Arriving into Beijing station at 9am fresh from a fairly comfortable train ride, Seven and I (mainly Seven) helped the German guys to find their bearings and then we set off to drop our luggage and head to the Great Wall of China. For such a large population, the transport system is actually quite robust and the hour long journey to B station where all the tourists go to see the Great Wall was easy and we actually got to sit down. There is another place to visit the Great Wall but it takes about 3-4 hours to get there and today was a Monday so therefore a working day meaning maybe it would be quiet? Quiet in Chinese terms is relative but actually we didn't have to wait for very long as most of the tourists opted to use the sky lift to avoid walking, we walked up. The wall was built so that it always headed for the highest point, when reading this I did not even register the fact that actually this meant it was pretty steep. I was lucky enough to get a photo with not many people showing just how steep it was...
For miles around you could just see undulating hills and dense bush. I feel for the army that tried to get through it to be honest (but actually the great wall was not very useful and was breached twice (I think)). Luckily the weather was great, the sun was out and not much pollution was inhaled so overall a great day. On the journey to the wall, we met an Irish dude who ended up staying with is around the wall. He was fun to chat too and is living the dream life getting well paid to teach English in South Korea and then travelling and then back to South Korea.
The following day, Seven had to return to work so I had the next couple of days to explore Beijing all alone. First up was the National Museum of China and at without wanting to risk being visited by secret Chinese officials, I was not all that impressed. It was a huge building and not filled with very many exhibits so it just looked empty. It did however have a very interesting exhibition on Chinese currency and how the use if different monies has evolved throughout the dynasties. As mentioned earlier, I decided against visiting the frozen corpse of Chairman Mao so a little walk around Tiananmen Square concluded that day. I could visit Beijing without a visit to the Geological Museum so that happened the next day. Photos are included in my Google Album for those that want to see but there were some really impressive specimens although very very few were on display. The whole museum was only 4 floors wth the 4th floor being a celebration of how much geology Chairman Mao new about (sigh!).
My final day consisted of a visit to the Summer Palace. A very large park with a palace that was destroyed many times by the British and French. I know this because literally every sign in the palace started off with 'this building was rebuilt after being destroyed by Anglo-French Forces'. The palace from what I read was mainly used by the Dowager Empress Cixi, most people might remember her as a complete b!*ch who spent loads of money including using money set aside to upgrade the Chinese imperial navy to build herself a concrete boat and eventually lead to the downfall of the Emperors and the start of the Republic of China. There is also a very large Buddhist temple in the middle of the palace complex. I found it a reoccurring theme that people would be trying to pray but in the background people are trying to sell 'tat' to tourists. Strange.
I have not really spoken about individual meal but my final one in Beijing must be mentioned. We went to a place that did hot pots, not the English sort though. In a nutshell you get a pot that is spit in two and you can choose 2 from a number of flavours of soup to go in them - see photo. We had spicy and mushroom. They sit on a cooker in the middle of the table and kept at the boil. You then order your food such as meatballs, crab sticks, noodles, beef etc etc and it comes raw (similar to Korean BBQ from HK) and place them into the soup to cook. It was beaaaaaaautiful food and the staff were so welcoming, helpful and chatty. One of the waitresses apparently had a crush on me (according to Seven) so she was always hanging around filling up my water which was pretty cute. We ordered noodles and proper noodle chef (yes they exist) can out and did some crazy moves including throwing the noodles around so that they almost hit my face before cutting them and placing them in the soup. All for really good value, I could not have had a better meal to finish my time off in China.
The morning of my departure was my first experience of stress. I literally could not get into the metro heading for the airport due to the rush hour. I suppose I should have thought ahead that a city of 17 million would have a busy rush hour. Luckily a taxi driver said he would just take me straight to the airport. Leaving China was also not as painful as I imagined and immigration was fast and efficient. Next stop was South Korea before onwards to Tokyo BUT we were delayed by an hour, something not uncommon in China so I was told.
No comments:
Post a Comment