Day 73 – Beijing - How many things can you do in a single day in Beijing?

Sunday, April 6th, 2008

We woke up early this morning to meet Mr. Godfrey, our interport lecturer in the lobby of his hotel which was about a 5 minute cab ride from our hotel. The original plan was to meet up with him there, then have him give us a nice little tour of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Godfrey said he has been coming to China a couple times a year for a while now. He almost (?) had a masters in Chinese history and culture at one point so he knows a lot about the history of everything and the best ways to get around. When we met up with him 5 other people from SAS decided to do the same thing, so now we have like 15 people as a group that are going to try and travel together. One very important lesson that I learned quickly on this trip was that the larger the group you try to travel with, the harder it is. If your group can’t fit into one taxi then there’s a very good chance that you’re going to be split up. Godfrey knew this. Once he realized how many people were in our group he instantly said ‘’well now this is going to create quite the logistics problem.’’ He gave us the entire plan for the day then we proceeded to try and get 4 taxi’s to take us where we wanted to go. We got lucky by getting 4 taxi’s at the same time outside of his hotel, but that proved not to go too far. Godfrey got into the first car, which turned left, then the second car (that I was in) turned right and the following two cars followed the second car. So now our leader has been separated from ¾ of our group in the middle of Beijing. He told them all where we wanted to go and wrote it in Mandarin to clarify, but our driver spoke pretty good English and decided to go on his own.

We ended up at a park just north of the Forbidden City. The park was actually really fascinating. There were people EVERYWHERE in little group singing, dancing, writing calligraphy on the walkways, playing jump rope, the Chinese version of hackie sack, and doing numerous other things. The park was very large but it was full of people doing a number of different things. All of the active people in the park seemed to be adults, which was kind of interesting. Also, the groups of people who joined together to sing were singing just for the pure joy of it, not asking for any money or anything in return. I thought this was really unique and awesome. I have never seen a park so full of people (and adults for that matter) doing such a variety of things just for the pure joy of it. The reason for this goes back to the Chinese culture. As a baby and growing up they never had a lot of toys and games to play with, so now that China is growing up and developing the adults can go out and enjoy life’s simple pleasures. I’m sure that part of the reason the park was so full was because it was a Sunday as well, but still great to see nonetheless. In the middle of the park was a large hill with a temple at the top of it. Or at least I think it was a temple. There was a big, colorful building with a large Buddha inside of it. From the top of there, you could look down on the Forbidden City and see all of the groups of people singing and dancing in the park below. China in general has proven to be a pretty hazy country. The winds from the Jacobi Desert brings over a lot of dust, then that combines with the extensive pollution in China to made for some hazy days in China. You could still see a majority of the Forbidden City from the top of this hill, but you couldn’t see Tiananmen Square from there. Still really cool. I wish there were parks like this in the US that people would go to dance and sing just for the pure joy of it. It was a nice site to see (and I never expected to see). So for anyone who visits Beijing, be sure to check out the park just North of the Forbidden City!
After relaxing for an hour or so at the park, we began the walk through the Forbidden City, which isn’t actually called the Forbidden City anymore. The Chinese refer to it as the ‘Palace Museum.’ Built over 600 years ago, it served as the home for the Chinese Emperor and the center of Chinese government for hundreds of years. It’s a huge area, with a lot of different buildings that have different meanings, but once you see a few buildings you’ve pretty much seen them all because they all look very similar. There are some special houses likes the ones for peace, worship, ect. Along with some immense architecture and stone carvings that are cool to see. It’s just too bad we didn’t have Godfrey with us to explain the significance of some of the buildings and perhaps some stories about them.
So continuing to walk South through the Forbidden City we reached the actual front gate, which was much more extravagant than the north gate that we came through. The entrance was lined with Chinese military guards, and there was a huge picture of Mao (?) at the top of the entrance.
Right outside the gate some woman randomly walked up to me and asked if she could take us on any tours tomorrow. Lucky for us (and her) we did. So she set us up with a big van to take us all to the Great Wall tomorrow morning, leaving at 8am. She also gave us a good price, so lucky us because prior to this we didn’t really have a plan for getting there then to the airport.
Just south of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square, the location of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. There wasn’t anything too extravagant for the thousands that died that day; after all we are still in Communist China and there is still disagreement about the number of people that died that day. There were groups of Chinese military soldiers patrolling the streets, walking in perfect formation through the streets. It was interesting to see them walk into a crowd of people on the sidewalk and see the crowd just split instantly to let them through. It was clear that the guards weren’t about to stop for anyone in their way. The groups of soldiers were probably 10-15 but there were numerous groups marching all around the Tiananmen Square area.
Our next stop was to get some food. We rarely have a plan on where we’re going to eat, we usually just walk around until we find somewhere that looks unique and cultural. We found this place that fit just that description. Apparently they call it a mixing pot or stew or something like that. So we sit at this round table with a pot in the middle that has one half boiling water and one half boiling water with sauce in it. Then they serve us thin slices of raw meat on a plate that we in turn dip into the boiling stuff for about 10 seconds until it’s all cooked, then eat it. There’s also some vegetables and potatoes that go along with this. Keep in mind that all of this has to be done with chop sticks and none of us would consider ourselves experts in that art. There was this group of older Chinese people at the table next to us just laughing and making fun of us while we attempted to do this. I’m sure the same thing would happen if they came to the US and had a weird meal for the first time. I have no idea what that meal would consist of though. Anyway, the meal was alright. Nothing too special or filling. So we continued our journey walking south to the Temple of Heaven.
Like I said before, Beijing is a very spread out city and if you see something ‘close’ to you on a map that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s close. Well this detail seemed to slip our mind as we started to walk south to the Temple of Heaven. We didn’t really know how to get there but looking on a map it was just south of where we were at. After walking for half an hour or so and getting a little lost we finally made it there. Some pretty gardens surrounded the area then in the middle was the main building for the Temple of Heaven at the top of some stairs. My pictures will show how cool the buildings in this area were. So much detail was put into every inch of this building, it really was remarkable to see.

One thing I haven’t really pointed out yet was how crowded every place that we go was because it was the weekend. All of these Chinese people were here to see these sights as well but they all were in tour groups. Each group had their own color of hats and a leader who held up a sign high in the air for the people to follow him. I even saw one guy with a whistle to make sure his group was following him. It was kind of funny to see all of these different groups with their distinctive hats following each other and staying close like sheep in a herd. You’ll see them in my pictures, it was funny.
The next stop for us was the Olympic Village area set for the Summer 2008 Olympics. For whatever reason Jim, Chris, and Todd didn’t have a whole lot of interest in seeing it so David and I split off to go grab a cab over to that part of the city. Again, we had a problem when saying to a taxi ‘Olympic Stadium’ but I picked up a tour guide from someone along the way that had a picture of the Bird Nest (the main Olympic stadium) and when we showed that to a taxi driver he knew immediately where to take us. If you haven’t seen any pictures of this stadium yet, Google ‘Beijing Bird Nest’ and you’ll see it. The architecture of this stadium (actually named ‘Beijing National Stadium’) is like no other stadium that I’ve ever seen. You’ll also be able to see my pictures of it once I post them, but it doesn’t look like I’ll get a chance to do that until I get back to the states. We kind of expected this, but the area is all closed down for security reasons. The fact that China and Tibet haven’t been getting along at all lately just makes it all worse. We couldn’t get anywhere closer than the street to the stadium. They still have A LOT of work to do before they’re ready for the Olympics. Hopefully 5 months is enough for them, there were a lot of people working while we were walking around though (and this was on a Sunday). There’s a hotel located right next to the stadium that just opened up, it even had the smell of newness in it. So David and I decided to go in there since it seemed like it would have a great view of the stadium, being that it is located on the same block as the stadium. We didn’t have a whole lot of luck because the wing of the hotel closest to the stadium was still under heavy construction, but we were able to get a decent view from above of the stadium. So cool. I love modern architecture like this (if you couldn’t tell by how much I enjoyed seeing the PETRONAS Towers in Kuala Lumpur). After checking out the view from the hotel of the Bird Nest we walked around the rest of the area to check out the other stadiums. The main entrances to anywhere for the Olympics was heavily guarded, but we were still able to see from a distance where everything is going to be going on, which was pretty cool.
Once done here we headed back to the hotel where we very luckily ran into Kev, Rachel, and Rudy (the three who were in the first car with Godfrey at the beginning of the day before we got separated) who were on their way out as we were coming in to meet up with Godfrey again to get some Peking Duck. Beijing is known for its Peking Duck and Godfrey said that he knew ‘The Best’ place in Beijing to get it, so we were pretty excited that we ran into them. I have no idea what this place was called because everything was in Mandarin but Godfrey was right. I would say this was one of my top 3 best meals in my entire life. They actually serve you a whole duck, then come to your table and cut it up for you into little pieces that you can either eat or roll into a very thin pancake type thing to make it into a spring roll. Then there was some sauce that you were suppose to dip it in that added all that much more goodness to the meal. Peking Duck = delicious.
Talk about a full day! Godfrey said that we saw pretty much everything possible for one day in Beijing besides the ‘Back Lakes’ area which is basically just another area of Beijing with a few (very) small lakes that have bars and restaurants lined around it. We figured we might as well, since you’re only in Beijing once. We can sleep when we’re on the ship. He was right, the area was really cool. Beautiful lake area with a lot of night life. We hung out on the rooftop of one of the restaurants for a little while before deciding to call it a night. We were all exhausted.

So our hotel has a decently fast internet connection and I was able to upload all pictures that I have comments on so far, which is about half way through Vietnam. This is probably my last upload before I get back to the states unless we get lucky in Japan, but I most likely still won’t have comments on most of my pictures.
A quick side note about getting around in Beijing, very few people actually speak English. So when we need to go somewhere we first go to the front desk at our hotel and tell them where, then they write out where we need to go in Mandarin on a little business card for us to give to a taxi driver. The business card also has the location of our hotel in Mandarin so we can get back to the hotel without getting too lost. It’s actually a really nice system they’ve got working for them.