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.