Being in Beijing

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It took us about an hour to figure out where the subway was and get to our Hutong. A Hutong is an old style of building in Beijing, houses are built around a garden courtyard.  Fast disappearing as Beijing develops, these areas are some of the "true" Beijing and our Hostel was located in one.

Beijing is gearing up for the Olympics and they have made a big effort for signage and are overhauling the subway system. This suited us well, since signs are in English and Chinese, and announcements are also dual language. It's very easy. Our first afternoon, we took it easy, had showers, relaxed and then wandered out to find an ATM and get some food.

We took a pedicab (bicycle with carriage attached) to the night market where all sorts of exotic foods were being cooked. We gorged ourselves on dumplings, vegetables on sticks, noodles, some egg pancake thing and I had candied fruit on a stick too!  Gorgeous. For meat eaters there was a vast array of stuff including snakes, scorpions, locusts, crickets, cocoons, baby octopus and spiders - all beautifully arranged on sticks. Yum.

The next day we decided to laze around in the morning. Around midday we hired some bikes and went off to explore the Hutong area. We biked for a few hours, round the Hutongs, a beautiful park and we stopped for some delicious tea at a pavement cafe.

Disaster struck at one point, when some bits fell off Cathal's bike. Turned out to be a brake pad. However a friendly pedicab driver came to the rescue - he made an interim repair, hopped on the back of Cathal's bike (which was very brave of him, it was the most ancient bike I'd ever seen) directed him to a little bike repair shop and he negiotiated the price - he said we'd be overcharged since we were foreign. So Cathal got a new brake pad, and the thing fixed for the princely sum of 7 pence! Our rescuer declined a lift back (wise man) and after us thanking him, he said "Chinese people are very hospitable" and went off on his merry way. How nice.

Back on our bikes again, we headed over to the night market for an early dinner as we'd skipped lunch. We cycled back along the main road like true Beijingers inhaling exhaust fumes and flopped down at the hostel with a well-deserved beer.

We checked out the Forbidden City for an entire day. It's really huge and absolutely rammed with tour groups - mostly Chinese. Once you get past the main bit, some of the palaces are quite interesting. They haven't got round to refurbishing these yet, which makes them look much nicer and more authentic somehow. Also the furnishings have been left pretty much as they were and you can peer in. There's an interesting exhibition of calligraphy and ink paintings, and all the jade you could ever want to look at, plus beautiful gardens. You would really need two days to go to every single bit of the city. It's pretty tiring and we reckon we walked miles. The one really disappointing thing is that there's a Starbucks right there in the Forbidden City. How did that happen?

The following day we rented bikes again and went round a bit, mainly to do some shopping for bits and pieces. Everything is so cheap here.  I managed to resist most of the shops and only buy essentials - like a new pink top!

We had a look at Tianamen Square and to the silk market for a spot of shopping! In the afternoon we went to the Taoist centre - White Cloud Temple which was a very peaceful and interesting place - we'll be popping some lovely pictures up here soon. 

We're leaving Beijing on the 10th to go to Datong. We're a bit sad to go, this is a lovely city, the people are friendly and helpful. For such a huge place it's not as frantic as we imagined and wandering down the side streets and hutongs is really interesting. Every kind of shop and stall is here from bicycle repairmen and popcorn sellers on the street to funny little hairdresser and kite shops.

Final Day in Beijing

Our last day in Beijing turned out to be one of our most enjoyable.  We checked out of the Red Lantern House and wandered off in the vague direction of the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower.  Once we got there we were quite content looking at them from the outside, we weren't all that tempted to go in (particularly once we realised how many steps we'd have to climb).  Instead we headed of again, this time towards the nearest subway station, so we could go visit the 'Maoster' in his maosoleum in Tianamen Square. 

Niamh spotted an interesting looking bar/restaurant on the way, so being that it was heading towards lunchtime, we popped in. I should mention that we'd been sorely disappointed the previous evening by a restaurant recommended by Lonely Planet (the Gong Delin), so we were hoping for better luck.  As it turned out, we needn't have worried.  Despite our not having three words of Mandarin between us and our lovely host not speaking any English, we were treated to the best meal we'd had in ages. 

That evening, Niamh wanted to go the Beijing Opera, partly I suppose to make up for missing the opera and ballet in Russia.  We went to the Chang'an Grand Theatre, which is on the ground floor of a gleaming new office building on one the main streets in Beijing, for some reason.  The theatre was pretty empty, most of the audience were tourists.  The performance was 'The Fairy of the Azure Lake', telling the story of a Fairy Carp who falls in love with a young man and transforms herself into the image of his ex-fiance, who doesn't care for him any more. Very complicated, but tremendously enjoyable.  Chinese opera is completely unlike European; there's singing alright, particularly at the beginning, but there's also a great deal of acrobatics and some very extended fight scenes.  We loved it.

So overall, a lovely ending to a very enjoyable stay in the city.