I arrived in Beijing via a very short flight from Shanghai. Met loads of lovely people staying at my hostel.
The hostel itself whilst clean, it's staff were absolutely shit because of that this hostel was the worst I have stayed in during my two month holiday. It's the kind of place where hospitality disappears the moment you've paid your money and informed them that you are not interested in any of their tours. In fact I would go so far as to say if they ran a tour to a place of interest (e.g. any of the three Great Wall sites) they claimed that you couldn't get there using public transport. Besides their tour, taxi was the only other alternative suggested. Which would be fine except the price they quoted for getting a taxi to Simatai was twice what I actually ended up having to pay. When the discrepancy is 500 Yuan it is by no means an insignificant amount, especially so when you consider a bed at a Beijing hostel for the night costs 60 Yuan and a meal at an average restaurant 15 - 25 Yuan.
Unfortunately I still had three places outside Beijing I wanted to visit during this my last week not to mention the sights in Beijing itself that I decided to put up with it, big mistake. Needless to say soon as I'd finished my out of town visits I changed hostel immediately and spent a lovely two days at a much, much better hostel. Funnily enough I met a few other people at the Jade International Hostel that had come here after falling out with their initial hostel too! Paul, these receptionists seriously love you. Just mentioning your name and the fact that you'd gone to Korea on Wednesday convinced them I knew you and immediately they accepted my lower accommodation offer without the usual bartering. Thanks mate. The hostel location is awesome - a couple of streets away from the Forbidden City and its staff are a whole lot nicer too.
Great Wall
On my first full day here I visited the Great Wall at Simatai, we bribed an official with 20 Yuan and got to go into the prohibited area. This area hasn't been restored and is more dangerous as a result. In places the wall was barely wide enough for one person to walk safely along it and I spent most of the time scared and hugged the sides of the wall for safety. Got loads of scrapes on my arms and legs as I climbed over bits of the wall. I chickened out when I had to climb a very, very steep part, we're talking almost 90 degree climb with very few foot and hand holdings. The blokes I was with saw it as a macho challenge, so glad I'm not a bloke.
It should be said that the wall has been restored quite heavily and asthetically speaking, badly. By that I mean sometimes the part of the wall you walk on meets a fort at the top window instead of at the door. You'll see what I mean when I finally get around to uploading the pictures. I'm assuming the forts are the originals hence the bad joins however my book says new forts were added along the route to aid tourism. I'm assuming that in that case the join would have been better.
Forbidden City
It was nice but due to the Beijing Olympics the pinnacle of the City - the Palace of Supreme Harmony was hidden by scaffolding and white plastic sheets - such a disappointment. Almost guarantees I will need to visit Beijing again, much to my distain.
Summer Palace
Beautiful, in my option, much more beautiful than the Forbidden City. This place was rebuilt by Empress Cixi after the British and French allied troops destroyed it during the opium wars. Some destroyed building in the gardens remain. The plaques around the palace and the blurb on the audio guide leave no doubt that they still hate us for it!
Temple of Heaven
A relaxing way to spend a day. I've read loads of books on China and it was nice to finally see the place that Emperors came to pray and give thanks for a good harvest. Though seeing Beijing 2008 memorabilia I was expecting the temple to be made from gold like the Golden Temple in Amritsar, it's not but it is lovely nonetheless.
I've written this blog honestly from the start and see no reason to change now. The sights in Beijing are worth seeing but please don't expect the majority (say 85%) of people in the tourist industry to be genuine or kind. I can only talk from an English speaker's perspective but I would advise being more wary of strangers than you would be in either London or New York or in the rest of China for that matter. Perhaps Shanghai is just as bad but I was with Yi and Wolfgang so was shielded to a large extent and found it to be a lovely, infinitely less ruthless and cruel city.
In Beijing I was made to feel like a country bumpkin thrown into a cage full of lions and wolves and when they'd had my fill of me, I was thrown into a tank full of sharks and piranhas for good measure. It was pure hell, there wasn't a day that I didn't have to argue/fight with someone to honour their initial spoken agreement with me. I pity the people going to see the Olympics for I am certain that they will be conned left, right and centre. I met a lass in Chengdu who thought China was hideous, she was travelling from North to South and having been to Beijing I can completely understand how she came to hold that point of view.
I'm so glad I used Beijing as my base and escaped it for days at a time to see the sights in the nearby towns and cities. If it wasn't for that I would have willingly paid to bring my flight forward. In fact, on Monday morning after another hideous argument I was seriously considering calling my airline to get an earlier flight home but decided not to let them win.
I left Beijing with no doubt that had this been the first city I visited in China some two months ago I would have been on the next flight out of there to New Zealand or Canada. I would have left China thinking the people were awful. On the good side, whereas in the rest of China I didn't think of home and would have happily stayed forever, Beijing made me desperate to return to the safety and comfort of home. Not to mention the unfriendliness of strangers and the fixed pricing!
I only felt comfortable and safe and consequently only enjoyed Beijing when I was inside a tourist attraction with friends or on my own else I was on the streets with a large group of friends. I now understand why asylum seekers in the UK feel the need to travel in groups outside their home - it has everything to do with safety and nothing to do with intimidation.
Now that I have had my rant let me give you solid examples of my awful experience and perhaps give advice to people travelling to Beijing who happen upon my blog.
- Do NOT get taxis at transport links. In fact I would advise using buses or the subway to transverse long distances and then simply walking. Unfortunately Beijing is spread out, so I realise this is probably easier said than done especially if you have luggage. I made the mistake of continually arriving in Beijing in the early hours of the morning of the two taxis I got near the transport links one ripped me off monstrously, with hindsight he used the outer most ring road to take me to my horrible hostel located inside the inner most ring road.
The second time when I got in the cab, I showed him the ring roads and asked that he didn't use them. Within a 30 seconds we were on a ring road. Asking him to get off it, was not sufficient I had to shout and scream and then I had to shout and scream some more to make him stop the cab and let me out. I eventually followed the subway line above ground and used it as soon as it opened in the morning. Fortunately I was carrying a rucksack which made walking miles feasible. Walking along the major roads in the early hours felt completely safe, more so than I have ever felt in any UK city.
Be aware of taxi drivers away from the transport links, they will try it on too. As much as I loathed it I had to use a cab to get to the train station early one morning as it was too early to catch the subway. When I got into his cab he did suggest we use the ring road as opposed to going through the city. I pointed in the direction I wanted to go and he accepted it without argument. Bliss.
My very last argument in Beijing was at 5 am on Wednesday morning (I’d been awake for 1.5 hours, this was NOT a record). It happened at the airport check in. The day before I called Dick, for whom I had a business card. He’d arranged a taxi to take us to the Great Wall and he seemed decent. He quoted me 50Y. I was expecting to pay around 85Y so repeated the price to him twice to ensure I heard correctly and he said it was low as I was only one, I thought I’d finally found a decent person in Beijing. In the morning I again confirmed the price with him over the phone. At a toll gate the taxi driver couldn’t “find” his money so I decided to pay as I had such a good bargain. The driver helped me with my bag and took me to the check in desk. I gave him 50Y and he refused it point blank and immediately called Dick on the phone. That bastard had the audacity to tell me “lady you misheard the price is 150Y not 50Y” of course an argument ensued, I was absolutely fuming, could I not spend one day, my last day of all days, in this fucking city without being ripped off. All the pieces were in my court, I had my bags, check in was just behind me but I was worn out, tired and fed up with arguing that I gave him 100Y. What can say other than Dick you are as you name suggests, a complete wanker.
My guide book says there are a lot of unscrupulous taxi drivers around but the vast majority are decent. My experience and the stories I heard from others relating to taxi drivers driving people around in circles, else pretending they didn’t know where infamous attraction were together lead me to believe otherwise.
- The buses in Beijing are jammed packed at all times of the day. Whereas in other cities and towns bus drivers and conductors would willing and happily tell you which stop you need to get off at, a significant number of conductors in Beijing felt the need to charge 50% in excess of the ticket price for said information. Enough said
- I lost count of the number of times I was approached by people who befriended me on my way to a tourist attraction. Once they’d gained my trust I was repeatedly told that the said attraction was either closed because of bad weather or renovation and then they suggested we go for tea or a meal at a local venue. Luckily Jane had warned me about them and my nice hostel also displayed a warning so I was never taken in however I was always left angry by the interaction. Quite quickly I developed another persona, which lessened my anger and eventually I simply ignored them.
- Souvenirs are insultingly overpriced. In the rest of China you started at a bargaining position of a third or a quarter of their initial offer if it was a big-ticket item else a half. In Beijing regardless of the item you must start at an eighth if not less.
If you don’t like bargaining hard or are bad at it buy inside tourist sights such as the Forbidden City. They are reasonably priced and certainly not a rip off. Admittedly if you are very good at bargaining you could get them slightly cheaper on the streets.
The first time I went out shopping in Beijing I found a shop from where I wanted to buy some souvenir chopsticks to give away to all and sundry. The young woman in the shop asked how many I wanted and I said six. Her starting offer for one was 80Y. I was flabbergasted, elsewhere in China they would have started at 20Y, considering the numbers I was buying I would have expected to pay somewhere between 6-8Y for each. Needless to say I walked away in shock and she was left shouting at ‘50’, ‘20’, ‘10’, ‘free’ to my back.
In my hostel, a couple of Americans staying in my room paid 150Y for a wooden carved picture which they though was antique, I wouldn’t have paid more than 20, perhaps 30 at a push. It certainly wasn’t antique. As my book says buy something because you like it not because you think it is old or valuable, the likelihood is that it isn’t either of those.
- Make sure you carry lots of small notes with you so that you can give sellers exactly what you’ve agreed upon. A couple of times I gave them more as didn’t have any smaller notes and they were reluctant to return my change and wanted to renegotiate. I had to argue to get my money back and once I grabbed my money and left the item behind. Both times it happened when there was a lack of other buyers around. Take heed.
- In the bar of my hostel one night I got talking to a whole load of people, most of us coming to the end of our journey and we all had a good whinge about Beijing. The general consensus is that people in Beijing will try and rip you off. If you speak some Mandarin, you will get ripped off too but to a lesser extent. You certainly won't be given the respect that the Chinese people get. We were unanimous in that we will all miss China as a whole but most definitely not Beijing.
In summation, if you're travelling to Beijing as part of a group you should be alright in that you can expect to be ripped off only sometimes. If however, you are travelling alone and don't speak the language or speak it very badly expect to be ripped off more often than not. For this reason and for your own sanity I would highly recommend travelling as part of an organised tour to keep your interactions with locals to a minimum or at least have a tour guide that can make sure you're not taken advantage of. As for the rest of the country, you do not need to go on a tour. In fact your money will last twice as long if you don't go on a tour! The people are absolutely lovely, very generous and kind willing to help and my experience has been that whenever I've needed an English speaker I've found one without looking too hard.
I'm aware that I've done the big management no-no of starting and ending my Beijing article on bad points with the good points lost somewhere in the middle. In case you missed it, by the good points I mean the sights. So let me highlight another good reason to visit Beijing - the food. The variety of food in Beijing is huge, there is no world cuisine that you will not find here. I can thoroughly recommend Russian food, it was simply divine. I would have tried Indian food but there was insufficient meal times ;-)
Almost forgot, hence re-editing of live article. I tried scorpion. There is a picture of me with said scorpion though it does look like I'm about to feed my nose as opposed to my mouth. In reality I did eat it. It was covered in salt and deep fried - how did it taste? Other than salty, the claws were crunchy, the legs and tail were nice, the best in fact. The body however was simply disgusting, very squishy and I was going to spit it out but I resisted so that I could tell the world that I'd eaten a scorpion. The body was very soft and squishy. Needless to say I swallowed quickly and promptly followed up with a dessert ;-)
