myChinaBlog

22 May 2008

Beijing musings

Posted by Andrew under: 1. Beijing .

Yesterday was our last full day in Beijing and we spent the day visiting the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. The latter was not a Buddhist temple but in fact a way for the emperor to pay homage to the god(s) and prepare sacrifices (such as ox and other animals). Both sites are way larger than the Forbidden City and no less grand.

While flying to Guilin, here are a few of our observations of Beijing:

Smoking is not as prevalent as we thought and even the airport has a smoking room; there are also “green” cabs where smoking is not allowed
Clean streets, dusty hazy skies
- The smog and haze is quite strong but not as sooty and black as I read in other travel bloggers
No one was pushy - the only time we experienced it was at the Temple of Heaven: these three elderly ladies were pushing and talking their way in line though there was only space for two lines. When we got to glimpse the emperor’s chair, turns out they did not even bother to look at the exhibit and continued on walking, talking and pushing …
Still a biking city though the cars do outnumber them but the bikers really pay no mind at all to the cars - our taxi driver had to swerve multiple times to avoid hitting any of them
Apartment complexes are built in sets of at least three duplicate buildings - you often see multiple buildings dotting the skyline
Beijingers are quite free to comment about their government in the open without concern that someone can overhear
Zach will get stares (but the plus is that you are allowed to stare back) and because he has large arms, they want to touch him - one soldier asked if Zach was in the American Army. (Zach asked me to tell him that “he was too old to be in the army.” Sorry but I didn’t learn that in any of my dialogues. I must be using an outdated lesson …) some thought I was Singaporean.
Excellent opportunity to supply toilet paper vending machines!
Learning to bargain from an expert - pay no more than 10% of the starting price
I knew more Chinese than I realized and started to recognize more phrases, though hardly fluent they do seem to understand me. Now if only they’d stop speaking to me in Chinese!
Surprising number of English signage throughout the city, I guess all in prep for the Olympics.
Sharks (boys/men hanging off their male peers), pandas (people with poofy hairdos), scorpions (women with long wisps of hair hanging down from each side of their face to their shoulders)

Funny story, the concierge told us how to take bus #10 to get to the closest train station where we can then travel to another part of the city. After some sightseeing in the central part of Beijing, we see a #10 bus that we can take back the way we came. Once we get on, I tell Zach that we take this bus for another 5 stops to that same train station and ask the bus attendent to let us know when we get there. I’m feeling smug that I was able to “read” (recognize) the bus stops and pinpoint that we were going in the right direction. Zach turns to me and asks, “Why would we get off the #10 bus at the train station to only reboard the same #10 bus to take us back to the hotel?!” D’oh!

Here is a picture of us with Qing, our Beijing guide, and her husband Chen, who drove us to the Commune and back. If anyone needs a guide in Beijing, she was the best and we’ll let you know how to get in touch with her. (When we first heard about the ‘quake and not knowing exactly where it occurred, we e-mailed her to see if she was okay. She had no idea that it had happened until she saw the flood of e-mails in her inbox!)