Beijing Part 1...

The flight to Beijing was early evening (Sri Lankan Airlines, they were very good!), so by the time we arrived in Beijing it was 2.30am and we had some hanging around to do. Bradley tried to snooze while I battled through my book (Revelation by C.J. Sansom, thanks Blaggers – finally reading it! – is a pretty gruesome story but very addictive). The airport had some pretty comfy chairs though and it was soon 7am and time for the first bus into town (yes, we could have got a taxi, but where’s the fun in that?).

Beijing is a massive, smoggy city, hot but not too hot, although all the pollution must be responsible for a good degree or two of the local temperature!

As soon as we got off the bus we were delighted to find we were just over the road from the hostel we were staying at, a YHA hostel which all seemed very promising. We checked in and collapsed into bed for a quick disco nap – waking up mid-afternoon to start the day! Oh well, we must have needed the sleep. Since it was a work day, that was day one of Beijing sightseeing over – an airport, a bus, a hostel, and a supermarket for lunch/dinner supplies.

The next day we leapt right into the big sights, starting with Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City. Security is tight at metro stations and across the city, but nothing quite like Tian’anmen Square. There are security and police officers everywhere, and entry and exit from the square is carefully controlled. It felt a little uneasy being there to be honest, and bizarre to feel like that amidst hordes of visitors – not like going to Thorpe Park! We moved quite quickly through the square and headed into the much more inviting Forbidden City.

 

The Forbidden City took the rest of the day to explore – it is just immense. The history surrounding each building is incredible – the audio guides we hired were well worth the investment! I felt very underprepared for so much Chinese history – clearly I need to read more about earlier Chinese history, although the chronology of the dynasties is starting to fall into place after a few days of piecing together the things we’ve learned at different sights. Even the entrance – the Meridian Gate – is imposing, and it’s quite amazing to enter the Palace complex and see that it’s only the beginning. After that you hit the Gate of Supreme Harmony, and the enormous courtyard that can hold 100,000 people (that’s a lot of visitors to the Palace!). Then there are three main halls – the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Middle Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony. These were used for different purposes – the Hall of Supreme Harmony was the serious one, where big ceremonies took place (making use of the courtyard!), while the Hall of Middle Harmony was more of a departure lounge, somewhere for the emperor to hang out before either heading to a ceremony or meeting with a small group. The most fun place (if you were in good favour) would have been the Hall of Preserving Harmony, where banquets took place (though of course plenty of serious stuff would have happened here too).

North of all these halls are even more halls, smaller but just as important. They are also situated around the Imperial Gardens, which have many knotted Cypress trees dotted around, plus some rocks that apparently look like animals! I struggled to see the animals, but I think there was supposed to be a chicken and a dog in there somewhere… maybe it’s like a magic eye picture, I could never see the space ship or the boat in those either! 

Each hall has a purpose and a powerful name, but my favourite of these was the Hall of Joyful Longevity – I’d imagine that was a popular one! Another great name is the Hall of Mental Cultivation, and this was also a stand out hall to walk through. Some of the sights at the Forbidden City (also called the Palace Museum, if you turn up and get confused as we did) are closed off, presumably because they require restoration, but the sheer number of things to see means you’ll be there for most of a day. So, exhausted from a long hot day of sightseeing, we headed back for a very relaxed night in.

 

The next day was a bit of a late start, so we headed out to explore the hutong (meaning alleyway) in the North Dongcheng district. The main one we had read about was Nanluogu Xiang, and this has been through a load of modernisation to become quite a trendy social hotspot. It had a great atmosphere, and you could buy loads of lovely food from street vendors to nibble as you walked. Darting out from this hutong were several other smaller, older hutong with a little more character – people actually living there rather than working or socialising there.

The smaller hutong definitely have a more relaxed vibe than the rest of Beijing. Rather than eat as we walked through the crowds, we stopped at the edge of Qianhai Lake for some dinner, where we managed to get sweetcorn, aubergines and spicy peppers (very spicy!) with some spiced bread – yum!

 

We’d arrived too late to the area to get into our next destination, the Drum and Bell Towers, before they closed, so the next day we headed back there to make up for it. This was in the same area, so we also went back for more aubergine and sweetcorn for lunch (couldn’t quite face the spicy peppers again!). The Drum and Bell Towers are opposite each other and we ascended the Drum Tower first – very steep steps! Great views though of Beijing, and we even got to see a drum performance using the tower drums within a few minutes of arriving at the top, which was excellent timing. There were five drummers, all drumming in perfect time with each other – also excellent timing!

 

The Bell Tower was more of the same – steep steps, excellent views, but this time there was an enormous bell (rather than several). There was also an interesting legend about the casting of the bell – apparently the bell had to be cast by a certain date or all the craftsmen involved would have had their heads cut off, and as the date loomed, the bell still hadn’t been cast and the craftsmen didn’t see how they could complete this in time. As the master craftsman contemplated the furnace and the molten metal within it, his daughter came over to him, distracted him, and threw herself into the furnace – and then the metal was ready for casting. Nice story! I’m hoping it’s just a legend. Still, it is quite hard to imagine casting a bell that size, so perhaps the difficulty in creating it part of the story holds some truth. 

Next stop was the Lama Temple, an active Buddhist temple a short metro ride away. A key part of the experience (if you’re a Buddhist) is to give the gift of incense to Buddha and there is incense everywhere – it is quite overwhelming! This of course means that there is incense for sale all along the road outside the temple, although there isn’t the hard sell of other tourist attractions since it is a revered place of worship. The temple itself is an incredible complex, with beautiful buildings and several very large sitting Buddhas (even one huge standing Buddha) and each Buddha has a queue of people waiting to offer incense and bow before the statue. It is quite hectic for a place of worship – there are people everywhere, trying to reach each Buddha, though again it is very respectful (less pushing and shoving than other crowded places in Beijing). It was quite hard to get a real feel for the place as it was so busy, so partly out of respect for the serious worshippers we kept our visit brief.

Our final destination for the day was the Temple of Heaven gardens, an ordered and well-kept garden complex housing the Temple of Heaven. We decided to just enjoy the gardens rather than go into another temple – the gardens were incredibly peaceful, with a few different groups of cheerful singers playing along with a hotch-potch of musical instruments, and lots of passers-by (like us) just stopping to enjoy the spectacle along the way. 

There were also groups of older men and women playing card games and board games in the sun, and lots of younger people sat out in the gardens with their friends enjoying the day. It was very peaceful and we decided to join them, resting in the shade of some of the ancient trees for a quick lie-down! 

On the way back, we wandered through some of the more lively streets, and saw what looked like a flash mob (but almost certainly wasn’t) doing what looked like the Macarena (and it definitely wasn’t) in a small roadside park in the dark. It looked like great fun, and there were plenty of spectators! Everyone seemed to know the moves, or I might have joined in! 

We also wandered down a road known as Ghost Street, where you can eat a huge array of Chinese cuisine, with a speciality of shellfish. We even saw some of the live crustaceans trying to escape before they reached the pan – poor little guys! Anything seems to go down here, and a lot of the food was cooked on your table or served partially cooked ready to finish on a hob on your table. A very hands-on way to eat!

This blog has been brought to you courtesy of Talking Heads and Psychic Babble – a nice chilled evening of listening to music, sorting through photos and writing!