BEIJING, CHINA

Beijing

We eventually found ourselves a hostel after a few hours traipsing around Tianmen Square and the surrounding area. Once again we could only get a twin room but it was clean, big, had it’s own lounge and cool wallpaper with Chinese characters on it. We also had free Internet access in our room. This proved invaluable as we managed do a lot of catching up on our blog as we had fallen a little behind.
Beijing is immense and you really get a sense of how big it is when you see the roads here. There are at least two lanes everywhere and the motorways have 8 going in each direction and they are pretty much always chocka with cars and buses. The buses are always full of people and there are big wide bike lanes throughout the city, which make cycling around Beijing very easy and a lot of fun, too.
Of course when in the capital one must go to the Great Wall so we decided to take a tour organised by our hostel to a place called Jinshangling about 4 hours drive away. Most tourists head to Badiling but we were told that it’s always crowded there and would be even worse at this time of the year during the summer holidays. Like with Angkor Wat it’s hard to describe what it’s like when you first lay eyes on the Wall. It literally goes on forever as far as the eye can see in each direction. If there was ever a more aptly named landmark this was it – THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA. We had a hard slog up a track to get to the wall but all the effort was worth it. When we finally made it there it was breathtaking.
The first part of the walk (which was going to take us from Jinshangling to Simatai about 10.5kms away) was on a section of the wall that hadn’t had much (if any) restoration done to it so it was pretty tough going especially in the parts that were steep. The best thing about Jinshangling is that there was basically no one else there other than our tour group and maybe one or two others so we were able to get great photos without lots of other people in the shots. To think that the Emperor all those years ago decided (at the same time as he was getting his tomb constructed by 720,000 people) to get this built to keep out invaders is mind-boggling. The terrain that it covers is so barren and remote that it must have been such backbreaking work. About two thirds of the way through the walk we had to cross a swing bridge over a gorge that of course had a toll of 5 yuan – that was on top of the entrance fee for the Jinshangling and Simatai sections. This is due to the fact the different provinces look after those sections so they each charge their own rate. We decided to take this flying fox down the valley to where a boat was waiting to take us across this little reservoir to the car park where our tour group was meeting. It was so much fun and was a great way to end a brilliant day. From the car park we were driven to a restaurant for a buffet meal that was included in the tour fee before we drove back to Beijing.
The next stop on our sightseeing was the Infamous Forbidden City. Once again we were overwhelmed by the number of people queuing for tickets to get in and also just hanging around in the courtyard out front. This place is huge and unfortunately due to facelifts being done for the Olympics a couple of the main buildings were covered in scaffolding but it was still so impressive. The Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties basically never left this palace unless the really had to as everything they would ever need was there. It was like a huge museum full of historical artefacts created by master craftsmen. It is said that the central courtyard could fit 100,000 people in it and there were paintings depicting such ceremonies. There were also so many wings to it and at the back was a massive garden full of stone displays and gorgeous trees and flowers. One thing that you say about the Chinese Royalty – they never did things by half! Some girls asked Tama if they could have their photo taken with him so I took one too!
We also had a look around the famous Silk St market which was 8 stories of shops that sold copies of pretty much everything and anything from sunglasses to golf clubs. It was full of other tourists and the stall holders were shouting out their pitches as we walked passed at every opportunity. As we mentioned in the Yangshuo blog two lads from England and Wales gave us a tip about a good restaurant to go to in Beijing so we went there for dinner. It was called Xiao Wangs Home Restaurant and it is famous for its Peking Duck so of course we had to try it seeing as we were in the city that is the home to this world reknown dish. It was superb as were the other two dishes that we ordered. We didn't get any email addresses from those boys but if by some chance you guys read this thanks heaps for the tip! You were dead right! Unfortunately the rice and beef dishes we ordered didn't arrive until the rest of the meal was finished, which turned out to be ok in the end as we were full already. So we told the waiter that we were full and it was too late for those dishes and typical of the amazing service there he accepted it and took them away. 5 minutes later he returned with a platter of cold watermelon and apologised profusely for the inconvenience they had caused with the late dishes. It was a brilliant night out.
We decided that the next day we would do some cycling around the city so we got some bikes from our hostel and set off. We rode around the walls of the Forbidden City and then over to Tianmen Square – reputedly the biggest central public square in the world. Not surprisingly so as it was HUGE. We captured our touristy photos with the famous Mao portrait then continued on our ride.
They were gearing up for the one year countdown celebration to the Olympics so there were massive lighting rigs and speakers going up and on one side there was an actual countdown clock that we had to have a photo with. The funny thing was that when we stopped to take some photos all these Chinese people came over and asked if they could take photos with us in front of the clock too. It was quite hysterical.
We rode on through the city to the Temple Of Heaven Park. It was a beautiful park with lots of gardens and temples that the Emperors would come to in order to pray for good harvest for the coming year. (Dad they had Chrysies here's the photo for you!) One of them had a wall called the ‘Echo Wall’. It was a circular in shape and designed in such a way that if one person stood at one part of the wall and another stood quite a long way away all they would need to do to be able to hear each other would be to lean over and whisper at the wall and the sound would carry right around it. We tried it out and even though there were a lot of people there shouting to each other we could hear each other clear as day.

That night we went to a Beijing acrobatics show. The Chinese are of course famous for their amazing acrobats and they didn't fail to live up to their reputation. It was incredible, they were so talented. We were sitting in the very front row so had a brilliant view of the girls contorting themselves, spining plates etc and the boys fliping off poles, spining through hoops etc! Was fabulous!

We had two days to go and decided we would go to the Lama Temple and leave the Summer Palace till the morning of our last day before catching the train to Shanghai. We would live to regret that decision but more of that later. The Lama Temple is the largest Tibetan temple outside of Tibet and is a beautifully peaceful place. The buildings are typical of the ornate architectural designs of the era in which ts was built - in the Qing Dynasty around the same time as the Forbidden City (1400's).
The main attraction here was a 18 m high buddha figure that is carved out of white sandalwood which was quite stunning as far as budhhas go. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos of it as protcol dictated otherwise.
When we went to the Summer Palace the next day we didn't realise how long it would take to get there - about 2 hours.
This meant that we would only have around just over an hour to see it all in order to get back in time to catch our train that night. We had made a major misudgement as there was no way that we would see this magnificent palace in that time because it was enormous. To put things in perspective the Summer Palace is situated on Kunming Lake. When the Emperor had the palace built he thought that the original lake was too small so he got 100,000 people to make it bigger and deeper. We rushed as fast as we could to get glimpses of as much as possible and managed to see most of the main buildings but still left a lot unseen. We were so glad that we had made the effort to get there though as it was such an impressive place and the buildings were incredible.
When we finally found our way back to the hostel to collect our bags we had enough time to grab a cold beer and then get to the station to catch our overnight sleeper train to the last destination on the Asian leg of our trip - Shanghai.

Arohanui
Liv and Tama xx