As told by me

Having delivered my overpriced wine and other gifts, I was now on my own time and so headed straight for the nearest subway station to escape the apparently endless and rather daunting concrete jungle that is the Beijing suburbs. Luckily, this was only a short walk away.

Beijing ‘burbs

The subway took me south, towards the Temple of Heaven, where I’d planned to spend a couple of hours before meeting up with my colleague at the Forbidden City, after lunch.

On a whim, I jumped off the train a couple of stops early at Jianguomen. I wanted to get up close to the CCTV building, an impressively controversial architectural statement that I’d been admiring from afar out of the window of the Sheraton. The guidebook also noted a couple of other attractions in this area that caught my interest.

This is the heart of the embassy area and therefore consists of compounds surrounded by double barbed-wire fences and patrolled by unsurprisingly photo-shy soldiers, such as these chaps.

Soldiers – Embassy area

In the centre of this area lies Ritan Park, a well-patronised and thoroughly pleasant middle-sized park, complete with lake. The highlight of the park is the the Temple of the Sun, used during the Ming Dynasty for ritual sacrifices by the Emperor. I caught a couple of glimpses of the CCTV building through the trees so set off to hunt down my prey.

Ritan Park

Back on the main road, the Beijing Silk Market stood between me and the CCTV building. This promised much more than just silk and it certainly delivered. It is a wonderful place, packed full of genuine replicas of all your favourite brand name clothes, at allegedly very special, just for you, you my friend prices. It is also a place that a solitary western man should never enter alone.

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the half an hour it took three separate stall holders to relieve me of a total approaching $200. It’s just that I was enjoying it so much that I forgot to employ the one secret weapon that everyone has at their disposal – just walk away and listen to the price plummet behind you. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll wear the pants at least once and I can always sell the jacket on ebay…

I stumbled out of the market, light of wallet but laden with my purchases and continued down the road towards the CCTV Tower. After a solid ten minutes walking I concluded that, while I knew it was close, it definitely wasn’t where the map said it was (an inaccurate Lonely Planet map? Surely not!) and my level of interest was dropping as quickly as my blood sugar.

It was also now approaching the time for my rendesvous at the Forbidden City so I abandoned my quest and jumped in a taxi for the short trip west to Tiananmen Square. The square was now devoid of the scaffolding that blighted it on my last visit and was still sporting the huge video screens and an impressive set of red (of course) columns left over from the celebrations.

Big screen – Tiananmen Square

Anniversary columns – Tiananmen Square

The Gate of Heavenly Peace, the entrance to the Forbidden City which lies to the north of the square, was also back to its best. I was once again being spoiled by the glorious weather which facilitated some rather good photos, such as this one.

Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tiananmen Square

At the entrance there were plenty of uniformed soliders and police, but also a series of rather ominously un-uniformed young men sporting crew cuts and not terribly friendly expressions, interspersed between them. I decided not to try to photograph any of these guys and stuck to the set shots instead.

Soldier at Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tiananmen Square

The rendesvous with my colleague went all wrong (I choose to blame him) so I ended up ‘doing’ the Forbidden City on my own, which was fine, though I spent the whole time playing catch-up, which wasn’t so great.

Forbidden City

I therefore didn’t give this vast and enormously impressive complex anything like the attention it deserved. I didn’t even rent the almost compulsory audio guide. I did run into some old friends though (or their cousins, at least).

Hilltribe at Forbidden City

More Forbidden City

The one impression I did get from my all-too-brief encounter with the Forbidden City is that, impressive in scale it may be, it is, dare I say it, a little repetitive.

Forbidden City rooftops

Anyway, I’m sure that comment will ensure I’m never issued another Chinese visa. That will be a shame as I was just starting to make my first very tentative steps towards the beginnings of an understanding of some Mandarin.

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Beijing - October 2009

My second trip to Beijing was originally planned for the end of September, but was pushed back two weeks, largely (I believe) because of activities associated with the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of The People’s Republic, on 1st October. This was just as well as I’ve read reports that whole suburbs were closed down and residents were prevented from entering their houses to ensure the secrecy of the preparations.

Everything was back to normal by the time we arrived on Monday 19th, in time for two days of meetings, the details of which I won’t bore you with. I will say however that our hosts were very generous and gracious and made us feel genuinely welcome. As is the way in these parts, they gave us lovely gifts – framed shadow puppets – which they’d even gone to the trouble of engraving with their company name. The gifts we’d brought with us were rather pathetic by comparison, and I therefore found myself in what may be one of the most expensive supermarkets in the world, buying outrageously overpriced bottles of reasonably decent Australian wine, to make up the difference.

To give you an idea of just how expensive this place is, this can of basic Gillette shaving foam was priced at 184 Yuan. At about 6 Yuan to the Aussie, that’s a $30 can of shaving foam. Aye Carumba!

$30 shaving foam!!!

I suppose they have to charge those sorts of prices as they had about 40 staff on the floor of what is not a particularly large store. Many of these were tasked with standing at the end of a specified aisle, presumably to assist shoppers. They were however curiously inattentive when I actually wanted some help finding a particular bottle of wine, but were only too quick to react when I pulled my camera out to take a photo of them standing around doing nothing.

This was the ritzy, embassy-ridden part of Beijing though, just across from the Sheraton Hotel, where we were staying, and next door to the Hard Rock Cafe. Another clue about the nature of this part of town are the dozens of pimps that line the street of an evening, handing out pictures of their girls (I’m sure there were boys too but I wasn’t offered any). After four nights, I think I had the whole set.

Canal by the Beijing Sheraton at night

Mornings in this part of town are a much more civilised affair though. It hadn’t taken me long (about a quarter of a second in fact, once I’d seen the 227 Yuan price tag) to decide that I would not be eating at the hotel, so I spent my time sampling the breakfast delights on offer down by the canal. My favourite was an egg cooked in a pancake sort of thing, served with chilli sauce and lettuce. There were plenty of other options too, all of which were tasty and none of which cost more than 2 Yuan. Take that, Sheraton!

Canal by the Beijing Sheraton by day

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Beijing - October 2009

I haven’t been this excited for some time, and was up correspondingly early. After the standard banana pancake hostel breakfast we waited around for a group from another hostel to appear (they turned out to be backmarkers for most of the day, especially the guy that clearly hadn’t read the tour description and turned up in sandals), then we got underway.

The journey out of town took a while (it’s a big city!) and I got to know Leora and Danny, medical students from Jerusalem who were really lovely. I think I’d learnt this lesson sometime ago but had evidently forgotten it – if they look European and it sort of sounds a bit like Dutch (lots of back of the throat action) but clearly isn’t, it’s probably Hebrew.

We climbed up through the mountains and I was starting to realise that we weren’t heading in the direction that I thought we should be. My concerns mounted as I started seeing signs for Badaling, the dreaded tourist-infested section of the wall the avoidance of which was most of the point of taking this tour. This concern turned to alarm as we took the Badaling Great Wall exit amid a sea of tourist coaches and cars. I was determined that this wasn’t going to spoil my day though and kept trying to think positive thoughts.

This did the trick as we soon turned off down a side road and headed away from the tourist hordes. Fifteen minutes later we were heading up a secluded valley and my mind was at ease. We picked up our guide, a local guy who looked every day of what we later discovered were his 75 years.

When we were dropped off, a couple of kilometres further up the valley, it was clear what they meant by ‘The Secret Wall’. Our guide pointed up the rather steep hill to where part of the wall was visible up on top of the ridge. This led to audible groans from some of the smokers in the group for whom I had no sympathy whatsoever, particularly those that thought it was acceptable behaviour to smoke in the van on the journey up.

Secret Valley

The climb up was suitably steep and hot – there was barely a cloud in the sky and no wind in this deep valley – and I was rejoicing in the fact that I am as fit now as I’ve been in a very long time.

Steep!

I charged off ahead and by the time I’d reached the ridge, was well in front of the rest of the group. The views from here were fantastic and were destined to only get better as we still had plenty of climbing to do. There were lush, jagged peaks off in almost every direction and we were just out of reach of the thick greyish-brown haze of rampant industrialisation that lingered off in a distant valley.

Views

It really was a secret part of the wall as we didn’t see a single other person throughout the trek, which was pretty special. We did however encounter heaps of lizards, butterflies, some enormous bumble-bees and even a small snake – the Biology teacher from York was very excited about that and went on to bore us all with descriptions of the (non-venomous) snakes to be found on the British Isles (his special subject, apparently). I shut him up with the story of my encounter with an angry brown snake (very deadly) in Canberra at Easter.

We were also blessed with wildflowers growing all along the wall-top path as we followed our guide (I asked him his name but confess that I promptly forgot it) up to a hill-top fort where a very keen entrepreneur was waiting for us with all sorts of dubious souvenirs. Many of these were focused on the fact that this point was (allegedly) 888 metres above sea level, which strikes me as just a little too convenient.

Our Guide

The wall

After a bit of a rest while we resisted the urge to buy bright yellow ‘I climbed the Great Wall’ t-shirts, we continued on along the ridge in the blazing lunchtime sun. I was being particularly good with the sunscreen (I was on my third application by this point) but some of the northern Europeans were starting to pink up nicely already.

More views

Our route took us along another kilometre or so, before we left the ridge and headed down, out of the refreshing breeze, and back into the oppresive heat of the valley.

More wall

We were then treated to a really good banquet lunch down in the village (the salt police have clearly never made it up this way either) with some very interesting and tasty dishes. One in particular, which the rest of the table believed to be melon with garlic, which I’m pretty sure was cucumber with garlic, was really good.

I managed to swindle the front seat in the van on the way back into town and was on a real high for the whole journey, notwithstanding our driver’s belief that the emergency lane was in fact part of the road to be used at will, especially on steep downhill sections. There was also the young German who thought a van with all the windows up and the airconditioning on would be a good place in which to light up a cigarette. But I was in such a good mood after such a wonderful day that I didn’t mind so much.

Everything that mattered was great about today. The weather was brilliant, the trek was invigorating, the views were awesome, it was a great bunch of people (with a couple of easily ignored exceptions) and I felt strong enough to do it all over again at the end. It confirmed for me that if I do get to Africa in March, then I really do need to climb either Mt Kenya or Mt Kilimanjaro. I’ll need new hiking boots for that though…

More Wall photos

See: www.leohostel.com if you’re interested in this tour (this website only works in IE though).

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Beijing - August 2009

I had originally intended to do a tour out to the Great Wall today, but certain (yes you, BBC) weather sites had been telling me all week that it was going to rain. This turned out to be complete nonsense and I was greeted by a glorious sunny morning when I rose this morning after a challenging nights sleep at my new digs.

I’d booked a dorm room at a hostel close to Tiananmen Square, based largely on good reviews of their Great Wall tours. I haven’t done a dorm room for a very long time, but I’d realised that I had been both wasting cash and missing the opportunity to meet people by insisting on private rooms for my recent travels. So, despite the fact that I am gainfully employed on a pretty decent salary, have a per diem for this trip that I’ve barely touched, and had spent the last two nights in what claimed to be a five star hotel, I happily checked in to my A$10 a night room.

This didn’t go quite to the original plan though. I’d assumed that I would be able to take my leave from the conference at about 6pm, get changed and head over to my hostel. Instead, my boss and I were invited out to dinner by the representatives of an agency of the Chinese government, who were keen, it appeared, to use our services. This was a very strange experience – a ‘proper’ Chinese business meal complete with private room, dozens of dishes and dozens of toasts for which I was expected to down a shot of very potent smelling rice spirit. I pretended to drink this for the first few shots then outright refused once my juice arrived. My boss, meanwhile, was downing this petrol-like substance throughout the meal, as required by protocol. Our hosts (two men and five women) had evidently done copious research in preparation for this meeting and knew about as much about our company as I did, which was a little unnerving, especially as we’d only become aware of their existence that morning and still weren’t sure what they did. They were also very knowledgeable about the industry and drilled us for a solid couple of hours, only finally letting us go when it became clear that my boss was about to pass out into his shark fin soup.

Anyway, the upshot of this was that I turned up my hostel wearing a suit not once but twice, the first time when I dropped off my bags before dinner and again afterwards. I got some very odd looks, as you’d expect and did no end of harm to my traveller cred.

The challenging nature of the night related to the quality of the bedding. I’d heard some complaints about the hardness of the beds at the allegedly five star hotel the conference was held at. They were nothing compared to the plywood and inch and a bit of cheap foam that I spent the night on. Actually it wasn’t too bad, and was arguably pretty good for me, as long as I slept on my back. I tend to be pretty noisy when I sleep on my back though so I’m not sure the other people in the dorm would have appreciated it too much.

The hostel is pretty cool though. It has a good vibe and a great restaurant/bar/lounge complete with wide screen tv and sound system. The staff are very friendly and it’s about a ten minute walk from Tiananmen Square, in a Hutong area. They weren’t kidding when they noted on their website that ‘our street is under construction’ – the place is a bombsite! I actually don’t mind it though – it is pretty interesting to watch the workers doing their thing and it introduces a significantly random element to the area which I appreciate.

The bombsite outside my hostel

So, back to Saturday morning. I walked over to Qianmen, at the southern end of Tiananmen Square, before another wander through the square itself. On this glorious sunny morning, it was teeming with people, many of whom were in the world’s longest queue, waiting to see Uncle Mao. I don’t like big queues at the best of times, and queuing up to see the pickled remains of ultimately maniacal demogogues really isn’t my thing. Anyway, I’d missed Uncle Ho in Hanoi so it only seemed fair to avoid Uncle Mao as well. Here’s a picture of just one section of the aforementioned queue though.

Queuing up to see Uncle Mao

A quick ride on the subway took me around to the Lama Temple, the largest Tibetan Buddist temple in town and somewhere I’d been advised to check out by someone I met a while ago who used to work in the embassy here. This consisted of a series of largely identical temples lined up one behind the other. I’m glad I persisted to the final one though (there were about half a dozen) as the reward was an 18 metre tall Buddha, carved (according to the Guinness Book of Records plaque affixed outside) out of a single piece of sandalwood. I’m not sure what a sandalwood tree looks like, but it would have to be up there with the Californian redwoods in terms of size for this claim to be true, unless there’s some other definition of ‘one piece’ that I’m not aware of. Regardless, it is an impressive piece of work.

Big Buddha

Guinness Certificate

The temple is at the edge of a large hutong area which I proceeded through, in search of a guidebook-recommended t-shirt shop, on my way to Jingshan Park, which promised sweeping views over the Forbidden City. The gear on offer at the t-shirt shop was really good, though by no means cheap, and I left with a new t-shirt and a poster that is going to be a pain to carry home and expensive to frame. This hutong is a lovely area with some great shopping, bars and restaurants. The Beijing Downtown hostel is right in the middle of it and may be worth checking out next time I’m in town.

Jingshan Park delivered on its promise, with some awesome views down over the Forbidden City and around the rest of the city as well.

Forbidden City from Jingshan Park

Another Forbidden City shot

Later on, after a shower and an after-lunch nap back at the hostel, I set off in search of the last remaining section of the Ming-era city wall, which I’d studied briefly in my Cities and Technology course a couple of years ago. This was worth the trip and I wandered the length of the very pleasant park that had been built along the southern side, right down to the southeastern tower, which promised more views over the city. Sadly, this was just closing as I got there so I continued on my way.

Ming wall

I had arranged with the Kiwis to meet at an expat bar in the embassy area to watch the Bledisloe Cup match from Sydney, and kick-off time was now rapidly approaching so I began looking for a taxi.

As I was just around the back of Beijing train station, it quickly became clear that this was not going to be straightforward, so I thought I would head over to the train station where all the taxis were heading.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see what a bad idea this was. Beijing train station is really more of a vortex of humanity than a normal train station and the taxi queue was far too long to contemplate. The ticket queue at the subway station was similarly daunting and I was beginning to despair of getting to the game at all. I finally found another entrance to the subway though and after some ‘Chinese queuing’ (walking straight to the front of the queue and shoving my money through the window) I got a ticket and was on my way.

Beijing Railway Station

My new plan was to get off at the nearest station to the bar I was heading to, which was across the road from the Workers Stadium. Little did I know that there was a large concert tonight at the stadium, and it was quickly clear that there were no taxis for me here either.   I reluctantly followed the crowds headed for the stadium, past dozens of offers of tickets, glow sticks and binoculars.

I had changed into my new t-shirt and had noticed earlier that I was getting a few more stares than normal. This became even more pronounced as I made my way through the crowds, and I began to suspect that what I thought was an ironically amusing message was in fact something else entirely (it’s in Chinese, of course, so I have no actual idea what it says).

The description of the message I was wearing is this (from their website):
Second Hand Drugs – This is an illegal sticker advert found on the streets of Beijing. Call the number if you have any pharmaceutical drugs lying around the house you don’t need and sell them. They’ll be repackaged and sold again.

Given the volume of stares this was generating, I won’t be wearing it to the airport.

I finally found the expat bar, just a little after kick-off, and while it was a great game, I won’t say I enjoyed it as, even though it went down to the wire, we lost by a solitary point.

As soon as the game ended, the TV was switched to another game, involving willow and leather, that as of very recently I no longer have any interest in, so I quickly took my leave.

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Beijing - August 2009

Beijing is big.  Really big. It’s the first thing I thought as we landed and I kept thinking it for the next two days. The airport is big. The roads are big, wide and long.  And very straight. The volume of traffic is intimidating. Many large cities have ring roads. Some even have two. Beijing has six.

The new buildings are big and bold and very modern.  Beijing has plans and they’re obviously big and bold and modern too. The firm guiding hand of the central planner is very evident and the place seems to work pretty well, which is just as well given the numbers involved (~17 million residents).

There seems to be a quiet confidence about the place, and I have a real sense that I am visiting the new centre of the world.  But I could just be making that up.

I’ve been looking forward to this trip for months as I really didn’t travel for nearly long enough on the last instalment, and was determined to make the most of it.  The reason for the trip was a conference, held on Thursday and Friday, at which I was to give a presentation and hopefully meet lots of prospective customers.  I then have the weekend to myself before returning to Melbourne on Monday.

I arrived at lunch time on Wednesday and met the two kiwi representatives to the conference at the airport.  My boss and his wife were staying at a different hotel so I shared a cab to the hotel with the kiwis, out in the ‘silicon Beijing’ section of town, a little way to the west of the centre.  After a quick freshen up, we jumped in a cab to Tiananmen Square and went for a bit of an explore.

The square itself is really big, but otherwise fairly unremarkable, at least on this muggy overcast afternoon.

Tiananmen Square

After a few snapshots, we wandered off around the outside of the Forbidden City in search of ‘snack street’. En route we met David, a local student who walked and chatted with us for a while. His story seemed pretty genuine, including the bit about his teacher, Peter, from Melbourne, and the school trip he’s going on to Australia in October. We politely but firmly declined his offer to visit ‘his friend’s art exhibition’ though, as that was clearly anything but genuine.

Wangfujing Snack street was pretty interesting though seemed to be a bit of a contrived tourist trap. One thing that is different here is that the tourist traps, on the whole, appear to be targeted at the internal Chinese tourist market, rather than to westerners. In fact, westerners are pretty thin on the ground here (or at least overwhelmed by the ‘locals’) which is a nice change.  I declined the sheeps penis and still wriggling scorpion kebabs and had something I’m fairly sure was pork instead.

Wangfujing Snack street

Next stop were the Drum & Bell towers, where we stopped for a quiet beer (I had sprite) at a chilled rooftop bar looking out over a Hutong, one of the yet to be bulldozed old areas of the city.

Drum Tower

From here, it was a short walk to Lake Houhai, a pleasant play area for the locals, then we made our way to a restaurant recommended by the ubiquitous guidebook that does not need to be named.

Lake Houhai

The menu was as weird and wonderful as we’d been promised, and the airconditioning was industrial strength, but it was the saltiest food I’ve ever ingested. It was so salty that my mouth was still tingling when we got back to the hotel. A nightcap of icecream and pear juice served as a pretty good antidote.

My presentation on Thursday went pretty well, though it was a little intimidating talking about a subject for which I do not claim any real level of expertise, especially when I knew that a number of people in the room really were experts.

After the days presentations and discussions ended, we were bussed out to the Summer Palace for a brief twilight tour followed by some very impressive entertainment and an awesome banquet in the imperial dining room.

The Summer Palace

The entertainment

The banquet

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Beijing - August 2009