw this sort of thing in other historical sites in China later on as well. China has tons of ethnic minorities within it, being that it is so big. It was interesting to see since I'm so used to Korea, which is such a homogenous society. I guess I just assumed China was the same, but it definitely isn't. Many of the tablets and inscriptions at temples are written in Chinese as well as other languages of these minorities, such as Tibetan and Manchu. The people who most of the world think of as the typical Chinese people are generally Han Chinese. Even though having multiple languages on a tablet may seem as though the majority Han people and the minorities coexisted peacefully, it is important to remember that China conquered these lands to make them a part of the country, so things aren't as nice as they may seem.
On the way to our last stop, we took a brief photo op at the Olympic Park to see the bird's nest and the water cube. The last stop on the tour was another shopping trip. This one was a little bit more overt than the jade gallery. We went to a tea place to have a tea tasting. The woman taught us all about various kinds of tea, and we got to try it. Again, this place is meant to have better quality tea than you can get at a market. At the tea tasting, she explained to us that you're supposed to hold the tea cup with your middle finger on the bottom and your index and thumb on the sides. For a woman, the other two fingers should be out (kind of like the funny "pinky up" for rich people when drinking wine), but for men, the fingers should be down. We ended up buying some really tasty fruit tea. Usually, I think fruit tea tastes really weak, but this wasn't watered down at all. The tea is loose leaf, and you can actually see the bits of dried fruit in it. I learned a little bit about loose leaf tea because I never really drink it. I guess you can use a pinch of loose leaf tea for 3-4 cups of tea over the course of one day. We also bought some jasmine tea, which is called the "morning tea" because it gives you energy. The last kind we got is called pu'er tea. It is China's national tea because it is made from trees that are only grown here, so this is the only place you can get it. It tastes like black tea but less bitter. Pu'er tea is supposed to be really good for your health--lowers blood pressure and helps you lose weight. I also got a mug that came with a ceramic, tea strainer and lid as well as cool tea cup with a dragon on it. Even though we spent more money than we intended to, the tea is really good, and we had a nice time there.
The tour was basically over, and we slept a little bit on the hour long trip back to the city. Our tour guide was nice enough to help us arrange tickets, at a discount, to see a Peking Opera show for tourists at Liyuan Theater. It wasn't an entire opera that we saw. Instead, we just saw parts of 3 different operas, but it was still a really great way to experience something that is a big part of Chinese culture. Peking opera usually has several roles, but the major one is the male painted face role. We got to watch the man paint his face and get into costume on stage before the show. The face is painted with black and white paints. The costumes, for all the characters, are really colorful and detailed. The words are sung in a really exaggerated way, and there is a combination of singing, speaking, and dancing in the operas. Sometimes there are long breaks for dancing or performances of other kinds. Peking opera is different than the opera that we're used to. It wasn't too long, but afterwards, we grabbed a taxi back to the apartment and rested for the evening.
Day 2
On the second day, we had a lot of sites to see and very little time to see them. We also had scheduled a lunch with a friend of mine from high school who I hadn't seen in quite some time. Jesse had studied Chinese for many years and originally went to China on a Fulbright Scholarship to study Chinese comedy. He still lives in China and does comedy. It was really nice to be able to catch up with him during our brief time in Beijing. He made time to take us to lunch and show us around a little bit.
A lot of the primary sites to see in Beijing are right in the center of the city. Beijing is organized in rings around Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven which is a little bit south of those things. We didn't realize that the Temple of Heaven itself is in a large park, so it took us a lot more time there than we thought it would just to walk to see it and get back to the subway station. Walking through the park was fun on its own. We watched old ladies dancing for exercise to all kinds of random music. They have not a care in the world for who is watching them. There was also a whole row of men playing cards and gambling in a pavilion. The Temple of Heaven is a Taoist temple that the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties would visit to pray to the Gods for good harvest, but apparently, praying for good harvest was done well before that. The Temple of Heaven was built between 1406 and 1420 by the same Emperor who had the Forbidden City built. The main building of the temple is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, and it is a circular 3-floored building made of wood with no nails. There are a series of other buildings as well, and everything is painted beautifully. The park has all kinds of lovely trees planted in rows and people exercising. It was very relaxing. 
Tiananmen Square was our next stop. Right near the Square is Mao's Tomb as well as the National Museum, neither of which we had time to see. There are all kinds of Soviet-style buildings around the Square. The lines to get into Tiananmen Square are really long because you have to go through a security check. I guess the reason they have those in place is more to stop people from getting in and protesting there. Tiananmen Square is the site of the famous photo that was released of a man standing in front of some tanks during the pro-Democracy protests in 1989. There have been several other important historical events there as well. We took a few photos with the big picture of Mao on the gate of the Forbidden City behind us, and then it was time to meet Jesse for lunch. We thought it would be a good idea to get our tickets to get into the Forbidden City and go back after lunch.  |
| Hutong Street |
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| Lama Temple |
We decided to visit another place on our list, panjiayuan antiques market. By the time we got there, the market was closing for the day, but we still got a feel for it and some people were still selling goods. For one, the antiques market is not a normal street market. It's inside a walled area. There are some stalls in rows, but there is also an overhang area with vendors crowded underneath, selling antiques off short tables. It was quite a sight to see. Even as some people were closing up shop, others were yelling for us to come and look at their items. Gianni was in the market for some old military or government medals, and I had become attracted to the many snuff bottoms that I had seen at other stores. We both got what we were looking for. A young Chinese guy stopped me to tell me that I shouldn't show my money to the vendors. I didn't realize I had, but it was sweet of him to be concerned. He either didn't want me to pay too much or didn't want me to get stolen from. I did haggle for prices as best I could, so I think I did alright. I'm getting more bold about it, though I'm still not great.After getting what we wanted to get, we headed back to the apartment. As I was making plans for the following day, our host came back from his business trip. This was the first time we had met he and his wife. He was very helpful and suggested a Peking duck restaurant nearby and called a taxi for us. We hadn't had it yet, and Peking duck is one of the traditional Beijing foods that you have to try. Peking is the old name for Beijing, in case you didn't know. We ordered duck as well as a massive plate of dumpling at the restaurant. The duck was so decadent. I love duck already, but Peking duck was good. The duck I've had usually has some sort of fruit sauce, but this duck was basically just cooked to perfection. There was a sauce they gave us along with some rice-based tortilla-like things to make a sort of duck wrap. It was a great meal. When we got back from dinner, I had a chat with our host for a while and made a plan for our last big sightseeing day in Beijing.
Day 3
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| Tower of Buddhist Incense |
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| Beautiful views at the Summer Palace |
Since we weren't able to get to the Forbidden City the previous day, we had to cram a lot of things into one day to make sure we saw all the must-see tourist/historical sites in Beijing. We got up super early to head to the Summer Palace. I made a mistake and took us on a really long detour to get there. We took one line that made a huge loop north of the city before connecting to the line to get to the summer palace, but there was a line that cut straight across the center of the city instead of looping north. Woops! We still got there pretty much on time. The Summer Palace is a beautiful complex of buildings built throughout a lovely park/garden area. There is a lake that was frozen and people were skating on it. There were even people on skate bikes. We didn't have time to try it, but it looked really cool. The architecture of all the buildings varied, so there were all kinds of things to look at. At times, you had to climb up rocks to reach the next set of buildings. The whole place felt really peaceful and natural. One building was an outdoor stage used by the Empress to watch operas at the palace. The Tower of Buddhist Incense is the most dominating feature of the whole palace complex. You can see it from anywhere on the lake, and it's a beautiful view from up there. Along the lake, some beautiful boats in the shape of dragons were parked for use during the warm summer months. The Summer Palace has the kind of buildings you typically think of when you think of China. You can also see artifacts from the different Emperors and Empresses who have lived at the Palace. It was our favorite site in Beijing. The Palace was originally built on that site beginning in the 1100's and the site has gone through several name changes. Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty commissioned work on the imperial gardens there on the hill in 1749 and gave the hill its present name: Longevity Hill. In 1860, the Summer Palace was burned down by the British and French during the second Opium War (read about the Opium Wars in my previous post about Hong Kong). It was rebuilt soon after. In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the Palace was seized by the allied powers. The garden was burned, many artifacts were seized. The Palace is still being restored today. We spent about 3 hours at the Summer Palace, looking around the various buildings and taking in the natural beauty of the area.
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| View from the park at the north exit of the Forbidden City |
We had one more very important site to see before leaving Beijing to head to Xian for a day: the Forbidden City. We couldn't leave Beijing without seeing it, obviously. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty in the 1300s to the end of the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty in China which ended in 1912. Everything in Beijing is centered around the Forbidden City. It was built between 1406 and 1420. The Palace is a virtual maze of over 980 buildings. In some of the buildings, you can see artifacts, including a really big wooden throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, one of the main buildings at the Forbidden City. There are a lot of gates to get into the Forbidden City, and there's a moat around the outside of it. You have to enter the Forbidden City from the south and walk through it to the north exit. Before actually exiting, there was a beautiful garden with some really cool grafted trees. Tree grafting was, according to Jesse, developed in China. It is a process of twisting the tree as it grows to create an interesting pattern on the trees. We walked through it and spent a few hours at the Palace, but our feet were incredibly sore by that time. On the north side of the palace, there is a little park with a small hill that gives you a great view of the Forbidden City from above. We took a quick walk up there for some pictures. You can see the air pollution in them, but it didn't obscure the Forbidden City too much. If you go to Beijing, you have to go to this park for the best view of the City. 
When we were done with our huge sightseeing exploration, we needed to get a taxi from the north part of the city to the south west. We tried to take a taxi, but the taxi driver refused to use his meter. I had heard about taxi drivers trying to scam people like this, so we walked away from him. Instead, we decided to try out one of the tuk tuk/scooter things we had seen around the city. We took it a bit further than they usually go, I think, but we still paid more than the taxi driver was trying to make me pay. Also, the motor scooter can drive in the bike lane, so it took less time. In China, the tuk tuks are not the same as in Thailand. In Thailand, you face the same was as the driver, but in China you face the back. Also, China's tuk tuks fit two people, and you sit on a seat covered by a metal box with a door that opens and closes to get inside. We only took one of these once, so it was a fun, novel thing to try.
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| The Beijing West Train Station |
For the rest of the info about our day trip to Xian, stay tuned for the next post.
Day 4
On the last day in Beijing, we didn't really have a whole lot of time to see any major sites since we were supposed to fly to Shanghai in the later afternoon. Instead, we were able to meet up with Jesse one last time. Over lunch the other day, he mentioned a 24 hour dim sum restaurant that Gianni just couldn't get out of his mind. We decided to go there for brunch with him. The restaurant was like 3 stories, and Jesse said it usually has a line out the door even still. The whole building was a traditional Chinese style with carved wood siding. The dim sum was really delicious. We got whatever Jesse suggested since he'd eaten there before. I ate soup dumplings for the first time. Soup dumplings have soup inside them, so you have to bite it just a little and suck the soup out first. If you bite it too hard first, it will spit hot soup all over you. We also had these crunchy, sweet taro rolls. It was a thoroughly satisfying final meal in Beijing before heading to the airport. It was also really nice to see Jesse one more time.
We got to the airport way earlier than I thought we would. I figured the security would be really lax because it was just a domestic flight--not true! Every person had to have bags checked and get completely felt up by a security officer of their own gender. It was completely violating. I'll take the body scanners any day. Also, I had to put our bag through the scanner several times because they decided not to tell me everything that was wrong at the same time. And nothing I had even had to be confiscated or anything, they just probably had inferior scanners that couldn't see my stuff right. Apparently external batteries have to be of a certain voltage or something, but no other airports I've been at care about that sort of thing. Anyway, we still got through with plenty of time to take our little airplane the 2 hours it takes to get to Shanghai.
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