The Middle Kingdom

Christine and I were very excited to arrive in Beijing. The city is home to many well know sites, the country and therefore the capital is a growing superpower, the city holds more people than half the Canadian population, and finally, we were just happy to get off the train and really stretch our legs with some longer walks.

We arrived at the Beijing train station around 2 in the afternoon, and then had to figure out how to get to our hotel. Once again the joys of booking on line saved us a small fortune, and Beijing is not an expensive city to begin with. We were trying to figure out how to get a cab to our hotel, along with some others from the train. The regular cabs didn’t recognize our location, as the address was not written in Chinese characters. The only person who would help us was one man who spoke English and he wanted to charge a rate that we thought too high (also he wasn’t an official cab). After finding some free internet nearby and writing down the address in Chinese, we showed it to the first cab we saw and it was no problem from there. The 30 minutes in the cab cost about $3 Canadian and was far less than the $40 the English speaker tried to sell us on.

Our hotel turned out to be about half a block from the wall of Forbidden City, one of the most famous of Beijing landmarks. Because the hotel was so full we got bumped up into a higher class of room, and it was nice to finally have some space after the cramped cabin conditions on the train. By the time everything was settled it was early evening, so we would not get in any major sight seeing that day.

Instead we decided to walk along the outside of Forbidden City and find a restaurant, being sick of all the noodle soup from the train. We found a restaurant that had pictures and prices, so we made a few selections and settled in for a delicious meal. The dishes are quite large, cheap and fantastic, just as I remembered it from my previous visit to the Middle Kingdom. We had the most amazing sweet and sour pork. This was interesting since I remembered it being very difficult to find that dish in Shanghai, but perhaps it is more of a regional popularity here.

We spent the rest of the evening wandering around, getting harassed by hundreds of modern rickshaw drivers (they now have motorized scooters or bikes to take you around). The common barrage is: HELLO, HELLO!! HELLO SIR! WHERE YOU GOING? GET IN!! WHERE YOU FROM? LET’S GO! Any combination of these was employed. It didn’t matter that we said no or completely ignored one driver not 5 feet from the next; they still had a try at their luck. Of course everywhere we go there are many others trying to hawk goods or get us to join their tour group.

Yesterday Christine and I decided to visit the Forbidden City, and let me tell you it is not forbidden anymore. Tens of thousands of tourists are crawling all over the place, and most of them are Chinese. I guess this time of year there are not a lot of western travelers. The city is very large and pretty much every direction you turn is a picture waiting to happen. They “hired” 1 million labourers and 10,000 artisans to work on building it back in the 1600’s. One stone in the city that is ornately carved took 20,000 men 23 days to move a very short distance from the outskirts of the city to the palace. They had to wait for winter, spread water along the path and then drag the stone over the ice.

The commentary for the audio guide is done by none other than Roger Moore, James Bond Number 2. I of course am referring to his order as Bond, after the venerable Sean Connery. As to his turn at Bond, my dear father ranks him as number 2 in acting, but I place him in a tie for 3rd. I know there are a lot of Bond references through out the blog, but I can’t help it if dear old 007 gets around.

Roger’s dialogue of the structures is a nice complement to the architecture, and the entire city took us most of the day to visit. We took particular enjoyment poking fun at the names of the buildings, as they are probably poetic in Chinese have other, er, nuances in English. Things like: The Palace of Eternal Longing, or the Courtyard of Ever Lasting Pleasure, and so on.

We spent the late afternoon and evening wandering around Tiananmen Square. There is a lot of history to that square, and we spent some time appreciating the significance and sheer size of it. We took in the sight of the flag lowering in the square, carried out with a number of troops, officers and on-lookers. Thankfully I could easily see over the shoulders of the much shorter Chinese people, and I teased Christine about giving her a boost so she could enjoy it as much as I could.

That evening we stopped for another delicious meal on our way back to the hotel. The food here is so cheap, and I know we aren’t even eating at the restaurants that really cost nothing (cause the signs are all in Chinese and all we can see is that the most expensive dish is $2 at the whole restaurant). Still, for about $8-9 we can enjoy 3 or 4 different dishes and drinks. On our way out of the restaurant we saw a place for me to get my shaggy hair cut. So here is what I got for $6 – they shampooed and massaged my scalp for about 15 minutes, I got a nice haircut where they took their time and he did a pretty good job, and a head-neck-shoulder-upper back-arm-hand massage that must have lasted about 25 to 30 minutes. The whole ordeal was taking so long that they offered to shampoo and blow-dry Christine’s hair and give her the same massage for about $3 since she was waiting so long. Where can you get all of that for less than $10, China rocks. The couple that was serving us was also having a good laugh at my beard and offered to trim it as well, but I passed.

Today we spent the day wandering around the city. We did stop back at Tiananmen Square again so that we could visit Mao’s Mausoleum. We figured since we already visited one evil dictators Mausoleum on this trip, why pass up the other. When we got in line we were told by someone official looking that Christine had to check her bag. He led us to the checking station and we were worried that we were going to miss the closing of the visits, since it is only open until 12:00. He walked us back to the line, demanded a large tip, but we bartered down to $1.50, and he sent us in line way ahead. If he hadn’t we would have missed the exhibit. It is funny how many people were complicit in letting us cut through the line. Once in place the line moves at an incredibly steady pace and I would estimate that more than 100 times as many people line up daily to see Mao as they do for Lenin. Since Russia has 1/10th the population of China, I would say that Lenin’s popularity just can’t compare to Mao. While in the line there was a terrible amount of pushing and shoving and people trying to get ahead of others. In particular the little old ladies seem to shove and push their way through, often dragging their husbands in tow. When I say little, I mean little, most didn’t even come to my chest height. The younger generations seem to be a bit more relaxed and just flow with the line. Along the way we made friends with a little boy and his family. Afterwards, when we wound up in a hot pot restaurant we ran into the family again and had some photos with them. The hot pot was fantastic, and we had a wonderful assortment of recommended dishes.

We spent the rest of the day wandering through some very brand new tourist shopping areas that must have been erected for the Olympics, probably after knocking down some peoples homes. The streets then meandered into the far far less touristy shopping areas, where we enjoyed looking at places the locals buy. Afterwards we went off for dinner at a restaurant where they overcharged us. After a bit of arguing they simply pointed at the chopsticks we were using and said they charged us the difference for that. How do you argue about a chopstick fee we don’t know, but they were only overcharging by about $2, so we decided to pay up and move on.

We are excited about the next few days that we have here in Beijing and find that there is still a long list of things to do and see. Our start in Asia has been really nice and we look forward to our next adventures.

Thanks again to Christine’s Mom for posting this blog. She didn't even need to ask for Peter's help this time. We’ll have some photos of Beijing ready in the next day or two.

Our best to all of you,

Christine & Hovan