FIRST DAYS IN BEIJING

30 June 2008
BEIJING
Tianamen Square
Forbidden City
Wang Fu Jing and Roast Duck

We arrived in Beijing yesterday morning at 4am! We were due to arrive on 28 June at 11.05PM, but our flight got diverted to Shanghai and the delay was 5 hours. We were told that it was weather conditions and that Beijing decided to close their airport. When we landed, we were told that there was no problems with the weather, but they just decided randomly to shut the airport. How considerate!At the passport control, the guy keept looking at me and at the passport and he did not believe I was the person in the photo! So he called a colleague to look at me and at the photo. I felt so stupid and I was not impressed at 4AM in the morning. The guy also asked Amit to take his glasses off so he could see his face properly. Beijing airport is huge, and supposed to be the biggest one in the world. It is very modern and clean. All set up for the Olympics.We got a taxi to our hostel. We are staying at a place called 9 Dragons House Hostel. In it set in an alleyway called a "Hutong" in the Dongcheng District. We are very central to everything, which is good. We are paying 14 pounds per night for the room which has AC, TV and bathroom. Not bad. We will stay here until the 3rd July.We were so tired that we slept till 1pm and then we had our first eating experience. It is so hard to communicate with people over here. No one speaks English, if they do, it is very very broken. We are no better - we speak no Chinese. We try to teach ourselves some words and sentences, but we are awful at pronouncing the words. We spent about 15 minutes trying to explain what we wanted to eat. The menu was in Chinese, and the waitress was trying hard to explain to us what was on the menu..in Chinese. We sat with the dictionary, trying to pronounce the words, and they made no sense to the waitress. Luckily, we also had the Lonely Planet guide. We showed some sentences to the waitress and she understood a few words. Everything we asked for , they did not have, so we ended up looking at photos on their menu and just picked two photos from there, not knowing what we were actually ordering, as a photo does not always show everything. We ended up with two alright choices. One was a spicy noodle soup and the other was what we would describe as a Chines Paratha. It is like a Giant Paratha of 3 layers stuffed with spring onions and sliced sweet corn. It was good, but really heavy.We can't stop laughing at how hard it is to speak to people here. This is the hardest country to travel for us, and it is an experience and a challenge. We have never had this problem to date and we have been around a bit.
Well, the metro system is quite easy to figure out. Took us 5 minutes to figure our how to operate the ticket machines and the metro is impressive. It is clean and informative. We took the metro into Chongwein, where we spent a few hours in the New World Shopping Mall and had our first Chinese supermarket experience. The fish section has aquariums with live turtles, prawns and fish of all kinds. You just pick the one you want to bye to cook at home. ( I felt so sorry for the turtles, they were trying to get out of the aquarium. ) We were stopped by a girl who wanted to interview us in connection with the Olympics. We gave our answers and then we got a small Chinese present as a THANK YOU. It is a wall hanging. Had food near Chongweng (was over-priced and quite disgusting) and wandered back to our hostel at 9.30PM.

Beijing has 15,2 Million inhabitants and is the most polluted city in the world. You can barely see the sky, it is just full of pollution/smog. Every day you wake up and the sky looks white/grey. You feel the heat but you can't see the sun. It is depressing to look at. They say that if you breathe one day of air in Beijing, it is like smoking 70 cigarettes. Can you believe it! So polluted. What a shame! and this is where the Olympics will take place. I am really missing fresh air. The city is clean on the roads and you don't see as many cars on the roads as we expected. Apparently, the government has limited cars on the roads up until the Olympics are over.
It seems it is common to spit into public bins.

30 June
We only made it to Tiananmen Square (the largest public square in the world), as we spent an hour looking for the recommended Roast Duck restaurant. We had walked the complete wrong direction but still ended up at one of its branches. But it was now 2.45PM and they had just shut until 4.30PM! Great! So we went for a long walk down the Tianamen Square and passed the Mao Mausoleum/Mao Memorial Hall, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the Monument to the People's Heroes and the China National Museum. The square is absolutely massive and has lots of red flags on the middle of it.

1 July

I think we have quickly gotten used to Beijing. We don't take any taxis, just the metro/underground and lots of walking. We went to the Forbidden City today which is so grand and impressive.It was closed to the public for 500 years - hence it is called the Forbidden City. It was the home of two dynasties of emperors - the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. This is where the very Last Emperor of China lived. When you enter, you go through three massive gates before you come to the main entrance to the Forbidden City. It has lots of beautiful buildings in red with roof tops in the colour of gold/yellow with ceilings in green/blue/gold/red. All the roof tops have corners with very small statues of 9 creatures. The first is an emperor riding on some animal followed by eight animal-looking creature - like lions and dragons. When you are in the Forbidden City you just can't comprehend how massive it is. It just goes on and on. At the very end of the Forbidden City, there are pretty gardens with statues and small temple-looking houses. You could spend a day here - we spent 4 hours exploring. There is Hall of Clocks which stores numerous grand, unique clocks/time pieces given as presents to the Emperors. They were made in England, Switzerland, Japan and America. We were in the hall when there were having a clock display of their ring tones. I would not say that it is worth paying 10 Yuan to see this.
After enjoying the Forbidden City, we had lunch at the famous "Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant" off Wangfujing Dajie - which would be the equivalent of Leicester Square. The restaurant looked so posh and the service brilliant. The interior all in red, gold and yellow. The Peking Roast Duck was tasty. Over here the eat it with the skin. First the cut a bit of the skin off and serve it to you, for you to dip it in sugar and eat it. Then they present the meat with the skin on and you roll it into a pancake. There is a certain style in rolling the pancake. And lastly, they present half of the head of the duck with its brain! Amit ate it!
There are lots of shops on Wagfujing Dajie and a whole section just dedicated to the upcoming Olympics. There is the famous little alley the Wanngfujing Snack Street where you get all sorts of meat, octopus, beetles on skewers, roast corn on the cob, coconut juice and stuff that I have no idea what is and would not touch.
Tomorrow, we are off to see the Great Wall of China. Looking forward to it.