China On A Budget - Bejing

I’m writing an account of a recent holiday my wife and I had in China. I’ve broken it down into four parts, one for each area we visited: Bejing, Xi’an, Yangshuo and Shanghai. I hope I can make it sound as interesting as it was in person.

Part 1 - Bejing

Wednesday 16/6/2010
Caught an early flight from Brisbane Airport to Inchon (Seoul) in Korea for a connecting flight to Bejing. The Chinese won’t allow you to fly direct into China. Nice flight with Korean Air in a well appointed aeroplane. Good tucker on the journey which took about nine hours. Talking to a young Korean chap on the aeroplane and I explained that we were undertaking our own tour we’d put together on the internet and not hiring any guides, even though we spoke no Chinese. He said that the English were strange people. I thought, ‘that’s funny coming from a Korean’ !?! Huge airport at Inchon which includes a giant shopping mall. Our connecting flight was held up for two hours due to some wild thunderstorms over on the Chinese mainland. Arrived at our hotel, the CityTel Inn in Bejing around 9pm that night (Chinese time two hours behind ours).

Thursday 17/6/2010
The hotel was in a nice area about 40 minutes from the airport and within walking distance of Tienamen Square and the Forbidden City. Clean room with view of a park below. The bathroom accessories included a packet of condoms. Apparently the Chinese leave nothing to chance! Buffet breakfast consisted of bean shoots, rice, curried vegs, boiled eggs, sea grass, dumplings and luckily for us, toast and coffee. After breakfast there was much discussion with hotel staff (only one knew some words of English) about how best to get to the Temple of Heaven, underground rail or local bus. Luckily, before leaving Australia, my wife had sent away for an English/Chinese translation book with pictures she’d found online, and this proved invaluable in a land where virtually no one speaks English. In the end we settled for a number 60 bus outside the door. The Bejing city streets are huge eight lane thoroughfares with smaller side streets running off. The only way to cross the main streets is via the underground walkways. Plenty of police on the streets walking the beat in pairs.

The people on the bus were very friendly and happily informed us of how many stops to reach our destination. This simply involved showing the passengers a picture of the Temple on a brochure we’d obtained from the hotel. For just 1y (6y = $1 ) each way you can travel anywhere on the buses. What’s that you say, cheapskates? Yes, but we saved heaps this way instead of giving it to the tour guides. It had been raining from when we’d woken up and continued for most of the day. This pleased the hawkers who were out in abundance flogging umbrellas. The Chinese certainly leave nothing to chance. The rain made a tour of the Temple and surrounding park and grounds unpleasant so we retreated to the markets opposite. It was full of pushy but not unpleasant girl stallholders who seemed happy in their job, even though they seemed to sell very little. Of course, anyone with the remotest resemblance to a Westerner is fair game. We came across an Optometrist’s outlet inside the market building where Carole, my wife and Leader of the Opposition, ordered a pair of bifocals using her Aussie perscription brought especially for the purpose. This resulted in a pair of glasses with two attractive sets of frames for around AUD$100.

In the afternoon we walked beside the wide eight lane thoroughfare along to Tienamen Square and the Forbidden City. Talk about patriotic Chinese, the square was just about chockers owing to it being a public holiday in Bejing. A huge image of Chairman Mao looked down on the entrance gates to the Forbidden City. Most of the buildings inside are closed but a few contained displays of ancient Chinese lifestyle and culture. We wandered through the City for two hours and still didn’t reach the gates in the far wall. At around 5pm the sun decided to try and poke through the eerie grey haze, but it was a pathetic attempt.

Friday 18/6/2010
Hired a private car and driver (who spoke good English) to take us to see the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall in the Huairou district of Bejing, which the driver described as less touristy. But we still walked the gauntlet of hawkers and stall-holders on the way to the cable cars which took us up the side of the mountain to the wall on top. The Great Wall of China is an amazing piece of engineering workmanship that stretches for thousands of miles. It stands about eight metres from the ground to the top and consists of huge stone blocks covered with smaller blockwork with a brick walkway on top. Inside the wall the walkway, or battlement, is protected by two metre high walls with a series of cut-outs to fire weapons through. This top section is about sixty centimetres thick. The walk along the top is not for the faint-hearted. It rises steeply in places as it climbs over the mountain ridges, but you need only walk a couple of hundred metres or so to appreciate the experience. Awesome views of the countryside and the wall itself is easily the most exciting attraction in China. Our driver shouted us lunch at a nice restaurant which consisted of flower soup (delicious), fried rice, and a prawn dish with pork dumplings, washed down with a pint of home-brewed beer. Burrrrrp!

The sun was more fair dinkum today and actually shining through a hazy sky. The Bejing sky consists of a grey haze when it’s raining which blots out the clouds, and when it’s sunny it seems to struggle to fully penetrate a bluish-grey haze. This haze manages to keep the summer temperature down to about 28C-30C at this time of year.

Each afternoon before tea we had a ‘happy hour’ in our hotel room. The prices for a bottle or can of beer depend on which corner shop you purchased it from. A bottle of local Tsingtao beer fluctuated between 5-10y and a 330ml can was around 3y. Nice tasting beer, I might add.

Just on dusk we walked down to the Wangfujing night markets, not far from our hotel. It consisted of a fascinating array of raw food stalls containing squid, prawns, snake, lamb, tongues, ears, eyes, testicles etc, and fruit, all on wooden skewers. Simply choose your tucker and it’s cooked on the spot. We had a lamb skewer each, quite tasty, two potato pancakes and a pineapple skewer which completed our evening meal. We shared a bottle of Tsingtao Beer to wash it all down while watching the happy throng of market-goers.

Saturday 19/6/2010

“I’d give my right arm for a bowl of home-made muesli!”

My stomach is rebelling against a diet of curried vegetables and bean shoots for breakfast, so I fill up on toast and coffee. The sun is poking through a still-hazy sky, but poking through nevertheless. I decide the sky has now turned light blue. We decided to try our luck and use the underground railway (Metro) to get to the Bejing Zoo. We had printed maps of the railway system from the internet that told us which line to take and which station to change lines. The names of the stations were in English as well as Chinese. I soon realised that even a dill could navigate the railway system and not get lost. Each station had a security bag check before you went through the turnstiles. Travel is cheap, 6y for as many stations as you wish using your Transit Swipe Card. It was standing room only even at 10am in the morning. Imagine peak hour!

Bejing Zoo is huge, but cheerless and cruel. Large animals such as tigers and bears sit or pace up and down in small concrete cells. The pandas had slightly more space, but my wife and I were on the verge of tears at the plight of these poor wild animals. We only spent a short time looking at the animals and decided that was enough. On the way to the exit we spied a place called “The Australian Cafe” and went in for a coffee. I’m not sure if they know what we pay for coffee at home but they wanted 60y ($10) per cup, so we went without. That just about summed up a not-too-pleasant morning.

The sun was shining today and hot, about 33deg. After lunch we took a bus (seasoned users of public transport by now) back to the Temple of Heaven which we knew from our first rainy day visit was surrounded by a park and trees. Temples aren’t my scene but one has to marvel at the architechture. This was a huge tiered building containing ancient religious Chinese manuscripts in glass cabinets inside. The temple grounds seemed to be a meeting place for people to sit and play cards or just chat with their friends. In the park area people were dancing and singing traditional songs so we sat and watched and relaxed in the peaceful scene.

The dreaded markets beckoned as we left the Temple grounds. What is it about women and markets? But I couldn’t complain as I needed some more shirts because I deliberately didn’t pack many owing to the fact they’d be cheap in China. I looked for good quality and found some Jeep brand polo shirts. After much haggling I got them for 75y each (around $13). We priced them in the Inchon Airport complex on the way home and they wanted 800y ($130) for the same quality shirt. Chop the airport price in half and we still did pretty well.

Finding somewhere to eat an evening meal in China was a bit of a worry. Some restaurants have the menus in English and a picture of the dish, but the end result didn’t always match the picture. We also thought it wise to avoid eating too many meat dishes. However, we did manage to order some great tasting fried rice, but when it came to ordering an accompanying dish it became a bit like a lucky dip. Luckily we found a nice little pastry shop in a nearby supermarket that sold pizzas which helped to keep the hunger pains at bay.

Inside the Forbidden City

And so to Xi’an…

China On A Budget - Xi’an —–>