Beijing

Alright, time to dish the info on my time in Beijing!

So I set up a private tour with my family through a company called Bespoke Beijing. We had our own tour guide, Laura, and driver, Liu (who spoke NO English) all to ourselves for 3 days, then another day of planned itinerary, and one more day free. For sake of organization, I will take this one cool sight at a time.

Temple of Heaven

Old men painting Calligraphy 

Now Laura insisted that the only time to see the Temple of Heaven was in the morning, and now I know why. The entrance is park area, and the exit is also a long park area. It was filled with the locals! They were dancing, playing games, writing calligraphy, singing in large groups, knitting etc… It was pretty cool seeing them hang out and socialize like that. It was mostly, though not completely older, retired people… and hey, I wouldn’t mind a retired life looking like that! 

Chinese Chess

The Temple itself was a place where the Emperor would come and pray for things like good harvest. The entire area is built with a square wall, and an entirely circular inside… that is to symbolize the earth, being the square, and the heavens, represented by the circle. Once you enter the circle, you are dealing with heavenly stuff (hence the prayer and sacrifice that took place there). *side note* The ancient Chinese money, the circular coin with a square piece cut out, represents the opposite of the Temple of Heaven; the square representing the earth and the people, surrounded by the heavens. 

Anyway, the exit to the Temple of Heaven is this really long corridor type of thing… apparently the longest covered one or some weird record like that. The entire thing was intricately painted with detailed murals of old stories… some of which Laura stopped to tell us about. 

Tiananmen Square

Well, I have been to Tiananmen Square. To be honest, it was interesting being there, but otherwise I have nothing much to say about the place. We just walked around a bit and in general headed towards the Forbidden City… which took a little longer than planned because we had to stop and take pictures with Asian families who wanted their photos with us. One lady even pushed her baby into my mom’s arms and made us all stand around them for a picture. That kind of thing happened pretty regularly.

Forbidden City 

Every building the Emperor stays in has these.

The Forbidden City was…amazing. The roofs are almost all gold colored… the color of the emperor. The place was pretty big! The emperor stayed in the Forbidden City during the winter, and in the Summer palace during the… yep, you guessed it!... the Summer. Again, the amount of detail on each and every building in the place. What you might not realize… none of these structures are built with even one nail! Anyway, the entire area is decorated with dragons, the symbol of the emperor, and phoenixes, the symbol of the empress. 

Also, the first huge courtyard area has absolutely no trees what so ever to guard against possible assassins. For the same reason, the Emperor had 15 layers of bricks beneath the ground layer that we walked on… except that is not just for the entrance courtyard, but the entire grounds! Off course in the back of the Forbidden City, they had an entire garden for the Emperor and his children to enjoy… so I guess they weren’t worried about assassins there? 

Olympic Buildings

Of course we also went to see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. So exciting! The Bird’s Nest was HUGE!!! I mean, I knew it was huge, but at the same time, it was so much larger than I had thought it would be!!

The Great Wall

This is how slanted one section was. haha

Alright, alright… The Great Wall. Awesome. We rode about 2 hours outside of Beijing to get to a more remote section of the wall… get away from those obnoxious tourists! Lol Anyway, this section of the wall has not been redone in most parts, so we were walking for about 3 hours along the original thing! Let me just say that some parts were STEEP! It was really cool getting to see the wall… it stretches all along the tops of these mountains, and as you drive up you’re thinking: “Oh my gosh… there is no way this is possible!” Discussing the length of the original wall is a bit complicated… but if you were to stretch it out straight, it would be greater than the width of the US from Miami to California! 

Summer Palace

Huge lake! All the gold-roofed buildings are part of the Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace (name is self-explanatory) is built beside this huge lake… which actually makes it quite cooler in the whole area. What can I say? More beautiful buildings with amazingly detailed designs and painting, more fun pictures with the traveling Chinese tourists.

Lama Temple

Yay more temples! 

(okay, okay… I might have said that a little sarcastically) haha… it is just that I have been to sooooo many temples! Here, they had the tallest standing Buddha…no pictures allowed, of course! Also… I DID get to see some Lamas :) 

798 District

Made out of folding chairs!

lol Cookie-cutter Asian!

Now this is a cool little part of town that many don’t know much about. It is a place that used to have a bunch of factories, now they aren’t operational, so a bunch of younger modern artists moved in. It is full of modern art galleries and interesting statues and sculptures around the streets.

One of the galleries we went in had a room with 4 blank walls where a huge David Bowie was broadcast on the walls with his blasting music… a version of one of his songs that the artist interpreted as Modern Art. (I admit I am not a pro on the subject, I mostly just wanted to go for the street art!)

Hutongs

Do you guys know what Hutongs are?... I didn’t. They are alleys, basically. Off of the alleys, there are Courtyards with surrounding rooms. Each of the rooms is occupied by a different family, sometimes shared by families. There are also small kitchens, which they often share, and no bathrooms! Outside in the alley… the Hutong, there are public restrooms which everyone uses. Obviously I didn’t get the chance to see the men’s restroom… but I did glance into one of the women’s… and I now understand why many older women seem to have an aversion to doors in bathrooms… there are none in the Hutong bathrooms! So anyway… thousands and thousands of people live in these in China. Some have been remodeled a bit, some have not.

It is really unbelievable when you think of a nation which has been moving forward so quickly, can still be stuck in such a backwards practice! I mean some of the Hutongs seem clean enough, despite the lack of personal room or anything else that we might consider “normal” but some are serious dumps.

We took a rickshaw ride through one Hutong area, and went shopping in some of the other ones which have becoming local shopping streets.

Night market

One of the famous sights in Beijing is the Night Market. It is not huge or anything, but it is a long row of hawker-type stands selling all sorts of goodies… of course, what “goodies” are is up to the individual, I souse. I would define “goodies” as the yummy fruit and toffee-covered snacks… my brother, however, chose to define “goodies” as scorpions, sea horses and star fish. Among the list of also available “treats”, though not tried by any of us, were water beetles, snake, the private parts of male sheep, centipedes and silk worms! At some of the stands, the bugs were still alive!... well, up until the time that they were cooked. 

Whew! Well those were the highlights of Beijing! I hope you learned a bit more about the places, I guess… and enjoyed the pictures of course!