Ni Hoa from Beijing! We arrived yesterday afternoon and crashed at the hotel for the night, after 18 hours of travel. We took a cab from the airport (which took about an hour) and we were absolutely shocked by the horrible smog in the air. I started coughing and sneezing almost immediately after walking out of the airport.
We awoke on the morning of 9/15/16, refreshed after 14 hours sleep and set out on foot to see the city. Our first stop was breakfast at a small nearby restaurant, where we enjoyed a steaming bowl of noodle soup. It was sort of like Pho, but without hardly any meat. So. Good. Next we started walking toward where we thought Tiananmen Square would be. Along the way, we met a nice Chinese man who recognized us as tourists (a really tall bald guy and a blonde girl are hard to miss in China!) and asked if we wanted directions. He kindly walked with us to the Forbidden City entrance, and along the way he told us that he had been a professor of Chinese calligraphy at the local university for 35 years before retiring last year. He now works part-time, teaching calligraphy to tourists at a local art studio. He invited us to visit the studio, but we were on a mission to see the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is incredible. It’s like a city within the city of Beijing. I was expecting to see ancient palaces and gardens, but I wasn’t expecting the long, meandering streets filled with shops, restaurants, and businesses within the walls of the Forbidden City also. You can buy everything from shoes and purses to groceries, and street food. We were thoroughly impressed with the perfectly manicured sprawling gardens containing trees that are thousands of years old, along with huge ornate palaces and buildings dating from the Ming Dynasty and before. It was awe-inspiring to think that these buildings have stood the test of almost unfathomable time. The pictures really don’t do it justice, but we tried.
We stopped at a coffee shop inside the walls and were again immediately recognized as tourists (I’m telling you…we stick out like a sore thumb.) The owner gave us some great advice about visiting the Great Wall (which we will do when we return in January) and gave us her personal email address and asked us to let her know when we were back in town.
We left the Forbidden City and walked to Wangfujing Street, which is a bustling shopping area with a street market. There are plenty of high-end stores, like Prada and Karl Lagerfeld, but we walked right past all of that nonsense to get to the good stuff…the street market. This place. Was. Nuts. It just so happened that this was a four-day holiday weekend in China for the Autumn Festival and everyone was out with their families. In addition, Wangfujing Street also had the International Brand Festival this weekend, which is sort of like SX Interactive, but on a smaller scale. It was a fun atmosphere with so many people, but it was extremely crowded. The market consisted of a complicated and confusing network of narrow alleyways and they were packed shoulder to shoulder with people. It was hot and claustrophobic, but we just had to see it anyway. There was a staggering amount of street food and trinket shops.
After 29,000 steps, we were pretty tired and finished off the day with Peking duck for dinner. It was a great day.
The last time we visited China (Shanghai in 2015,) we were disappointed with what we found. It seemed stifled and forced and very uncomfortable. We were delighted to learn that Beijing is much different. It was open and welcoming and interesting and we cannot wait to return in January.
Bye for now…
Emily
