Beijing - a part of western life in China
From October 1st to October 7th the Chinese celebrate their National Day. On October 1st 1949 this "communist" country was founded and Mao was declared (or rather declared himself) the new leader of the Chinese people. Th communist ideas have pretty much disappeared during these 60 years and China is now a place with less communist characteristics than Germany.
We decided to spend this week without work in the Chinese capital Beijing. I went with Hannah, Becky and Stacey and on top of that, Anninka and I could celebrate our reunion once I got to Beijing, because she, like us, had decided to use this opportunity to visit the Beijing.
Everyone had warned us that during the week of National Day Beijing would be very crowded and they had been right. Getting there and back turned out to be the first problem. We had trouble finding a train to get to Beijing and couldn't get one for our way back, so we had to take a plane.
Our train took us straight from Huai Hua to Beijing...and it took 27 hours. It wasn't as bad as it sounds due to our comfy beds and creative and noisy games which entertained th whole train.
We, who had gotten really used to Huai Hua's small town life, were a little lost in the big city of Beijing. There was no street food, the buildings were new and modern, everything was clean, there were no piles of trash in the corners, the traffic was less noisy and more organized, there were foreigners in the streets, the people spoke some English and everything was more expensive. We were really confused.
We had some trouble finding our hostel but thanks to the amazing helpfulness of Chinese people we finally got there. It was very nice to see Anninka again. We had a lot to talk about, a lot of experiences to exchange and I had definitely missed her company after leaving Kunming.
The very touristy bits of Beijing were crowded, full of foreigners, expensive and not very Chinese at all. We went to a cute little street with old houses and we could hardly walk because of the amount of people shoving and pushing through the narrow streets. But in the end we found a nice little cafe with a good view over the cute street where we could sit on the roof and enjoy some calmness.
Naturally we had to do the main tourist attractions. There are so many things to see and to do in Beijing. A lot of history but at the same time it is a very new and modern city. We had to pick well when we decided what to do with our limited time in Beijing.
Thursday: Tian'anmen Square and Forbidden City
The most famous image of Beijing, known all around the world with the huge painting of chairman Mao in the background: That's what we saw when we stepped onto Tian'anmen Square, the biggest square in the world. It did look a little different than I remembered from the pictures though. There was a huge street crossing right through the square and every inch of it was packed with picture-taking people. The entrance to the Forbidden City, the place where the Chinese Emperors used to live until the kingdom was overthrown in 1911, was right below the image of Mao. The whole city (and he name is accurate - it is huge!) is enclosed by a huge wall and during the time of the emperors it was prohibited below death penalty to enter the forbidden city. Now the prices still try to achieve the same purpose but unfortunately that doesn't keep the masses of tourists out of that special place, and neither did we hesitate to pay to get in.
Even though place lost some of its magic due to the crowd, it was still a very special place to see. There were many squares, palaces, huge stairs, statues and temples, all very beautifully decorated, some made out of wood, some out of stone. All the roofs were golden or yellow and we were taught that yellow and gold were the colors of the emperors and no one used to be allowed to use them except the royal families. We couldn't go inside any of the buildings but it was still very impressive to think for how many years this place had been home to the kings and queens of China. It was opened during the Ming Dynasty in 1420 and even the last Chinese king still lived in this city.
We spent many hours in the Forbidden City and finally got to a park which was very Chinese and very pretty and used to be a place for the emperors to relax and qrite poetry and we did the same thing-without the poetry-part.
Even though we had spent almost all day in the Forbidden City we weren't able to see all of it. It was too big. But it is definitely a place to come back to, even though I want to pick a less busy day.
Friday: To be a real man you must climb the Great Wall!
And that's what we did. I had dreamed about going to see the Great Wall, but I was not expecting at all what we got. Because we were a little tired of crowds after our day in the forbidden city we followed the Lonely Planet's advice and picked a less touristy part of the Wall- what w hadn't thought of was that this would also mean that it would be much harder to get there. But we finally did, after a long bus ride and a weird taxi driver and from the small village we had arrived in, for the first time, we laid our eyes on the Great Wall of China- One of the Seven Wonders of the World.
We had to climb up the mountain through a forests until we got to the actual wall, which was winding itself along the mountaintops, like a white snake, imitating the exact form of the mountains. After a one and a half hour hike up the mountain we suddenly saw the first bricks of this mysterious and at the same time famous wall. Screaming in excitement and disbelief we ran around the last corner and stepped onto this historic piece of architecture. The Great Wall of China was built more than 2000 years ago ans was meant to protect the Chinese Empire to the north. It has since been rebuilt many times, in the Middle Ages it was rebuilt almost completely. It is not and has never been a continuous wall. There are parts in between where there is no wall but if you look at it as one wall, it goes almost from one end of China to the other end.
We had picked a relatively unrestored section of the wall, which meant it was less crowded but at the same time it was a lot more difficult to walk on this part of the wall. It was covered with small shrubs and trees and there were a lot of loose rocks. Compared to the other, very few, people we came across on the wall, we looked really out of place without any hiking or rock climbing equipment and unhandy purses instead of backpacks. But we had a lot of fun finding our way over rocks and between trees, up and down, the way the wall led us. Sometimes we really had to climb some rocks and sometimes we had to be careful not to fall off a steep drop when parts of the wall were missing. It was exciting and fun to climb, walk, hike and take in the amazing views during our breaks in between. When we finally got to the top of the mountain we found ourselves facing a breathtaking view across the mountains and the wall, creeping over peaks and through valleys. We decided to make this our spot for our lunch break and sat down with our feet dangling high above the beautiful landscape.
We stayed there for a long time, trying to take in and understand this magical place until we finally felt ready to move on.
We passed one of the watchtowers and found ourselves unable to continue. The mountain, and therefore the wall, suddenly went straight down in almost a 90 degree drop before continuing in a straight line, as if nothing had happened, about 100 feet below us. Even though we were a little nervous we finally decided to take the risk and climb, or rather scramble down the Great Wall, holding on to stones, trying to step on protruding rocks without sliding off or if nothing else worked sliding down on our bums!
After the first sudden drop we came across two more similarly scary declines and when we had reached a "normal" part of the wall and then finally the village again we were all very proud of us! And on top of that we had been declared real men by two fellow wall-climbers who looked way more elegant than we did as they were climbing down behind us. Apparently there is a saying in China: "To be a real man, you must climb the Great Wall". And so we did! I have hardly ever had as much fun in my life!
Saturday: Lama-Temple and Summer Palace
When we got up on Saturday morning we could feel our every muscle. Our bodies hadn't been used to the kind of "hiking" we had done the day before. On top of that we all still seemed to be a little tired. But we wanted to use our time in Beijing and decided to visit the Lama Temple, the biggest Tibetan temple outside of Tibet. It was built during the Qing Dynasty ad has a lot of buildings, different temples, big and small, statues, squares, and many many colors. I love how colorful all Buddhist temples seem to be. Before entering we had to buy incense sticks, which everyone carried around with them. In front of almost every building there were little fires where you could light up your incense sticks and so we did but it was a little awkward because we were surrounded by masses of praying Buddhists, while we didn't have a clue what we were supposed to do. We burned our incense sticks and bowed our heads respectfully (or so we hoped) and admired the artwork and the statues but during our visit, I started feeling more and more the desire to learn more about Buddhism. Even though I did feel a little uncomfortable I really enjoyed the temple with its colors and friendly atmosphere.
We had a quick lunch (at Subway, once again it felt like we were back home and not in China any more) and went on to the Summer palace, which is a huge palace, a little outside of the center of Beijing with big park. Like the Forbidden City the entrance and the buildings and squares were very crowded but the park was big enough, so that we were able to escape the masses. We didn't walk very fast, due to our sore bodies and stopped when we heard singing. We looked around and saw a group of older women and a couple of men singing with the most beautiful voices. We sat and listened and they came up to us and asked us to sing something. we were a little embarrassed because whatever we could do, it would always sound bad after what we had just listened to. But they seemed really excited about it, so we decided to sing "Amazing grace" . After a while they started to sing matching harmonies and in the end it did sound pretty good. They were just the nicest old ladies! Some of them spoke a little bit of English and Anninka could help out with her Chinese, and we ended up spending quite a lot of time with them in the park, singing, listening and talking to them. The whole thing was ended honorably with the Chinese, the German and the English national anthem ( we had asked them to sing the Chinese one, so they wanted to heard ours) and then we said good-bye and went on, all in a very good mood!
We wanted to find the famous yellow duck, which has been in Beijing for a couple of years now, swimming randomly in a lake in the Summer palace. It was meant to be an advertisement but people started liking it and it was never taken away. So the HUGE yellow duck has now become one of the main tourist attractions in Beijing. Of course we had to go and see it and it is definitely the biggest duck I've ever seen.
By now the palace was a little emptier, so we could get a better look at the buildings and then we left and wet to look for something nowhere to be found in China, except in Beijng: a vegan restaurant!
Once we got in there I literally felt like I was back in Germany. The furniture looked like it would in a vegan place in Europe. The food on the menu was western food, there were advertisement because all the ingredients were organic, there was a vegan chocolate cake in display. To our disappointment even the prizes were the same as they would have been in Europe and to top everything off, we were given a knife and fork to eat with. It was like being back in Europe. In there we could all forget we were in China. The food was amazing. Anninka looked like the happiest person on earth, she was enjoying it so much.
Saturday night was already Anninka's and Stacey's last night in Beijing. Hannah, Becky and I had one more day left. To celebrate our second good-bye during our China-trip, Anninka and I went out with a group of Germans who were studying in Beijing for half a year and all night we stayed in the small western bubble we had created in Beijing, sitting in Western bars and dancing in a western club alongside other foreigners. It felt nice to have come of "our old life" again, but it also made me miss China a little bit.
Sunday: bye-bye, Beijing!
Sunday was another lazy day. We went to the Beijing university, Laura, one of the Germans showed us around. After some really good food by a lake on Campus we went to the center of Beijing and walked around there until it got dark. There was a lake, overpriced restaurants and bars, and lots of flashing lights everywhere. At night we went to one of the western bars again to say good-bye to our German friends and then back to the hostel to get ready to spend our last night in Beijing.
It was definitely a nice break from the routine and it was nice to have some fun and there are some things I miss about Europe. But then, I really did miss Huai Hua and was happy to be back, because this is China and Beijing just doesn't feel like China if this is what you're used to. It was very overwhelming-in a nice way- but I prefer my little Huai Hua as a place to live!
I do love China!
We decided to spend this week without work in the Chinese capital Beijing. I went with Hannah, Becky and Stacey and on top of that, Anninka and I could celebrate our reunion once I got to Beijing, because she, like us, had decided to use this opportunity to visit the Beijing.
Everyone had warned us that during the week of National Day Beijing would be very crowded and they had been right. Getting there and back turned out to be the first problem. We had trouble finding a train to get to Beijing and couldn't get one for our way back, so we had to take a plane.
Our train took us straight from Huai Hua to Beijing...and it took 27 hours. It wasn't as bad as it sounds due to our comfy beds and creative and noisy games which entertained th whole train.
We, who had gotten really used to Huai Hua's small town life, were a little lost in the big city of Beijing. There was no street food, the buildings were new and modern, everything was clean, there were no piles of trash in the corners, the traffic was less noisy and more organized, there were foreigners in the streets, the people spoke some English and everything was more expensive. We were really confused.
We had some trouble finding our hostel but thanks to the amazing helpfulness of Chinese people we finally got there. It was very nice to see Anninka again. We had a lot to talk about, a lot of experiences to exchange and I had definitely missed her company after leaving Kunming.
The very touristy bits of Beijing were crowded, full of foreigners, expensive and not very Chinese at all. We went to a cute little street with old houses and we could hardly walk because of the amount of people shoving and pushing through the narrow streets. But in the end we found a nice little cafe with a good view over the cute street where we could sit on the roof and enjoy some calmness.
Naturally we had to do the main tourist attractions. There are so many things to see and to do in Beijing. A lot of history but at the same time it is a very new and modern city. We had to pick well when we decided what to do with our limited time in Beijing.
Thursday: Tian'anmen Square and Forbidden City
The most famous image of Beijing, known all around the world with the huge painting of chairman Mao in the background: That's what we saw when we stepped onto Tian'anmen Square, the biggest square in the world. It did look a little different than I remembered from the pictures though. There was a huge street crossing right through the square and every inch of it was packed with picture-taking people. The entrance to the Forbidden City, the place where the Chinese Emperors used to live until the kingdom was overthrown in 1911, was right below the image of Mao. The whole city (and he name is accurate - it is huge!) is enclosed by a huge wall and during the time of the emperors it was prohibited below death penalty to enter the forbidden city. Now the prices still try to achieve the same purpose but unfortunately that doesn't keep the masses of tourists out of that special place, and neither did we hesitate to pay to get in.
Even though place lost some of its magic due to the crowd, it was still a very special place to see. There were many squares, palaces, huge stairs, statues and temples, all very beautifully decorated, some made out of wood, some out of stone. All the roofs were golden or yellow and we were taught that yellow and gold were the colors of the emperors and no one used to be allowed to use them except the royal families. We couldn't go inside any of the buildings but it was still very impressive to think for how many years this place had been home to the kings and queens of China. It was opened during the Ming Dynasty in 1420 and even the last Chinese king still lived in this city.
We spent many hours in the Forbidden City and finally got to a park which was very Chinese and very pretty and used to be a place for the emperors to relax and qrite poetry and we did the same thing-without the poetry-part.
Even though we had spent almost all day in the Forbidden City we weren't able to see all of it. It was too big. But it is definitely a place to come back to, even though I want to pick a less busy day.
Friday: To be a real man you must climb the Great Wall!
And that's what we did. I had dreamed about going to see the Great Wall, but I was not expecting at all what we got. Because we were a little tired of crowds after our day in the forbidden city we followed the Lonely Planet's advice and picked a less touristy part of the Wall- what w hadn't thought of was that this would also mean that it would be much harder to get there. But we finally did, after a long bus ride and a weird taxi driver and from the small village we had arrived in, for the first time, we laid our eyes on the Great Wall of China- One of the Seven Wonders of the World.
We had to climb up the mountain through a forests until we got to the actual wall, which was winding itself along the mountaintops, like a white snake, imitating the exact form of the mountains. After a one and a half hour hike up the mountain we suddenly saw the first bricks of this mysterious and at the same time famous wall. Screaming in excitement and disbelief we ran around the last corner and stepped onto this historic piece of architecture. The Great Wall of China was built more than 2000 years ago ans was meant to protect the Chinese Empire to the north. It has since been rebuilt many times, in the Middle Ages it was rebuilt almost completely. It is not and has never been a continuous wall. There are parts in between where there is no wall but if you look at it as one wall, it goes almost from one end of China to the other end.
We had picked a relatively unrestored section of the wall, which meant it was less crowded but at the same time it was a lot more difficult to walk on this part of the wall. It was covered with small shrubs and trees and there were a lot of loose rocks. Compared to the other, very few, people we came across on the wall, we looked really out of place without any hiking or rock climbing equipment and unhandy purses instead of backpacks. But we had a lot of fun finding our way over rocks and between trees, up and down, the way the wall led us. Sometimes we really had to climb some rocks and sometimes we had to be careful not to fall off a steep drop when parts of the wall were missing. It was exciting and fun to climb, walk, hike and take in the amazing views during our breaks in between. When we finally got to the top of the mountain we found ourselves facing a breathtaking view across the mountains and the wall, creeping over peaks and through valleys. We decided to make this our spot for our lunch break and sat down with our feet dangling high above the beautiful landscape.
We stayed there for a long time, trying to take in and understand this magical place until we finally felt ready to move on.
We passed one of the watchtowers and found ourselves unable to continue. The mountain, and therefore the wall, suddenly went straight down in almost a 90 degree drop before continuing in a straight line, as if nothing had happened, about 100 feet below us. Even though we were a little nervous we finally decided to take the risk and climb, or rather scramble down the Great Wall, holding on to stones, trying to step on protruding rocks without sliding off or if nothing else worked sliding down on our bums!
After the first sudden drop we came across two more similarly scary declines and when we had reached a "normal" part of the wall and then finally the village again we were all very proud of us! And on top of that we had been declared real men by two fellow wall-climbers who looked way more elegant than we did as they were climbing down behind us. Apparently there is a saying in China: "To be a real man, you must climb the Great Wall". And so we did! I have hardly ever had as much fun in my life!
Saturday: Lama-Temple and Summer Palace
When we got up on Saturday morning we could feel our every muscle. Our bodies hadn't been used to the kind of "hiking" we had done the day before. On top of that we all still seemed to be a little tired. But we wanted to use our time in Beijing and decided to visit the Lama Temple, the biggest Tibetan temple outside of Tibet. It was built during the Qing Dynasty ad has a lot of buildings, different temples, big and small, statues, squares, and many many colors. I love how colorful all Buddhist temples seem to be. Before entering we had to buy incense sticks, which everyone carried around with them. In front of almost every building there were little fires where you could light up your incense sticks and so we did but it was a little awkward because we were surrounded by masses of praying Buddhists, while we didn't have a clue what we were supposed to do. We burned our incense sticks and bowed our heads respectfully (or so we hoped) and admired the artwork and the statues but during our visit, I started feeling more and more the desire to learn more about Buddhism. Even though I did feel a little uncomfortable I really enjoyed the temple with its colors and friendly atmosphere.
We had a quick lunch (at Subway, once again it felt like we were back home and not in China any more) and went on to the Summer palace, which is a huge palace, a little outside of the center of Beijing with big park. Like the Forbidden City the entrance and the buildings and squares were very crowded but the park was big enough, so that we were able to escape the masses. We didn't walk very fast, due to our sore bodies and stopped when we heard singing. We looked around and saw a group of older women and a couple of men singing with the most beautiful voices. We sat and listened and they came up to us and asked us to sing something. we were a little embarrassed because whatever we could do, it would always sound bad after what we had just listened to. But they seemed really excited about it, so we decided to sing "Amazing grace" . After a while they started to sing matching harmonies and in the end it did sound pretty good. They were just the nicest old ladies! Some of them spoke a little bit of English and Anninka could help out with her Chinese, and we ended up spending quite a lot of time with them in the park, singing, listening and talking to them. The whole thing was ended honorably with the Chinese, the German and the English national anthem ( we had asked them to sing the Chinese one, so they wanted to heard ours) and then we said good-bye and went on, all in a very good mood!
We wanted to find the famous yellow duck, which has been in Beijing for a couple of years now, swimming randomly in a lake in the Summer palace. It was meant to be an advertisement but people started liking it and it was never taken away. So the HUGE yellow duck has now become one of the main tourist attractions in Beijing. Of course we had to go and see it and it is definitely the biggest duck I've ever seen.
By now the palace was a little emptier, so we could get a better look at the buildings and then we left and wet to look for something nowhere to be found in China, except in Beijng: a vegan restaurant!
Once we got in there I literally felt like I was back in Germany. The furniture looked like it would in a vegan place in Europe. The food on the menu was western food, there were advertisement because all the ingredients were organic, there was a vegan chocolate cake in display. To our disappointment even the prizes were the same as they would have been in Europe and to top everything off, we were given a knife and fork to eat with. It was like being back in Europe. In there we could all forget we were in China. The food was amazing. Anninka looked like the happiest person on earth, she was enjoying it so much.
Saturday night was already Anninka's and Stacey's last night in Beijing. Hannah, Becky and I had one more day left. To celebrate our second good-bye during our China-trip, Anninka and I went out with a group of Germans who were studying in Beijing for half a year and all night we stayed in the small western bubble we had created in Beijing, sitting in Western bars and dancing in a western club alongside other foreigners. It felt nice to have come of "our old life" again, but it also made me miss China a little bit.
Sunday: bye-bye, Beijing!
Sunday was another lazy day. We went to the Beijing university, Laura, one of the Germans showed us around. After some really good food by a lake on Campus we went to the center of Beijing and walked around there until it got dark. There was a lake, overpriced restaurants and bars, and lots of flashing lights everywhere. At night we went to one of the western bars again to say good-bye to our German friends and then back to the hostel to get ready to spend our last night in Beijing.
It was definitely a nice break from the routine and it was nice to have some fun and there are some things I miss about Europe. But then, I really did miss Huai Hua and was happy to be back, because this is China and Beijing just doesn't feel like China if this is what you're used to. It was very overwhelming-in a nice way- but I prefer my little Huai Hua as a place to live!
I do love China!
panigel - October 14, 15:58
