I love capital cities- they are the principal organs of a country- inputting, digesting and circulating life outwards through countless capillaries of roads, tracks, pipes, cables, lines and rivers. After the monotony of the flight from Heathrow, life in Beijing city fizzes and explodes like caesium on contact with water. It refuses to gently rouse you from your travel slumber and, instead, adopts the military-style-turn-him-out-with-the-mattress approach: decisive, a tad undignified, shocking but highly effective. I hit the floor hard this morning after my unceremonious dumping at Beijing Central Airport and, after thawing slightly in the humidity outside, I sought a taxi and found my way to the hotel.
Late afternoon, I met Martin – my Rough Guides mentor and walking Bible on all things Beijing. After a late lunch of pork, prawn and horse meat dumplings, we headed out to Dashilar, the local backpackers' area. The brief was to update information on some of the main hostels and to locate a restaurant to recommend. Brief fulfilled, as in the evening we feasted together on beer and delicious Peking Duck with all the trimmings (plates of crispy fat, meat and meat with crispy fat)! The meal also blessed us by providing shelter from a sudden downpour that cleared the low-lying smog and brought a welcome freshness to the streets outside. Off the hostel main drag, the web of streets opened into surprisingly quiet Hutongs (narrow alleys) where we dodged children playing, open charcoal stoves and hundreds of silent electric bikes.
Through jet-lagged eyes and in complete wonder at finally walking the streets of Beijing, today I only managed to glimpse and squint at the marvels of Tiananmen Square, the gates to the Forbidden City and Mao’s mausoleum. These monoliths of the Beijing pilgrim trail (for international and Chinese travellers alike) await me over the next few weeks with everything else Beijing has to offer, after sleep, a body-clock-reset and perhaps just one more Yanjing beer……
