China, Beijing: A Great Big Wall and Forbidden City

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Over 11 million people live in Beijing, the capital of China. This important city has a history over 3,000 years old and is marking a new point in China's history by hosting the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. When we visited Beijing during our 2007 travels in Asia, it was very exciting to see old meet new, as the city was preparing itself for a busy summer the following year.

The first sight that we set out to see was Tiananmen Square, which has been granted the title of "world's largest public pedestrian square". The place was very big and during our walk around it, we passed by the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall (unfortunately closed for renovations until September), the Monument of the People's Heroes and two Soviet-style buildings on either side of the square, the Great Hall of the People and the National Museum. The square was very busy with many people milling about; several kids were also flying kites around the square. The only drawback of the afternoon was the weather and pollution as it had cast a grey and dreary shadow over the area.

After walking through Tiananmen, we headed towards Wangfujing Pedestrian Street, one of the areas where we saw a lot of preparation for the Olympics underway. It was nice to see so much being done a year in advance of the Games; it was a shame, though, that we did not make it to the Olympic Park area of Beijing where the Olympic Stadium was being built. On Wangfujing, there were many new shopping malls and restaurants, some of them still in the process of being built or refurbished, but many of them were already open to the public and attracting huge crowds.

Off Wangfujing Pedestrian Street, we visited the first of two snack streets that we would see during our time in Beijing. There were many souvenir stalls at the end of the small lane and there were some exotic snack stalls serving up live scorpions on sticks, as well as seahorses and cocoons; all of these fresh "treats" could be barbecued then and there for any willing buyer ready to eat them. Not for us, thank you!

By the time we left the first snack and souvenir street, we had taken some great photos and had purchased several gifts for people at the souvenir section. It was fun bargaining with the salespeople there, as they were quite flexible with their extortionately high initial prices. We had been walking around for quite some time and we were both ready to go home by this stage, so we started off towards the place we were staying in Beijing - Peking Youth Hostel. On the way, we walked along Beijing's most famous snack street, the Donghuamen Night Market.

Even better photos were in store for us at the pedestrianised Donghuamen Night Market; there, we saw many gross things for sale, also on sticks in order to be barbecued. There were more scorpions, seahorses and cocoons, as well as grubs, cicadas, starfish, sea urchins, grasshoppers, crickets, pig's penises and testicles, chicken livers and hearts, dog meat, centipedes, snakes, locusts and our least favourite of all (because of the smell), stinky tofu. We didn't try anything that evening because the "snacks" were just a bit too much for us.

The Forbidden City was located just west of Peking Youth Hostel and Wangfujing Pedestrian Street was just 10 minutes away to the east. The location was perfect and was one of the main reasons why we chose to stay there. The staff at Peking Youth Hostel were fantastic; they were great to socialise with and were extremely friendly and helpful. The hostel had a cosy living room area with comfy sofas and free wireless internet; outside, there was a small courtyard surrounded by foliage with tables in the centre for people to sit and relax.

One of the things we needed to do when we arrived in Beijing was to cash a couple of American Express travellers cheques into US Dollars, so that we would have money to pay for our return flights from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing. We were required to pay cash for the flights when we arrived in Mongolia, our next destination after China's capital city. To accomplish this, we headed to a main branch of Bank of China (at the south end of Wangfujing Pedestrian Street); hardly anyone in the place spoke English, but we finally got some help from someone who could put a few phrases together.

The Bank of China staff member who helped us finally made a phone call to the bank's main office, to see where we could go to cash the cheques. We had a problem cashing them at that branch, despite it being a large branch in the middle of a very touristy and busy area, as they did not cash travellers cheques on a weekend. We were then pointed towards another Bank of China branch located at the north end of Wangfujing and a block west.

Saturdays were a problem for that branch, too, or at least that's what we were told when we made it to the next branch. We then became very angry because the other branch had guaranteed that this new branch would be able to help us, and also because we had wasted a lot of time trying to sort everything out.

To make a point of the horrible customer service we had experienced in the two banks, we told the staff at the second branch that we were not going to leave the bank until someone helped us; this meant that we would be happy to wait in the lobby until the first time they would help us, even if it was on Monday. Guess what? Ten minutes after they understood that we were not budging from the seats we had sat down in, they ended up cashing the cheques for us quite easily! There are many things that China needs to sort out for foreigners before next summer, when the country will be full of them due to the Olympics.

Picking up our train tickets to Mongolia was another headache inducing fiasco, but this time self-induced by none other than ourselves. To obtain our train tickets, we had to pay a visit to Selena Travel's partner agency in Beijing, Asia Tours. They were inconveniently located southwest of the city centre and we had to take a taxi there because there was no direct and easy route on public transport. We thought that picking up the tickets would be a quick affair, but a major mixup ensued, causing the entire thing to take ages.

The taxi we had taken to the travel agency was waiting outside the large office block that Kyle went inside to pick up the tickets. Dan waited outside with the taxi, and started to worry when Kyle had still not returned about 20 minutes later. The problem with the tickets was that they were booked for 5th June and we had thought for a while that the outbound date should have been 4th June. One of the earlier itineraries sent by Selena Travel, the Mongolian agency we used to book our travel arrangements in Mongolia, had 4th June as our departure date.

Since that itinerary had been sent to us, several other ones were sent with a departure date of 5th June. Each of these other itineraries had changed for some reason or another, and the final one had a mistake in it, whereby the travel agent had forgotten to include a camel riding excursion. Kyle then forwarded an earlier itinerary that included camel riding in it, to show Selena Travel that we were indeed supposed to have that activity included, but that itinerary had the start date of 4th June. From that point on, we had the 4th June date stuck in our minds and, from that day onwards, we thought that we were due to leave Beijing on 4th June.

Having the date 4th June stuck in our minds posed a problem for Kyle when he picked up tickets that were marked 5th June. He felt sure that the tickets were wrong and he had to try to discuss this problem with a Chinese travel agent who didn't speak English at all. The whole affair turned out to be a big mess and was completely our fault, but it worked out fine in the end once we realised our mistake. We had given both the Chinese travel agency and Selena Travel a really hard time before realising the mistake and apologising, but Selena Travel was really considerate; they ended up giving us a 40% discount on our return flights from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing to help make up for some of the stress we had faced picking up the tickets and trying to sort out the ever-changing itinerary in the first place. They had messed the itinerary up a few times during our negotiation of the trip, so it seemed fair for them to give us a rebate.

We didn't end up seeing any Beijing sights on the Saturday when we sorted out our American Express travellers cheques and train tickets to Mongolia, so we ensured that the Sunday was a memorable one. What could be more memorable in China than visiting The Great Wall? We booked a tour through our hostel that started at Jinshanling, almost four hours by bus from Beijing, and that would include a 10km hike to Simatai. The walk between the two places on The Great Wall was very steep in parts and there were often many places along the Wall with crumbling steps.

The Great Wall was in its original condition in nearly all of the parts we walked, hence the crumbling steps. While this may not appeal to a lot of tourists, who prefer the manufactured setting of Badaling, China's busiest and most touristy section of the Wall, we definitely preferred the natural state of Jinshanling and Simatai. When we arrived at Jinshanling, we took the cable car up from the base to the section of the Wall where we would start our hike that day. The cable car ride was nice, albeit a little scary due to the dodgy old fittings supporting the tiny car we rode in, but we could have gotten the same view from the walk up to the wall. Thus, the cable car journey was not worth an extra 30 RMB (£2, or $3.80) each and we would suggest that anyone trekking along this part of the Wall skip the cable car and walk 30-45 minutes up to The Great Wall.

The walk along The Great Wall was a very quiet one; we only ran into a few tourists during the entire journey. After walking for more than three hours and thoroughly enjoying this part of our 6-week trip to China, we made it to the Simatai end, where we chose to ride the zipline across a river between two hills. It was fun and the zipline transported us much faster than we thought it would have travelled between the start and end points; the woman running the zipline didn't get us any time to think, though, before we were pushed off the extremely high platform and pushed out over the water - that was more than a little scary.

After all of the walking that day, we had built up large appetites and we were glad that the lunch provided on the tour was a very tasty one. It was buffet style food and there were many tasty dishes including an egg and tomato dish, gungpao chicken, braised beef and noodles and sauteed vegetables. The Great Wall tour that we did that day was one of the best things that we did in China and was great to have included towards the end of our China trip at our last destination there.

That morning, on the bus to The Great Wall, a crazy Dutch man and his female friend were already tipsy when they boarded at 7:30am in the morning. They ended up drinking during the walk on the Wall and also during lunch, and the passengers on the bus back to Beijing had to endure their loud and often rude antics. The two of them were very annoying (the man was the most annoying) and we overheard them say that they were travelling to Mongolia on the same day as us. Spending another 30 hours on a train with them was not something that we were looking forward to, since they were so obnoxious and drunk that day. However, we did see them on the train a few days later and they were surprisingly not too unpleasant to have a conversation with when they were sober. Even so, we were glad that they were not in our carriage during that trip!

Our visit to the Forbidden City, the large UNESCO site which was once the Imperial Palace during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, was made on one of the only clear days in Beijing when we were there. The golden rooftops of more than 800 buildings inside the vast complex really shone and stood out in the bright sunlight. The extensive grounds were beautiful but the museums were a bit boring because many of them had grammatically incorrect English descriptions or none at all, and most of the exhibitions were really small and sparsely populated. We spent at least four hours in the Forbidden City and enjoyed several short breaks in the many small air-conditioned souvenir shops that were dotted around the place.

When we left the Forbidden City, we were ravenous and decided to try one of Beijing's specialty dishes, Peking Roast Duck. We opted for a place that was mentioned in our Lonely Planet guide to China, the Li Quin Roast Duck Restaurant. The restaurant and meal were okay but definitely nothing to write home about, which we know is a contradictory statement since we are writing about it now. The plum sauce was different than what we have eaten in London; it tasted thicker and grittier. The actual duck was not crispy like duck that we have eaten back home; however, the pancakes were good and once we added spring onions and cucumber to the mix, with pieces of duck coated in plum sauce rolled up in the pancakes, we managed to enjoy the meal.

All in all, we would give Peking Roast Duck a rating of about 6.5/10, when compared to eating aromatic crispy duck pancakes in London. This lower score could possibly be attributed to the difference in style of duck to that of London which we both like - we decided that Peking Duck was not crispy at all - but we also think that the quality of Chinese food outside of China is normally much better than the quality of food in the country itself.

A few journals back, we mentioned that we missed the food in Southeast Asia, and that feeling had still not changed by this point in our China trip. By the way, about an hour after we ate at Li Quin, we were both hit at the same time with miserable, explosive diarrhoea, and we were fortunately able to pop into the Raffles Hotel's plush bathroom to take care of business. We don't know if the problem was because of the food we ate at Li Quin; it might have been because we ate too much, or it could have been something we ate earlier or the day before; it could have just been another example of really unhygienic kitchens in China.

We seriously doubt that anyone reading this will remember our Raffles Hotel experience in Singapore, whereby we were not allowed in because we were wearing shorts, even though other people were being let inside with shorts on their legs. Well, our sweet revenge against the Raffles Hotel chain was executed in Beijing, when we each left an excellent and truly fitting gift in the toilets at the beautiful hotel. It should let them know what we really think of them and their stuck-up attitude. A special thanks to Li Quin Restaurant for "kickstarting" our payback plan.

By this point in the Beijing trip, we were due to leave early the next morning to board a train for our 30-hour journey to Ulaanbaatar. We were really excited to get to the capital of Mongolia and start the tour that we had booked with Selena Travel. Just before we arrived back at the hostel on our final night, we bought some snacks and drinks for the long train journey and then went back to Peking Youth Hostel to watch a DVD and relax before going to sleep.

You can read about our Mongolia trip in the next set of travel journals for that country. Including the train journey, we spent a week in Mongolia and really loved the place. It was one of the best places that we have visited in our 5-1/2 months in Asia and it was somewhere that both of us would like to visit again one day. Please do click ahead to read the Mongolia journal entries, but don't forget to finish this one first!

After our week in Mongolia, we were exhausted when we returned to Beijing, even though we flew back instead of taking the train. There were a few sights in Beijing that we still wanted to see before we left: Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace and Lama Temple. However, we only managed to make it to Temple of Heaven and the large park where it is located due to us being exhausted and struggling to get up early enough to visit the other sights. Knowing that the end of our Asian trip was in sight, we were also anxious about going to the US in a couple of days, and this made it difficult to focus on the remaining sights in Beijing. We did spend some time one day in Oriental Plaza, a huge shopping mall in Beijing. There, we saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was a bit of a dud, and we enjoyed some great Italian ice cream at Romana, a little shop run by a friendly Italian woman who used to be a doctor in China but decided to change her career due to the difficulty she had faced when practicing medicine there.

For our last two Chinese meals, we ended up spending a lot of money for average food, which was disappointing. At Royal Cafe, we were herded in there by a woman who spoke English very well, and who we also thought was just trying to get foreigners into her restaurant so she could get written up in a Lonely Planet guide (she actually asked us if we were writing for the company). She said that the restaurant served spring rolls and we had both been wanting to eat spring rolls for quite some time. However, when we actually sat down to order, she said that they didn't have any left! We ended up ordering wontons that tasted okay and a braised beef in soy dish that was gross; all of the pieces of beef were stringy and/or chewy and the dish tasted like chemicals... MSG overdose, anyone?

The second and last Chinese meal we had was better but more expensive. We ate at a restaurant that was full of foreigners and they even gave us an English menu with no Chinese dishes on it at all, with exorbitant prices. We knew that the place served Chinese food as we had seen a different menu outside the restaurant and, once we had asked them for the other menu, we were able to choose some Chinese dishes that were priced much lower than the Western dishes; the prices were still fairly steep, though. At this last place, we had sweet and sour pork (Kyle thought the dish tasted great but Dan thought the pork pieces tasted like popcorn), pork dumplings (they were weird, we could not taste any meat) and baked toast with tofu and vegetables on top (this was good even though "baked" meant "deep-fried in loads of oil"). After this and the previous paragraph's dining experiences on our last two days in China, you can probably understand why our final dinner in the country ended up consisting of a nice, tasty and cheap meal at McDonald's. Those 1/4-pounder burgers were to die for with a creamy, spicy sauce that you don't get in the US or UK.

One final thing to mention before closing out our last China journal entry was that our great pals Mads and Frida, who we met in Vietnam earlier in the year, and who we saw again in Hong Kong a little bit after meeting them, just happened to be staying in the same hostel as us! We got back from a day's activities fairly late one evening and we saw Mads on the computer checking his emails. We stayed up until 4:00am talking to him and helping him burn a DVD of his photos, and the late night caused us to sleep in the next day, ruining any chance we had of catching an early 1-hour bus to the Summer Palace. We didn't really mind, though, since we were ready to move on to a new country and it was great catching up with him. It was such a surprise seeing them in Beijing and a nice way to end our trip!