GO Asia 2007! Part 3: Beijing, China

Day 1 Beijing - Welcome to Beijing 北京歡迎你！

This may seem crazy logistically, but financially it all made sense.

Seoul -> Hong Kong -> Beijing -> Hong Kong

We actually arrived back into Hong Kong around midnight from Seoul, and only had about 4-5 hours before meeting the tour group for Beijing. (Around 5 or 6am in the morning) Being the budget conscious young travellers that we were...we decided to spend those early hours in the morning camped out at Hong Kong airport. Yep, we 'tried' to sleep unsuccessfully at the airport! Looking back now, it was quite the experience. We ventured into the quieter and newer T3 in hope of getting some snooze. Yep the terminal was quiet (from people) and empty alright...it was also extremely bright, not to mention the occasional construction noise that occurred sporadically, which of course helped with our attempts to sleep (not!) Anyway, here are some photos to prove I'm not making this up! Quite the experience, blog-worthy indeed.

Cindy's attempt to sleep. I was no different...I really don't know how we managed those 4 hours.

The minute we boarded the Air China plane to Beijing...both Cindy and myself fell right asleep!! Never did a plane flight feel so comfy (or non-existent)! Just wish I can one day find the best method to sleep on long-haul flights...as I never have a problem with the shorter trips!

Air China plane with Qantas in the photo...Australia-China relations are fab

Once we arrived into Beijing Airport, we met our tour guide, a Beijing local that works for this Hong Kong tour company. For some strange reason, her Cantonese was so much more understandable for me!! I think its because she spoke much slower...so maybe my Cantonese understanding isn't so bad as long as people speak slowly?!

In a very efficient manner, the team leader and tour guide managed to shuffle this very large tour group (around 40 people, our coach was completely full) onto our coach and started heading towards Beijing City itself, I was overcome with sheer delight and excitement. Since my childhood I've been wanting to visit this grand city. In fact, I didn't understand why my mother never took us to China when our family lived in Taiwan? It would have made more sense than to take a 5 year old and 9 year old all the way to Europe for a holiday! So I digress, why is Beijing the city of my dreams? Beijing is THE capital of the long running Ming & Qing dynasty; home of the Forbidden City; the Great Wall of China! It's also the one city where palaces from two dynasties lived. Now if you understand Chinese history, that is amazing. Usually the demise and end of a dynasty meant that the palaces they built were burnt to the ground. (Hence you don't find palaces from the Tang or Song dynasties anywhere) The fact that the Forbidden Palace still exists after around 500 years is to me, a miracle! All those TV shows I've seen that are set in Beijing, the history books I've read about the 'middle kingdom' were finally going to come to life!

First Impressions? Beijing is BIG! Yes I know it's a city with a huge population of 13 million people. But Beijing is big on a grand scale. Unlike Hong Kong where buildings are tall, the buildings in Beijing are just BIG...they are broad, they don't go up high like the skyscrapers of other Asian cities. Also, there were HEAPS of construction going on at the time in preparation for the Beijing Olympics. (And I suspect just more and more...)

My first photo ever of Beijing...cars getting through the very ancient and fancy looking toll-gates

The weather was also quite warm on our first day. So warm I was suffering in the double layered pants I chose to wear for the day! (It was advised by the really nice people from the Seoul trip, whom almost took pity on the lack of warm clothes we brought for ourselves) And, get this, we had CLEAR BLUE SKIES! (Prayers do work...I highly recommend praying for good weather before going on holidays!) I wasn't expecting that at all, especially with all the construction going on and having heard from numerous people that the pollution in China generally is bad.

I'm not lying about blue skies!

One of the first things we did was eat lunch...I had a beef rice dish (牛肉飯) with 油條 and 豆槳, at some place in Beijing. I thought it was a strange thing to eat in 'Beijing' as it reminded me of a typical meal in Taiwan! I didn't think Northern Chinese cuisine consisted of food like this, but at least it was recommended by our tour guide. And it was indeed yummy and cheap!

My 牛肉飯 lunch

Customary photo of me with the lunch (so asian!)

Once we fed ourselves (something I really needed) we visited one of the symbols of Beijing - The Temple of Heaven 天壇.

Now this is where being an avid reader of Chinese history finally came into good use (especially since the tour was in Cantonese). The Temple of Heaven was constructed during the Ming dynasty (constructed in 1420, and different parts were rebuilt in during the 18th century) as the stage for the 'Son of Heaven' aka Emperor to perform rites and pray for a good harvest. The design of the temple is based deeply on the Chinese beliefs of heaven and the universe. If you are to view the Temple of Heaven from above, one will notice that the temple halls are round and the base is square, symbolising heaven and earth. The most photographed feature of the entire complex is the 'Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests' (祈年殿). This is how the ingenious Chinese built imperial structures - they managed to build a triple-gabled circular building, 32 metres in diameter and 38 metres tall, built on three levels of marble stone base, completely wooden with no nails. Now that's amazing! And it still stand to this day!

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests - look how colourful the building is...and the blue skies

The Chinese also believed that 9 is a heavenly number, as well as the representing the Emperor - hence the Circular Mound Altar (圜丘坛) which consists of white marble arrayed in 3 tiers is revolved around the number 9. A single round marmor plate is surrounded by a ring of nine plates, then a ring of 18 plates, and so on for a total of nine surrounding rings, the outermost having 9×9 plates.

I was loving Beijing at this point and this way only the first major landmark we visited.

Next was our first shopping stop in Beijing. It was more like free time just before dinner. The bus dropped us all off in this modern shopping complex. Now this is not the basement bargain shopping, this was high class shopping. I was really shopped out from Korea so looking at over-priced (for China) clothes didn't really appeal to me. So Cindy and myself simply looked in marvel at how 'modern' Beijing is fast becoming. It is definitely not trying to lose 'face' to its younger and hipper sibling Shanghai with major shopping centres like the few we visited!

Modern Beijing

We were then taken to Wangfujing Dajie 王府井大街 for some snack food tasting. It looks extremely touristy from my judgmental Chinese eye, but hey it even looked more hygienic than some places I've been to in Malaysia! Now for those of you that are only familiar with Southern Chinese cuisine, brace yourself whilst at Wangfujing Dajie for some Xinjiang or Muslim Uighur food!! Yes, there's more to Chinese food than sweet and sour pork, way more! Here you do get 'snacks' from almost every province in China. We tried one of the tangbao (soup buns), they actually give you a straw to drink out of it! As well as some of the northern baozi that I love but don't get to eat much of whilst living in Sydney.

Snack food alley of Wangfujing Dajie

Stuffing my face at the snack markets

That was basically the end of our day 1 adventures. Cindy and I were pretty much exhausted from all that we had been through and were so ready to have a nice hot shower and sleep!! Even though our hotel was located way out of Beijing centre, we were treated to a newly constructed 5-star hotel! We had a queen size bed each and a huge bathroom & TV!! Sure it may have been out of Beijing city, but who has the energy to do more exploring? We were soon to discover that unlike our Seoul experience, Beijing was going to tire us up. There was a reason for those huge queen size beds.