Beijing - amazing last destination of our time in China

OUT! for Mao
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January 21st, Saturday

Getting into Beijing West Railway Station at 9am, Lihui's friend Li surprisingly met us at the train station which was fantastic! He helped us find our Hostel located about 30 min outside the very centre of Beijing which wasn't too bad in terms of location but a lot cheaper than staying down town. After something with our internet booking hadn't worked, we were kindly given the (so-called) 'Presidential Suite' of the hostel (the only room with ensuite bathroom - not quite what the name suggests but decent enough and at a good rate.

Stone relief in the Forbidden City
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We didn't waste much time before finding a delicious Uighur restaurant down the road for lunch and exploring the nearby Beijing zoo for some low key sightseeing. It was sad to see their Pandas after the ones in Chengdu: very skinny with brown fur and a nightmare of an enclosure.... . The other animals weren't too much better off so we weren't too thrilled with it all. 

Not being able to hold back any longer we journeyed down to Tiananmen Square in the late afternoon. It was amazing to walk across the vast square, see people promenading and taking pictures or playing with kites and walking up to the huge Tiananmen Gate, the entrance to the Forbidden City, with Mao's huge famous picture on it too (Alex expressed his disapproval with Mao - see pic!). We were excited to visit the Forbidden City soon!

Summer Palace
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January 22nds, Sunday

After a slight lie in, the weather (cold but clear sky and bright sunshine) prompted us to go to the Forbidden City today. Taking the bus we went into town and started at the North Entrance (opposite Tiananmen). Although this was quite convenient travel wise, in terms of audio guide this made our tour a bit muddled up. But we nevertheless totally enjoyed the various palaces and gates, all amazingly richly decorated and absolutely stunning. Also lots of interesting history and at last we got all our Ming and Qing dynasties sorted! :-) It was very interesting to learn about CiXi who was a concubine in the late Qing dynasty and ended up reigning China for almost 50 years as Empress! Taking our time we spent most of the time in the Palace and then took a bus to the Temple of Heaven to meet Li again (the temple unfortunately is going to through refurbishment so we didn't get very close...shame...). Li took us to a wonderful restaurant which we immensely enjoyed!

Late afternoon in the palace
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January 23rd, Monday

We had another slow-ish started (justified by all our travelling before Beijing of course!) and then set off to Beihai Park North of the Palace. As it was freezing lots of Beijingians were exercising their ice-skating skills its frozen lakes. We were heading through the park to catch a tour through the Beijing hutongs, the traditional, rectangular living quarters. In a cycle rickshaw the tour took us through several hutong streets and we visited one particular one in detail meeting the owner and chatting with her. Then we went to the former residence of one of China's very important female politicians during the communist era, Soong Qing Ling.

The last emperor's son? on Tiananmen Gate
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She had been married to Sun Yatsen who is kind of the father of democracy and who helped end the imperial rule and make China a republic in the 1910s. Unfortunately, he died very soon afterwards and his successors brought about a period of warlord rule in China. This ended with a union of Nationalists and Communists (among them young Mao) regaining control in the 1920s but as soon as that happened a civil war started between the two fractions. The Japanese attack in the 1930s again brought a temporary cease-fire between Guomintang and Communists. Civil war erupted again after 1945 but this time the Communists gained the upper hand and Mao proclaimed the People's Republic in China shortly after. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan which has since then been regarded as a rogue province by most mainland Chinese. The lady who's house we visited was an important politician during this entire period and to read about her life was quite interesting. We couldn't quite work out how much she was involved in horrible things like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution - must do our homework on Chinese history when we get home!

Some more delicious Uighur food round the corner from our hostel
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The tour finished with a visit to the Beijing Bell tower which gave a wonderful view across Beijing. In the evening we went to an absolutely amazing acrobatics show in a Beijing theatre - see pictures!!!

January 24th, Tuesday

Getting up early, we made for the markets near the Temple of Heaven Park. In a huge building we found one floor with all sorts of seafood (you could buy turtles even....must be a delicacy for Chinese New Year...), then one floor with watches and clothes or silk ware, and another with all kinds of jewellery, especially pearls. So we did a bit of bargaining and Lou got some very nice pearl jewellery! :-) Also found a market with toys, where we got stuff to take to Cambodia.

Beihai park lake all frozen over
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As our shopping spree had lasted quite a while we decided to spend the last hours of daylight walking through Temple of Heaven Park again. Although the sights there weren't that thrilling, it was interesting to see lots of Chinese people around entertaining themselves: Some people were playing cards, others danced to some music from tapes, again others made classical Chinese music and sang! We took a bus back to the hotel from there and then made for a Beijing Duck restaurant. The duck was absolutely delicious and somewhat different from what we expected. Slices of absolutely wafer-thin skin, slighly crispy and very tasty!

Spring cleaning?
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January 25th, Wednesday

In order to make it to the Great Wall as a final highlight of our time in China, we get up early to catch public buses and a minibus to the Wall's section in Mutianyu. We actually couldn't believe the figures behind the wall: 7200 km long, from the Chinese sea to Inner Mongolia (recently another distant section was discovered in the desert sand!), and some parts thousands of years old! Although what can be seen now is mostly Ming dynasty (1300-1600AD), the wall was originally built by the emperor Qin, who also built the Terracotta Army. What an amazing accomplishment!

Chinese acrobatics show
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So we were full of anticipation when we embarked the cable car to take us from the parking lot to the very top of the wall. It was amazing as the wall came into sight and we spent the first few minutes just watching in awe as it appeared in the distance on the most inaccessible peaks one could imagine, rolled up and down over peaks and then disappeared over yet more peaks in distance. Although the bit we walked was actually restored, even the unrestored bits on both sides can be clearly seen and are still very impressive. So we spent about 2-3 hours walking up and down, taking lots of pictures and just taking in the amazing atmosphere in the most glorious sunshine, Praise God! It's so worth a visit! To get down we decided to ditch our cable car return ticket and use the (German made!!!) toboggan route which was excellent fun! The Wall was definitly one of the absolute highlights of our trip, and we felt very blessed to have been able to go.

Getting ready for Chinese New Year
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Back in Beijing 3 hours later, we just wandered along one of the downtown streets and dinner on some of the food stalls in 'delicious food street' :-) We realised we were total light-weights with regard to food, opting for lamb skewers and missing out on grilled sea horses, scorpions, silk worms, giant locusts, snakes and goat testicles...!!! Yum!

And now we are just sitting in another internet cafe (which took us hours to track down!) emailing and updating this diary. We plan to go to the Beijing Summer Palace tomorrow but Friday we are off to Cambodia! What an amazing time we've had in China, praise the Lord! It has been a wonderful time, with amazing places but most importantly also amazing people to meet! It feels hard to think we have 6 weeks in Cambodia, another new country to get to know! But it will be good to do something useful after spending money on ourselves for the last 4 weeks and stay in one place with a proper purpose. We hope to be in touch again from there of course!

Beijing Duck at last!
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Greetings to all and lots of love from

Alex and Louise