Chris’ Blog

Our trip to Beijing

We finally made the big trip to Beijing to see all the major things that most people come to see when they visit China. The trip was five days and four nights. Our traveling companion was named Mohammed who Christine met through her Chinese language studies.

Day 1

Our first day was mostly a travelling day. We went to Mohammed’s apartment and then went together to the airport. Thankfully, because we were on a domestic flight we flew out of Shanghai’s old airport which is much closer than the new airport, so the flight should be a little easier, or so we thought…

Because the airport is mostly used for domestic flights there is much less English than at the international airport. All the airlines have several check-in lines with each line given a letter and you’re supposed to go to a certain line based on what flight you’re taking or something. We couldn’t even find the right airline. Finally we get someone to point out where the airline is and we get in line and notice a sign (in Chinese of course) with our flight number written on it. That’s never a good sign (no pun intended). We get to the counter and we’re told that the flight is delayed. We ask for how long…the answer is along the lines of forever. We need to go down two floors to room 2100. Okay. So we find an elevator, that according to the sign, breaks down regularily, and head down to the sub-basement. We find our room, but we’re told that we need to go up one floor to room 1190. Up one floor to room 1190 where we’re told we need to go back up to the top to counter 87. Of course. Back to the main level at counter 87…you need to go to counter 82. Over to counter 82, by now Christine has said at least five times that it’s a good thing that we came early. Christine likes to be very early for arriving at the airport, and nothing else. I, on the other hand, like to be early for everything except the airport. Oh, but over at counter at 82 we’ve given new boarding passes for another flight. Yippie. Back in line, we get our boarding passes, and we’re good to go. Except for the airport improvement fee, health screening, security screening…

We arrive in Beijing and are met by our tour guide. The three of us will have our own tour guide for the entire trip. Our tour guide’s name is Wang and he takes us to our Hotel where we check in and then are free to do our own thing for the evening. Wang suggests going to some street where lots of people like to go at night. So we head there. The streets were full of people and we kept getting hassled by people trying to sell us stuff or get us to go places. Two guys in particular really gave it all they had. They started walking along side us and talking to us…”Where are you from?” “I’m a student at…” “I like your clothes.” Blah blah blah blah. For two or three blocks they kept talking to us, well mostly just me, since Mohammed and Christine are much better at ignoring people. I was starting to get very tired of talking to them and was wondering when they were going to ask us for something when finally as we started approaching a certain side street, then they started saying that there was a good restaurant down there and lots of snacks… But we had already eaten I told them. Oh, wel then you will want to see some paintings. They were really giving it their all. One guy was working on me and his partner was trying to convince Mohammed and Christine. We politely refused, meaning we had to remove their hands from us since they were trying to physically pull us along, and we continued on our way. The rest of the evening was mostly uneventful. We walked around some more, got hassled some more, had a drink at McCafe, and went back to the Hotel. Oh, the name of our hotel was the King Wing Hot Spring Hotel.

Day 2

Wang picks us up bright and early from our hotel and we head down to Tian’anmen Square. On the south side of the square there is still a gate from the wall that used to protect the city. It’s pretty impressive. As we walk through the square Wang tells us how he used to be a street peddler himself and that we should avoid them. We walk to the north side of the square and across the street underneath the famous picture of Chairman Mao and head towards the forbidden city (which of course now is not fibidden at all, and in fact they encourage people to go there). The forbidden city is where the emperor and his court used to live. It’s very nice.

Then we had some lunch and headed off to see some Ming Dynasty emperors’ tombs. They were alright.

After the Ming tombs it was off to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was great. I could see why the emperors would spend half the year there. There was a lake and a lot of places to sit and relax. Of course, we couldn’t relax. We were on a tight schedule. (Editorial Note: I think we actually didn’t go to the summer palace this day, but in order to maintain artistic integrity I have left the preceeding paragraph in its original unedited form and location.)

Somewhere during the day, we also visited a the Lucky Pearl pearl store. Christine bought a pearl. We haven’t decided if it is lucky yet.

At the end of the day we went and watched an acrobatic show. That was pretty wild. The most interesting thing was that you are allowed to take pictures. So flashes are popping all over the place while the acrobats are trying not to get blinded and fall to the ground. It was great.

Then we had supper. I believe that we had the Beijing (Peking) duck that day. It was rather disappointing, not nearly as good as I remember it from Andrew’s Cafe in Ottawa. Oh well.

Day 3

The day began with a trip to a jade carving store. We saw the floor where they make their own carvings. That was pretty neat. They pay some guy (or gal) a couple bucks an hour to sit at a grinding machine and grind off one carving after another. We bought what is called a Family Ball. It is made from one piece of jade that kind of looks like a soccer ball shell with the black parts cut out and then more soccer ball shells carved inside the last shell. I think it is called a family ball because different generations of a family are supposed to carve the next ball. Of course ours was mode on the assembly line, but still very cool.

After the Jade Carving store we went to the Summer Palace. This is where the Emperors spent the summer instead of in the Forbidden City. After being there I could see why. It was amazing: a clear blue lake with water that looked like you could swim in it, lots of quiet places to sit and relax. Very nice.

Then, the Great Wall. The Great Wall was great. The wall was built by connecting several bits of walls that were alerady existing to form one continuous wall about 4000 km in length. Of course everyone goes to the same place to look at it though.

After the Great Wall we went to a place to have a foot massage. It wasn’t what I had expected…much more painful. Christine liked it though, so that’s what matters. At the end of the foot massage we went to another room and sat on a chair and put our heads down on a pillow in front of us. Then some guys came in and started beating our backs and punching us in the kidneys. That part was better than the foot massage.

After the foot massage we went out for a hot pot dinner which is another famous Beijing food, although you can eat it anywhere in China. I think the hot pot was the best meal that we had in Beijing. Overall the food was not very good. Our tour guide, Wang, said that most tourists find that the food in southern China is much better than the food in Northern China. People in Southern China also say that a lot too.

Day 4

Day 4 began with a visit to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was rather interesting in that it is the only place like it in China. My first impression was that it reminded me of the Jewish temple in that there were no idols or ancestors to worship there, only the God of Heaven. The emperor would come once a year to offer sacrifices to the God of Heaven and ask for a good harvest. There was also some statues of bulls and it looked like they were offered as sacrifices. I tried to get more information from Wang, but he didn’t know very much and didn’t consider the temple to be associated with religion. I thought it very strange that what I considered the closest thing to true religion was just thought of as an ancient yearly ceremony with no real purpose or meaning. I did a little research and later found out that Temple of Heaven religion is very old and predates Buddhism, Taoism by thousands of years and does indeed have many similarities with Judeasism and that the yearly cermony continued up until 1911, the end of the last dynasty.

After the Temple of Heaven we went to the Lama (Buddhist) temple. Lots of people praying to statues and asking them for favours. It made me quite sad. Wang said that he tries to learn a lot about the Lama religion and he explained quite a bit to us. He said that the more he learns the harder it is to understand and the more complicate it gets.

Some of Beijing is built around a system of alleys. The idea is that an alley will lead to a couryard with small homes surrounding it. These homes will share water (a well) and work together. In this way, resources are used more effectively and people have a greater sense of community. We took a rikshaw tour through this area and then stopped at the home of a typical wealthy family that lives in that area. It was difficult to get any good pictures because the rikshaw would go by everything too fast so I just pointed my camera and took blind pictures. They weren’t very good.

And finally we went to a tea house and had a tea service. We were shown different kinds of tea and how to do a Chinese tea service with washing the tea leaves and washing the tea pot and things like that. It was pretty cool. Of special interest was the fact that there was a large airplane parked in between the trees near the parking lot. I guess they don’t have to worry about someone walking away with it if it has to be disassembled first.

Day 5

Our final day in Beijing begins with getting up really early (5:00 am) and heading down to Tian’anmen square for the flag raising ceremony which happens every day at dawn. Well apparantly we weren’t the only ones with that idea and as with all of our other outings there were already about 5 000 people there before us. Oh well. We walked around and found a pretty good spot with a good view of the flagpole. There were about ten rows of people in front of us sitting on the ground and one row of people standing in front of us, so essentially we were in the second row and Christine was able to see quite well by looking over people’s shoulder. Soldiers were performing crowed control and had made two lines, one before the sitting people and then another before the standing people. I would say that we were about 50 metres from the flagpole at this point. After waiting for about 20 minutes and trying to hold back the crowd of people behind me there was finally some show of the contingent of soldiers that would bring the flag from across the street and begin the ceremony. Now I’m still a little uncertain as to exactly what all happened, but basically once the soldiers with the flag began their approach, the people who were sitting down began standing up. There was a lot of shouting but this crowd of people going from sitting to standing created somewhat of a vacuum since they also crowded forward and standing people take up much less room than sitting people. I also think that the crowd control soldiers fell back about 5 metres or so and suddenly people started running forward and pushing around us. Well, I wasn’t quite prepared for this and basically just tried to keep Christine in front of me so that I would lose sight of her amidst the chaos around us. I would say that within about twenty seconds we went from being second row to thirty-second row. Christine now had no hope of seeing anything and even I had difficulties trying to see much of going on. Luckily for us, though a nearby fellow was filming the ceremony on a video recorder that had a swivel LCD. He held the recorder above his head and pointed the LCD down and so Christine was able to watch the ceremony through that. At the end of the ceremony the flag soldiers made a march around the cleared part of the square afterwhich the crowd control soldiers completely retreated. This was followed by more running, I presume to be the first one to get a close up picture of the newly raised flag and I mostly just tried not to get run down by the stampede of people. I don’t if this was the normal procedings for the flag raising ceremony, but I did have mixed emotions and thoughts as to what such an event signifies.

After the flag ceremony we went to a large park where people were exercising, playing games, singing, and just relaxing. From what I have seen people in the large cities in China really like to spend time in parks and anywhere with grass and trees. It’s really quite nice.

And then the last place we stopped at was a market where they were selling all sorts of things. There were many great deals to be had there, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) we only had a few minutes to spend there. I did find something that I had bought earlier for a quarter of the price I had paid and I made the important realisation that when your tour guide says, “You will not find a lower price anywhere in mainland China”, he is lying.

Then it was off to the airport where we finished up our trip in much the same way as we started it. We checked in only to find that Christine’s ticket wasn’t really a ticket at all and we could not use to get on a plane. We would have to go to counter 36…