Beijing
Sorry about the chronological order being a bit messed up.
We did “The Wall” within the first couple days of being in China and decided to
do a blog entry on that alone. So here
is the story of us arriving in Beijing until we left for
Xi’an.....
After a long flight from England we arrived in Beijing at
about 9 a.m. We had been awake for well
over 24 hours, as neither of us really slept well on the plane. A dude from the hostel we were booked in at,
called Beijing Downtown Backpackers, picked us up from the airport. That was a
great relief since we had such little gas left in the tank, the last thing we
wanted to do is try and deal with trains and busses.
The hostel is smack dab in the center of a Hutong district,
on a very narrow brick road, loaded with shops, restaurants and bars. Once we checked in and dropped our stuff off
in our own private room, we decided to have beer at the pub next door not wanting
to sleep all day and be up all night. But
after half a beer each we realized it was inevitable....and passed out for
about six hours and woke up at dark.
We decided to venture out and about to get dinner, both a
little uncertain as to what to expect. Feeling a bit nervous about everybody
staring at us, and I do mean everybody, we jumped into the first diner for
noodles, pretty safe. After dinner we headed back to the hostel to try and
sleep through the night. Of course at 1 in the morn we were both wide awake,
feeling a little overwhelmed.
The next day we woke up pretty early and swore no napping,
to try to get into routine. We had our daily free breakfast provided by the
hostel. Bacon, eggs and toast, but all of it was pretty weird. Good, but still
different. We strolled around the neighbourhood, venturing out of the hutong
into more busy areas for the rest of the
morning trying to get used to the feel of our new cultural home. The streets
are very very busy with locals, tourists and mad traffic. Here the vehicles
have right of way. It seems to break down like this: busses rule the road, cars
are next, then scooters and motorbike type things, then bikes, and pedestrians
are at the bottom of the food chain. Even when you have the green walk sign!!
Constantly look out for traffic. On the sidewalk too!! People are honking all the time, not to curse
you out, but to say “Look out, comin through” kind of thing. It’s complete
craziness, but after a few days you start to see the method to the madness! We also started getting used to the currency
and realized how cheap things really are. 100 rbm is about $14-15. A meal is
about 15rbm on average and a big bottle of beer is 4rbm, which is about
70cents!! Brilliant. Cheaper than soft drinks, coca-cola is 5rbm!!
That evening we hung out at the hostel and met our new crew!
A fella from Ontario named Wally, Meg and Louise (Boner we tagged her as), two
girls from England. We all hit it off really well and spent the next 5 days or
so sightseeing and touring around together. It is amazing how much more
comfortable it made us feel.
After a relatively good night sleep we arose the next day
and the 5 of us took the bus, which costs 1rbm and the subway, which is 2rbm,
and made our way to the Temple of Heaven. A monster of a park filled with
trees, massive green spaces, beautiful temples and thousands of people just
hanging out, dancing, singing, playing a weird hacky sack type game and
enjoying card games. It was great to see. I have to mention that the whole time
we were still getting a lot of stares and people taking our pictures. Mostly Wally
and I. Wally, over six and a half feet tall, and me blond haired, blue eyed and
tattooed, attracted a lot of attention. Lots of stares, random photos, but some
people actually ask to have their picture taken with you!! It’s strange at
first, but ya get used to it. I want to know what they tell their family and
friends when showing them the pics later on!! Anyway, the temples were amazing,
really colourful and traditional looking with great meaning and history behind
all of them. Around one of the temples was the Echo Wall. I giant stone circle surrounding
the temple, about twenty feet high with 100 – 150 foot diameter. How it works is one person stands a foot away
from the wall, facing it, and the other person stands directly on the other
side, 100 or so feet away on the other side of the building, facing the wall,
and hear each other talking, at conversation volume, as if they are standing right
beside you!! Britt and I were amazed!! Incredible. After taking all that in, we
decide to head back to the hutong for some dinner. Guess what? We had Chinese
food!!! For the most part the food is really good. It is hit and miss sometimes
since we have to basically order by pointing at pictures!! Britt accidently
ordered sliced pigs ear thinking it was some kind of salad. Disgusting!!
The following day we did The Great Wall. No big deal.
Jing Shan Park, The Forbidden City, Mausoleum of Mao and
Tian’anmen Square were on the agenda for the next day. The 5 of us rented
bicycles for the trek. We got to the park and wanted lunch before we headed in
so popped in to a hole in the wall for some noodles. The “beef” in my soup had
whiskers and Wallies noodles were crawling. Literally, out of his dish came a
maggot!!! Britt, Boner, Meg, Wally and I left hungry although we were lacking
appetites!! We toured the park for a bit, meeting our first Chinese
cross-dresser, and headed up a fairly big hill to the temple above. The view
was amazing. A 360 degree panoramic of Beijing (what you could see through the
smog) and a very impressive angle of the entire Forbidden City. The walls and
moat surrounding it and all the identical temples and buildings within them. It
was huge. After absorbing all of that, which took some time, we biked around to
the Tian’anmen Square and Mausoleum of Mao which were just beyond the Forbidden
Cities walls. To tell the truth I wasn’t
too impressed with the square. Britt agrees, it’s just a big concrete city
block with a phallus statue in the center. The history behind it makes it what
it is, I guess, but Wally and I spent most of the time there trying to figure
out where the “tank scene” took place. Across the road was the mausoleum so we
snapped a few pics and headed back to the hostel to catch the van that would
take us to the Chinese Acrobat show. The show was mind blowing but it was a
“you had to be there” type of thing so I won’t do it any justice trying to
explain it with words!! Check one out when you have a chance. I have never seen
a Cirque du Soleil but assume it was along the same lines, just more raw.
The Night Market, or Freak Market as we donned it, was on
the menu for the evening to follow. Again, the 5 of us “Tomcats” bussed it to
the street where vendors lined the sidewalks. Their product was mostly “food”
but there were a few tacky nic-nacs being sold. The first thing we saw was a
display of skewered scorpions fanned out on the counter. These skewers had 4
live scorpions on each. The guys behind the counter pulled one out for us, set
it on the bar, and we watched it start to run away!! He swiftly snatched it up,
dropped it in the deep fryer for a few seconds, pulled it out, seasoned it with
some salt and spice and gave it to us to consume. Down the hatch. Except for
Meg. She wussed out!! Hahaha. Much love Meg!! That was it for us. The
tarantula, snake, lizard, chicken hearts, eyeballs and other spectrum of bugs
and grubs were not really for us to eat!!
Just after Meg left us for Thailand, and just before Wally
and Boner made their exit from Beijing we decided to reward ourselves with some
cheap traditional Chinese Medicinal Massage. The massage was decent but the
highlight was this “cupping” treatment we received. It is a technique used for
deep tissue manipulation and detoxifying yada yada. They suction these bulb shaped glass jars to
your back in specific areas by lighting the inside on fire somehow. Some sort
of gas inside I assume. Once they hit your back the fire goes out and sucks
your tissue inside. They then leave them for five minutes or so. This doesn’t
feel great!!! Pretty uncomfortable and restrictive!! Then they pop them off
starting at the bottom, working their way up.
But as the lower ones come off the top ones suck harder. Pretty gnarly.
As the pics show, some nice little bruises remain, that last for two weeks!!
Feels like a sunburn. The next day though, you feel really loose and relaxed.
Quite the experience.
For the music in our bones and drummers in our lives we
thought we would check out the Drum Tower. Nothing special really. We climbed a
few hundred stairs to the top of this thing and looked at a bunch of huge
drums. The view was very nice, we could see all the way to the Jing Shan park
and to the skyscrapers of the downtown core, one of them anyway. Just so
happens we were there at the right time because four traditionally dressed men
walked in and gave us a pretty cool drum demonstration. Very tribal and
powerful. Made the trip worthwhile.
The following day, Britt and I were on our own. It was 30
plus degrees as usual, and a trip to the Beijing zoo was on the agenda. It is
huge!! As we wandered around though, we both started to feel a little taken
back. The animals that are outside are all behind glass, so seeing them and
taking photos is next to impossible due to the reflection of the sun and the
thousands of people visiting. The animals inside, like the big cats were forced
to live in such small quarters it was sickening. I guess all zoos are like that,
but this seemed so sad to us both. A pacing tiger the size of a horse had room
to take three or four strides then had to turn around, three or four strides,
turn.... This combined with the way the viewing public yell and scream and try
to imitate the sounds of the creature they are looking at was all we could
handle. Full grown adults doing things our parents taught us not to do at the
zoo. One moron even threw a lighter at a tiger who was in a cage as opposed to
glass, to try and get reaction out of him for a better snap shot. Unbelievable.
The zoo staff didn’t seem to give a damn either. We left after a couple of
hours after only seeing a third of the exhibition vowing we’d never go to
another zoo again. We have the Panda Breeding reserve to look forward to, where
the animals come first.
After a day of that calibre we both agreed on indulging in a
few drinks. We scouted out a little pub literally 30 steps from the hostel. It
had AC/DC playing on the stereo so it was gonna be our watering hole for the evening.
A few beers in and some more rock n roll one of the bartenders brought us some
Bijou, I think it is spelled. A terribly strong wheat wine that could take
paint off the walls!! One shot lasted us both twenty minutes, taking turns
sipping it. A few of those and we were done. Before we were though, we met our
newest travel buddy crew; Grant & Emma, a great Australian couple. They are
in the middle of a three or four year travel. Incredible. They were also
staying at the Downtown Backpackers hostel.
I suppose they were indulging in the Bijuo also, the next
morning we were all feeling pretty rough. A hangover induced McDonalds visit
was in order. Don’t judge us, who do you think you are!?!? With a belly full of
grease the four of us tackled the Lama Temple. The grounds were full of many
worshipping locals, all burning incense and paying homage to Buddha. Half a
dozen temples each with their own statues, artwork and Lamas. Not the spitting
kind. Most of the temples were the same as the last, but the final temple was
home to one of the biggest statues of Buddha in the world. In 1990 it was put
in the Guiness Book of World Records as the biggest Buddha carved out of one
solid piece of wood. It was huge. Eight meters of it was underground and a very
impressive twenty meters by ten wide above ground. A monster of a statue. As we
left and headed towards the Confucious Temple, a combination of the heat and
our ailments changed our minds, so we headed for the air conditioning instead.
Back at our home base we met another travel buddy. Sitting
on the stoop was Nico. A younger kid from the Netherlands. He recognized one of my tattoos (the NOFX
nurses) so we hit off, talking about all the bands and music we commonly enjoy.
We all went for a bite to eat and then realized that the live rock bar was a
great place to finish off the night. There was a Chinese metal band playing
which sounded pretty cool. We were getting our wallets out to pay the 60 rmb
cover charge when an English speaking local told us quietly that the show was
almost over and not to bother spending the money. The venue had a bar at the
front and a separate concert hall so we just had a few beers at the front and
got to know each other a little better, imagining what the band we could hear
would have been like to visually witness. The walls in the bar were covered in
stickers and carvings from past bands and visitors so we carved a Turrettes
logo into the wall to add to the history (see if you can spot it in the photo!).
It was definitely my kind of place!!
My dear Mum asked us to keep our eyes open for a traditional
Chinese game called Mah Jong. I have no idea how it is played, but it looks
like a cross between dominoes and chess. The pieces are made of bone and
bamboo. Grant and Emma, Britt and I made the trip to a weekly Sunday Antique
market looking for souvenirs and I thought what better a place to try and find
the game in question. This was an exceptionally hot day and the market was
outside. There were thousands of people out for the event and hundreds of
vendors. We quickly realized that this was the place for haggling. It was
great. We were a little unsure of the sport of market buying at first. If you
touch or look too long at something, you basically are gonna buy it. They give
you a price. You laugh and offer ten percent of what they were asking. They
give another price. So on and so on. We bought a few things that we could have
got for cheaper but by the end of the day we were paying a quarter or less of
asking price!! And we found Mah Jong. Love ya mum.
Being typical tourists, the next day Nico, Britt and I went
and took a trip to the Olympic stadium. On
route we found a little Canadian pub!!! It was amazing. The owner was from
Toronto and his wife was Chinese. They offered a great little menu. I had
Poutine and a Moosehead for lunch as we watched Tin-Tin cartoons on the T.V.
Tasted really nice, and took us home for half an hour. Nico said he enjoyed it,
he may have just been saying that though!! We arrived at the Birds Nest and
Water Cube feeling stuffed. As always there were thousands of people
everywhere. Funnily enough people were still taking photos of us even though
there was a huge tourist attraction in front of them. We opted out of going
inside and having the tour partly because of the volume of tourists and partly
because our good buddy Chad was arriving with Big Matt for a business trip and
were able to spend the night with us in Beijing before they toured the country
for work.
They managed to find our hostel thanks to Chads acute
knowledge of the language and the fact his girlfriend, Lulu, who was back in
Canada wrote down the address in Chinese for him to give to the cabby!! We
grabbed a few beers, caught up, and headed to his hotel which had a Karaoke bar
in the basement. Now THIS was an experience!! We walked into the seedy dungeon
of this hotel and were promptly escorted into a private room. For 800 rmb the
room included all you could drink, all you could eat, and all the Karaoke-ing
you can handle. If we had ten or fifteen people with us this would have been a
great deal, but for four of us, not so much. Still cheaper than a night out at
home. So we indulged and had a great time. Now, parents and grandparents should
stop reading here!! We were informed of another
sort of entertainment, if so desired. For 200 rmb we could be accompanied
by a Lady Of The Night!!! Hahahaha, we obviously declined, but found it amazing
that women cost less than booze, food and Karaoke combined!! And there was no
lack of them wandering the halls. Sketchy!!! It was bitter sweet saying bye to
Chad and Matt, but we were relieved to get out of there!! But a big thanks to
Chad and Matt for an interesting and fun evening. We returned to the Hutong,
joined the crew on the stoop and enjoyed the rest of our last night in Beijing.
We packed up in the morning, said goodbye (for now) to Nico,
Grant and Emma, and headed to the train station to travel to our next
destination, Xi’an. This station was the biggest, busiest place I have ever
been to. It took us quite a while to figure out where to go and which train to
grab but sorted it out and boarded the vessel. We had “hard sleeper” tickets
which mean we live on a three level bunk for 16 hours. There is no privacy, it
is just rows and rows of these bunks with a little hallway at the end which
runs the length of the train. Pretty tight, but could be worse. An overnight
train so we’ll just sleep most of the way...
