Whistlestop trip to Beijing

October 2014 

Five hours later (or was it six?) we were in Beijing and checked into tour hotel, oh my goodness we had an enormous and beautiful room with an amazing bathroom! As well as two basins, a bath with TV, walk in shower and it also had one of those new toilets that has all sorts of settings including heated loo seat, jets of water to wash your nether regions in various places (!) and a blow dry setting, rather complicated but quite fun.

  Having freshened up (in all sorts of places) we were taken for dinner to Dadong restaurant which is famous for it's Peking Duck, well what else should one eat when in Peking/Beijing? The chef carves at your table and needless to say it was delicious.

The following morning N headed off early to his meetings and I went out for a walk around the area.
I had the words of the Katie Melua song in my head "There are 9 million bicycles in Beijing" but this obviously isn't the case any more and I only saw a few bikes by the side of the busy main road.

 Lots of people were heading down an alleyway so I followed, many of them were going to the street stalls serving hot dumplings and noodles for breakfast..

 

Later that morning I joined N and his work colleagues who had kindly planned to take us on a local cultural tour. We had been advised to wear warm clothes and comfy shoes. We were driven 80km to Badaling; the nearest point where tourists can visit the Great Wall of China. I was so excited and relished every minute that we walked up the trail in the cool clear air. We were so lucky to have clear blue skies and wonderful autumnal views of the wall snaking off into the distance.

 

The wall is on average nearly 6 meters wide which allowed 5 horses to be galloped abreast and 10 people to march shoulder to shoulder. How they managed the steep sections is a mystery to me! 

 

 I was surprised by how steep the path becomes in places, you literally had to hold onto the hand rail to stop from falling backwards. What an incredible building achievement the Great Wall was and still is, although I was a little disappointed to hear that it's a actually only a myth that it can be seen from space by the naked eye.

 The Badaling section of the Great Wall is probably the most visited part, but it has the most magnificent wall section among all the sections of the Great Wall and provided a wonderful experience, it also left me wanting to return one day to walk further and more remote sections.

 

Having spent several hours walking along the wall we headed back to Beijing stopping briefly to see the site of the 2008 Summer Olympics

The telecommunications tower

The iconic Birds Nest Stadium and National Aquatic Center.

Getting ready for the APEC summit

                                                                                

 

 It was getting dark and late so we all decided it was time for something to eat; with a little trepidation we agreed to try some "local food". The restaurant was very nice, our hosts choose the dishes with smiles on their faces so we knew we were in for something unusual. Most of the dishes were very tasty. Then the soups arrived, different ones for ladies and gentlemen with seperate special ingredients. We decided to "enjoy " the soup first and then be told what the special ingredients were. It looked like thick chicken soup with unusual bits in it and tasted OK but not something I would go out of my way to have again. After finishing we were told that the special ingredient in the ladies soup was forest frog-renowned for it's beautifying function for women, and in the men there was bull's penis- to increase strength and virility!

We certainly needed more strength as our hosts still had more sight seeing planned before bedtime. Next stop was meant to be an evening walk around Tiananmen Square but it was cordoned off in preparation for the following weeks APEC summit, so we were only able to see it from the other side of the road.

                                                                     Tian'an Square Guangchang - the Square of the Gate of the Heavenly Peace                                                              

 

 Zhengyang Men-formally part of a double gate, now a museum

  Arrow Tower

  Tiananmen Tower

 

 

                                                                  Chairman Mao's Mausoleum              

 

 We walked on further, past the guards to the Forbidden City, closed for the night but we could walk around the city walls. It was very quiet and there were few visitors on our route, our hosts were rather nervous stating they never normally walked that way in the dark due to the fear of ghosts, the ghosts of crying women in the concubine quarters of the palace.

The Forbidden City at night

 

 We didn't see any ghosts fortunately and returned to our fabulous hotel room for a few hours sleep before an very early start and the return to Singapore.
   It was literally a whistlestop tour of Shanghai and Beijing but it made a big impression and has left me with the desire to return to China and see much more one day soon.