China

Monday was our first full day in Beijing.  Our impression of Beijing probably sounds negative.  We assume China is a beautiful country and we just had a bad experience, or maybe the next time we travel we should stay away from the big cities and explore more of the countryside.  What we thought of the city after we landed Sunday night seemed to hold true over the course of the next few days we were there.  Beijing did appear to be a dirty, chaotic city, or at least the parts we went to.  The smog that hung over the city Sunday night did not disappear the whole time we were there.  We couldn’t see very far in front of us and like Sunday night, everything smelled like burning coal.  The people also seemed rude.  Obviously we did meet some very nice people, including our tour guide, driver, and the people in the hotel but in general people came across as rude.  It could have been the language barrier or it might just be the culture but in general, that was our impression.  The men also seemed to like to spit a lot too, mostly outdoors but we did witness some people spitting indoors as well.  On top of that it was very cold, but at least we were prepared for that.  Lastly, we were warned by just about every guide book and in our hotel room, not to drink any water unless it was bottled water.  The hotel recommended we don’t even brush our teeth with the water.  It was safe to bathe in, just not to drink. As a result, we had lots of bottled water on this trip.  We had a few things that we absolutely wanted to do while we were in Beijing including visiting the Great Wall, seeing Tiananmen Square, and visiting the Forbidden City.  On Monday we had a tour booked through the same company that we arranged our airport taxi through.  Sunday and Tuesday we would be on our own.

Our hotel had an interesting feature which we have never seen before:  the lights in the room only work when your hotel key is inserted into a slot near the front entrance.  Once you remove your key you have about a minute or two before the lights go off.  We figured this is a good way for the hotel to conserve energy and we are surprised that it is not used more back home. 

 

After grabbing breakfast in the lounge on Monday we headed for the nearest subway stop which was about a 4 block walk from where we were staying.  It took us a few minutes to cross the only street we had to cross.  Like we described yesterday we had to dodge cars, trucks, busses, motorcycles, and bikes.  We initially got about half way across the street where we stood next to a traffic island waiting for traffic to be clear or at least far enough away where we could make a run for it.  As it turns out we fared better than others.  One couple only made it a quarter way across before stopping to wait for traffic to clear up.  So they stood there, in between two lanes of traffic that were moving in the same direction, waiting to finish crossing.  This was quite an experience which we would have to repeat a couple of more times on our trip here.  Other times it was easier because there was at least a walk/don’t walk signal which at first we thought made things safer.  The only problem with the ones we encountered was that the walk sign was lit up at the same time that turning traffic had a green light so it wasn’t exactly safe to cross. We didn’t get hit nor did we see anyone get hit but there were several close calls.

People trying to cross the street.  The cars go fast and don't stop for anything.  Crosswalks mean nothing.

Once we made it across the street we headed for the subway.  We were happy to see that the subway only cost 2 Yuan, which is equivalent to about 30 cents.  You can get on for 30 cents and stay on for the rest of your life if you like; unlike Japan one payment gets you anywhere in the system.  We later found out that busses were even cheaper, about 15 cents for a ride and students pay half price for the bus.  Part of the cheap prices are to control pollution.  The government encourages the use of public transportation.  Another pollution measure is to only allow cars with license plates ending in a certain number on the road on certain days of the week.  One side effect of the cheap subways is extreme crowding.  On our first trip on Sunday morning it was crowded but not much worse than anything we had seen in Japan.  Sunday afternoon was just crazy as we returned to our hotel.  We were able to squeeze onto the subway and we stood right up against the door for our four stop ride.  It appeared that we had taken the last possible places to stand on the train but as we came to other stops we saw that we were wrong.  By the time we arrived at our station, we were no longer by the doors, we were instead in the middle of the subway car pressed up tightly to other people from every possible angle except for maybe our heads.  And by pressed up against people we don’t mean we were just touching people; we were actually squished up against other people.  In most cities we have been to the people entering the trains allow those getting off to get off first. Not here.  Here everyone gets off and on at exactly the same time resulting in a chaotic mess.  Our tour guide on Monday told us that she will often miss her stop because she simply can’t make her way to the door in time.  When we got to our station we pretty much manhandled our way off of the train.  Chris almost didn’t make it off the train because there was one person who would not budge, either because he was stronger or because there was no place for him to go.  Chris was able to find a smaller person to just push out of the way and get off the train.  No one seemed phased by this mess; it seems to be part of everyday life.  The other interesting thing about the subway is that you need to go through metal detectors before getting on the train.  Bags and purses need to go on a belt similar to at the airport as well.  They don’t seem to be monitoring the contents of the bag but you do need to put them through the belt and have them scanned.

Tiananmen Square is big.  It was so big that we could not see to the other side through the smog.  It is the world’s third largest public square, we think we read someplace it is the size of 9 football fields.  And it is crawling with soldiers, police officers and people trying to sell you something or some kind of service. In the square the biggest thing they were trying to sell seemed to be pictures of you taken for a small fee.  The hawkers were relentless.  They seemed to sniff out foreigners to the point where it was quite uncomfortable.  At one point we started talking Spanish to each other in an attempt to make the people go away.  For a little while it worked.  Each time a hawker would approach us we would speak to him in Spanish.  He would try and guess at the language we were speaking.  They would say “Espana”, we could nod our head yes.  Finally one of the guys found another hawker who spoke Spanish, and then we were in trouble.  We kind of just kept on walking and he eventually went away.  We learned two things pretty quickly:  if you kept on walking the price for whatever they were selling dropped.  The more you walked away the lower the price got.  One guy slashed his price for whatever it was he was selling by 67% and we still didn’t buy from him.  The other thing we learned was that they would not follow you into areas that you had to pay to get into.  The guy who dropped his price by 67% refused to pay the 30 cents admission to a park where we finally lost him.

Monument to the People's Heroes

The soldiers on the sides of the flag seem to perform a little ceremony similar to the soldiers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington

After Tiananmen we went to the Forbidden City.  The Forbidden City was built between 1406 and 1420, taking over a million workers, and was home to all of the Chinese emperors during that time.  No one outside of the royal family and government officials were allowed to enter until 1925 when they opened it up to the public.  This too, was huge, taking up over 7 million square feet and containing over 980 buildings. Today it is open to the public and besides allowing visitors to view how the emperor lived; there are numerous artifacts and museums inside of the Forbidden City relating to the Ming and Qing dynasties.   It took us probably 7 hours to explore the complex and we missed quite a few sections of the city.  We took some good pictures but had the weather been nicer we probably would have taken some really great shots.  We did encounter a guy selling some hand painted art and by hand painted, we mean it literally.  He was making some painting by dipping a single finger into ink and painting.  It was pretty amazing and we ended up buying a painting from him but not after bargaining the price down to about half of what he was asking.

Outside of the Forbidden City

Notice all of the people.

Up close shot of the detail on the buildings

The Gate of Moral Standards inside Forbidden City

The Gate of Supreme Harmony inside Forbidden City

Detail of the animals on the eaves of the Hall of Supreme Harmony

These copper and iron vats were filled with water for fighting fires.  In the winter they were covered with quilts to keep the water from freezing.

Inside the Hall of Central Harmony in the Forbidden City



Inside of the Palace of Preserved Harmony

The Thousand Year Pavillion in the Forbidden City

Ceiling of the Thousand Year Pavillion

There was also a hall of clocks inside the Forbidden City...this was one of the clocks inside.

A "water clock". Water falls down from the top and moves a boat which points to the time.

Our electonic map

The Hill of Accumulated Elegance

The only picture of the day with no people in it

We then visited a park just outside of the Forbidden City where it was advertised that we would have an amazing view of the Forbidden City.  Unfortunately, the smog pretty much killed the view but we did find a geocache in the park and the 30 cent admission allowed us to get away from the hawkers.  After leaving the park we walked about a mile and a half to the nearest subway stop where we boarded a subway for the worst train ride of our lives which we described earlier.

Would have been an amazing view.

On Tuesday we had a trip planned to the Great Wall.  Prior to coming to China we knew we would have a limited amount of time so we decided rather than try and go to the Great Wall on our own we would book a guided tour.  Our tour guide met us in the hotel lobby at 8:30 AM.  We had hired an English speaking tour guide and a driver to take us to the Great Wall.  Our tour guide, “Cookie” was well versed in Chinese history, culture and just about every question we threw at her.  Our driver didn’t speak much English but he was certainly a good driver, drifting in and out of lanes with the best of them.  We went to the Mutianyu section.  We chose that part because we read that it was less crowded there.  It was a little further from the city, the drive took us about an hour and a half each way, and they were right, there were not a lot of people there.  This ended up being the best part of our trip to China.  Mostly everything down on the bottom was still covered in smog but once we were on top of the wall and we climbed a little bit we were able to partially get out of the smog and we actually saw the sky!  We parked at the bottom of the mountain and took a chair lift up to the top.  The plan had been to take a larger, enclosed gondola up to the top but supposedly because of the pollution the gondola would not be running until later in the day.  As a result we had to take the non-enclosed, much scarier (to Jackie) chair lift.  There was no means of strapping oneself in and we had to each ride up separately.  The ride to the top was under 5 minutes and it dropped us off near one of the watchtowers.  We walked along the wall for about 45 minutes before turning back.  We learned that this section of the Great Wall is one of the older sections (but far from the oldest) having been built in the mid-6^th century.  It is also one of the nicer restored sections.  Much of the Great Wall is in disrepair and is falling apart.  What we see in pictures is usually one of the restored, touristy sections of the wall.  The section we visited is restored but it was still impressive.  Our tour guide showed us the difference between some of the original bricks and the newer pieces and she told us how people selling souvenirs on the wall used to take bricks out of the wall and sell them to people.  That would be quite an interesting souvenir!  Today, however, that is against the law.  Walking on the wall was not at all easy.  The wall pretty much follows the mountain’s profile.  The section we walked on was not flat for more than 5-10 steps at any time.  The stairs were usually steep and they were never the same height.  Some steps were spaced normally while others were spaced for little people while others required you to pull yourself up using your hands because they were so big.  There was also a nice thin layer of ice covering the shady spots in the wall.  We also learned how to tell which way is north when standing on the wall.  A channel is built along the south side of the wall to collect rain water.  We thought that was an interesting little fact.  After exploring the wall for almost 2 hours we headed back down the chair lift.  We had a choice of taking a toboggan ride down but we opted for the chair lift instead.  When we got to the bottom our guide took us for lunch in a traditional Chinese restaurant.  We ate Kung Pao chicken, dumplings, and a sweet and sour pork.  Yes, the Chinese food in China is just like back home.   We thought these versions were a little better than the westernized versions back home and one thing we noticed was that we were not one bit full so they must not use MSG.  Our lunch for the three of us was pretty cheap; we paid under $12 total for the food and drinks.

Some of the small shops before heading up to the Wall

Our tour guide

The water channel on the south side of the Wall

A bride on top of the wall taking wedding pictures

After lunch we headed back towards the city where we visited the Summer Palace.  The Summer Palace as explained to us was simply a place the emperor went during the summer while away from the Forbidden City. Again, we were surrounded by smog but we could imagine how beautiful some of the architecture may have been had it been a little more clear out.  On the grounds of the Summer Palace was a pretty cool corridor, aptly named the Long Corridor.  The Long Corridor is exactly what it sounds like, a long outdoor corridor which was built by one of the emperors so that she could enjoy a walk through the gardens while protected from the weather.  The corridor is over 700 meters long and is decorated inside with over 14,000 unique paintings representing events in Chinese history.  We finished our walk through the Summer Palace and got back in the car and headed back across the city toward our hotel.  While we were only about 15 miles from the hotel it took us well over an hour to make the trip.

Entrance to the Long Corridor

Inside the Long Corridor

Male version of Chinese guardian lions which stand outside many temples in China.  The male always has his paw on a ball

Female lion.  She always has her hand on a small cub

Marble boat on the grounds of the Summer Palace 

Also on the grounds of the Summer Palace

The following day we pretty much hung around the neighborhood near the hotel.  We walked around a bit, checked out a supermarket (which ended up not being much of a supermarket at all) and watched more men spit in the street.  We nearly got hit by several cars but by this time that was normal to us. 

On Wednesday we left China to head back to Nagoya.  Rather than put ourselves through hell on the subway again, but this time with luggage, we decided to take a cab.  In most cities a taxi ride from downtown to the airport, which in this case was about 20 miles outside of town, costs mega bucks.  But in China where everything is cheap, this ride was about $14.  We’ll take that over the crowded subway any day.

Our trip back to Nagoya was uneventful.  We boarded our new favorite airline once again, we had movies, big seats, and food for both legs of our flight and we got back to our hotel in Nagoya a little after 10 PM.