Beijing Day 3 - Great Wall of China

I didn't expect to be able to see the Great Wall this time around, given the limited time in Beijing. I also assumed that the Wall would be in the outskirts of Beijing, and would be relatively inaccessible. But my dad's business associates offered to drive us there, and now there was a freeway directly to the Great Wall, so getting there took no longer than half an hour.

Approaching the Great Wall, it was clear why this still remains one of the greatest wonders of the World.

Impressive at a distance

Thousands of years on, and still the wall remains intact. And not only the endurance of the construction, but the sheer difficulty of building it in the first place. Climbing the mountains is already pretty daunting, let alone pulling tons of rock up its slopes using ancient machines. And I was told this is the relatively easy part. At certain sections the mountains are higher and steeper.

Daunting up close

Before arriving here, I didn't know what to expect. Well I was in for a surprise. Climbing the Great Wall was literally a climb. And the first part of the wall was really the steepest. I don't recommend bringing little kids and the elderly here, because it can be extremely steep. Going up there, I wondered if anybody had fallen to their death before. It was quite easy to fall from the steep steps. But I very quickly got those thoughts out of my head.

The first section of the climb

When I started off, I wanted to reach the peak, which I thought was the right-most tower. I made my way up, plotting my way up with photos taken at different sections (go to my flickr site). I took about 1 and a half hours going up, and must have climbed the equivalent of at least 20 stories. And when I finally reached the tower, it still continued upwards along the mountain ridge! I decided to bring the Great Wall adventure to an end, and made my way down, which wasn't that easy, given the steepness of the steps.

After lunch, I pretty much had the time to myself, so I went alone to Wang Fu Jing, did a lot of window shopping. With that, the trip to Beijing pretty much came to an end.

Final thoughts on the trip:
Beijing is a huge place, and I would have loved to spend more time there. The city is pretty modern and growing rapidly, with construction of housing and infrastructure going on everywhere. And as the Olympic date approaches, the city will be even more vibrant. At the same time, Beijing is a city with thousands of years of culture. My only worry is that it that if the growth is uncontrolled, pollution and overcrowding will make it an unpleasant place to visit, and worse, cause the rapid deterioration of these historical sites.

Beijing Day 2 - On the road and Bei Hai (北海)

Had to wake up early - arrggh. But had to because I was meeting Allen and we had to prepare to meet a client in the afternoon. Had time to take a picture of the view from our hotel:

After a couple of hours of discussion, we made our way down to a nearby restaurant to have a meal. As it turned out, the restaurant we picked wasn't bad.

Beijing noodles

Spicy pork in water (can't remember the exact name)
We had to travel by bus to the meeting location, and I quite enjoyed the whole experience - eating at a local restaurant and taking the public transport. As a traveller, you always want to get a local experience. At the same time, it was very easy get used to because I understood the language, and there are already a lot of Chinese in Singapore. At the same time, its something new. I was very amused by how they ‘圈舌’ when speaking. Especially the taxi drivers or the so-called less educated - they could rattle off a string of sentences and I could not understand them, even though they were speaking Chinese. And like in the U.S when speaking to Americans you have to use an accent, I found myself developing a 'Beijing' accent to speak. Never would I have imagined myself doing that 5 years ago.

Other interesting things that I noted:

• In Singapore we address waitresses as ‘小姐’. They call them ‘服务人’. Apparently ‘小姐’ can also refer to prostitutes.
• They have TVs on buses, and they use some form of 'ez-link' type card as well. All pretty bad ideas to me.
• Every major bus stop has a customer service lady, to give directions on which buses to take. That's pretty cool.
  
• People are actually quite friendly. People were willing to give directions, taxi drivers are chatty. Only thing is that they speak loudly. It's like a natural thing. When they speak, their voices project throughout the bus.
• Not a single pretty girl. Yeah. Not a single one. 15 million people in Beijing and I didn't see any. Wat the crap!!
• We were walking along some side road and some military personnel put up a road block and were collecting money. And I could hear one driver saying (they are loud remember?) - ‘干吗的这条路也要给钱？’ It was quite funny.

It was about 4pm when we reached back to the hotel after the meeting. My dad and uncles were done with their meeting, so Allen brought all of us to Bei Hai, an imperial park. On the way there, we came across a whole village of old-style buildings.
Buildings from long ago
This was what I wanted to see in Beijing, the historial buildings and architecture. Too bad we were on a taxi, so I didn't have time to explore the place. We reached Bei Hai, and only after I read the sign did I understand the significance of the place. Apparently this place was an imperial garden, that was constructed from a thousand years ago.

It is a beautiful place, with beautiful landscaped gardens surrounding a huge lake. Yes, Bei Hai is actually a lake, and not a sea. And we could only tour the exterior gardens, because we had arrived too late, if not we could have toured the former imperial study quarters.

Where the emperor's children studied
There were other wonderful landscapes and structures there as well. One of them was the 9 Dragon Screen - a large wall that used colored stone and jade to create 9 dragons.

4 out of 9 dragons
We probably had time to explore like 10% of Bei Hai, before it got dark. I definitely must come back here again when I visit Beijing. But anyways, it was off to visit Tiananmen Square.

Next to Tiananmen Square was the Parliament House, which was huge and very impressive. It had stone columns at least 5 stories tall. Unfortunately I couldn't take a good photo of it at night. And we couldn't get up close to Tiananmen Square as well, because of some event that was happening.

Tiananmen Square with the Forbidden City in the distance
Still, I could see the giant picture of Mao Zedong. And Tiananmen, is actually just 1 section of the Forbidden City. The whole Forbidden City must be about 2-3 km long. I couldn't help but feel awed by the history of the entire place. Again, I didn't have time to explore the Forbidden City, so that's another "must go" on my next trip to Beijing.

Finally we made our way to Wang Fu Jing, the main shopping district in Beijing. We had dinner at a nearby restaurant. Most of the food was pretty decent, but one dish in particular was something new to all of us, apart from Allen, have never tried before - Fried Silkworms.

Fried Silkworms
Yes, what would a trip to China be without trying out some strange food? It tasted ok though. Slightly bitter and crunchy. Not something I would crave particularly. But who knows what properties silkworms might have? Maybe I'll get silky smooth skin after this...

Out on the streets, there was even more strange food on show - lizards, centipedes, seahorses and some kind of worm. All barbequed and ready to be eaten. Nope, I wasn't prepared to get a stomachache, so I didn't try any. We spent some time exploring Wang Fu Jing, before heading home after a long day. Next day would be a trip to the Great Wall.

Beijing Trip Day 1 - Dust and Traffic jam

**I uploaded my Beijing Trip photos to Flickr. Also, all the pictures were taken with a lousy Free Creative DiVi Cam. After this I'm taking my award-winning HP camera back from my dad.

The trip to Beijing was really quite unexpected. The week before, my dad asked me if I had any friends that were proficient in Chinese, and could go to Beijing on short notice. The only person I could think of was Ben in Shanghai, but he couldn't make it. My Chinese can't make it as well, but I wanted to go along, not to just have a holiday, but to meet my business contact there - Allen. In the end, they (my uncle Alan, dad and Henry) had to make do with my Uncle Alan's Chinese in the business discussions, which turned out to be slightly better than mine.

Anyways, Day1 was basically travelling there on a 5 hr flight on SIA. We left at 5pm and arrived at about 10pm. Took us about an hour to check out. Which was fine, considering that most airports I've been to are not as efficient as Changi Airport. So we stepped outside to get a cab. And the first thing I noticed was the dirt on the road and in the a ir. Every car there seemed to be covered in a layer of dust. The air was breathable, but then again, it seems that in China, people have the license to smoke anywhere. From waiting at the taxi line, to the next 3 days in Beijing, I've had to experience people smoking everywhere , even in air-con restaurants. So that made the feeling of pollution even worst. But back to the dust. I knew beforehand that Beijing, and the whole of China, is suffering from pollution problems. Beijing in particular, due to the depletion of forests surrounding the city, has resulted in sands from the Gobi desert blowing into the city. Adding the effects of construction due to the Beijing 2008 Games, and the growing number of cars, Beijing has become a place where the color white doesn't exist. Seriously, everything seemed to have a tinge of yellow on it.

We got a cab, and found ourselves stuck in horrendous traffic - at midnight. It took us a good 20 minutes to get out of the airport vincinity, which I thought was ridiculous given the time. They had better do something about it if the city is going to support the Olympic Games in 2008. Finally, after an hour in a taxi, we got to the hotel at 1am. Had to wake up early the next day to meet Allen.