There may be 9 million bicycles, but most are electric

Pick of the day: Hutong Public restroom, Beijing (Just north of the Forbidden City)

Beijing is littered with public toilets. They are everywhere, free and generally clean. They often appear to show names and photos of the cleaning staff, maybe in a name and shame way. They often have great little signage; one suggested I step a little closer to the urinal to aid my aim. This one was located in the Hutong (network of alleys) near to where we were staying. There seemed to be people using it from local houses so I can only assume the public restrooms may often be the only restroom…

Style: Squat party

Atmosphere: Communist

Extras: Presumably installed for the more adventurous Chinese is a lovely little western sit.

29/03/13 to 05/04/13 – Beijing

“Welcome back to civilisation”, that was the response of our hostel owner in Beijing when we mentioned we had come over from Mongolia. It wouldn’t take long for the reality of that statement to hit us.

To us this only read "goodbye boiled mutton"

The train ride from Ulaanbaatar was fantastic. We had booked 1^st class due to the thought we might need a reward after 3^rd classing through Russia/it was only £20 more than 2^nd class/I had an ulterior motive. 1^st class is definitely the way to go, with two sharing a cabin which in 2^nd class would house 4, a carriage attendant who doesn’t show openly that she hates you being there and a shared loo with the next cabin.

Living the highlife and the first privacy in about 3 weeks!

As we rolled through the Mongolian steppe I finally decided to grow a pair and ask Vi to marry me. Somewhat to my surprise she hadn’t seemed to have seen this coming and after a little moment she said yes. Which was a bit of a relief after a massive outlay on a ring (see photo).

Its an austerity fashion trend

With all the excitement we decided to head to the dining car for a celebration drink where we managed to rustle up enough remaining Tugrug to buy a can of coke each (don’t expect much from this tight fisted wedding).

Beijing was a slap in the face as we walked out of the main railway station, with more people milling about out front than we had come across during the rest of the Trans-mongolian. Taking a taxi alone gave us a preview of the chronic overcrowding in much of china. The queue like much of the queues we have so far experienced seemed down to supply not meeting demand, or in another way, the infrastructure unable to support the population.

Having arrived late afternoon the only thing we had in mind was a slap up Peking duck meal. Crispy duck the chinese way is soooo different to what we recognise at home. Whilst at home it is all about the breast meat, here it’s the crispy fat that makes it. It was a whole new taste sensation and one we repeated again before leaving Beijing.

Our first full day was spent in a fruitless expedition to the Public Security Bureau (PSB) in an attempt to extend our Chinese visas. While entering the building was quite intimidating, as the PSB is sort of like the KGB, the whole thing proved pointless when they stated we had to pay them $3000 each to prove we could afford to stay. We don’t have that much money so no extension. We spent the rest of the day exploring the Lama temple and some Hutongs (alleyways). That night we met up with a fellow trans-mongolian survivor, Paul (www.paulsadventure.com) and headed into Dongcheng night market. This is basically a massive open air food market that sells all the usuals of noodles and dumplings as well as some interesting variants. Notable among them were bats on sticks, centipede kebabs, and barbequed snake/tarantula/cockroach. We only really had the balls to go for mystery meat on sticks and something  that may or may not have been crayfish.

Mystery meat kebabs

These weren't too bad if it hadn't been for the horrid paste they'd added

Day 2: Next up was the Temple of Heaven and market. Beijing has enough sights for a couple of weeks so we thought we would get in the main ones. Initially we’d planned on 5 days in the capital but due to the train being fully booked that was extended to 7days. The Temple of Heaven is actually more of a public gardens with some impressive Buddhist temples and structures about. As with much of what we were to see the scale of buildings and landscaping were impressive. Before heading back to the hostel we had a look in the Pearl Market. This is like a huge department store where each floor has its specialty, with traders having small sections on each floor. This, however, just means that as you walk around a floor you get offered the same tat hundreds of times. We did find, however that the prices are ridiculously inflated. We got offered a kimono for 1000 Yuan (around £100) which we didn’t want and the price as we walked away went down and down until as a joke we offered 60 Yuan (£6) and they accepted. Annoyingly this means we now have a kimono to carry around.

Team shot in the temple of heaven

Signs, endless comedy in china

Day 3: The sun was shining today and for the first time in what has felt like months (including time in the UK) we (well Ben) were able to walk around in just a shirt. Our mission for the day was to tour the Summer Palace, which is a huge complex of gardens, palaces and temple buildings based around a lake. Being such a big site it is at the end of the North West bound metro line. The complex is stunning and varied with a small mock town around a canal, and a cherry blossom lined walkway by the lake. The area makes you feel as if you are in any major western city gardens such as Central park in New York or Sydney as the gardens are fringed by a high rise city skyline. 

The view from the hill in the Summer Palace across the lake to Beijing

Cherry blossom walkway

At least its not a wet hillock

That evening we splashed out on a Sichuan restaurant which did a set menu. God knows what we ate, but bloody hell it was good and bloody hell it was hot (both going in and going out…). The place was called ‘Source’ in Dongcheng, seek it out if you’re ever in the city.

Hot and spicy on the way in and out

Day 4: So this was the big day. THE sight to see in Beijing (within the city at least) is the Forbidden City/Tiannamen Square link up. The forbidden city is essentially a giant walled palace where the Emperor and his government were based. Now open to the world this is the busiest tourist spot in perhaps the whole of China. China has a massive tourist industry with thousands of domestic tourists shipped around the country on organised coach tours. As a foreign tourist this means you share the spot with thousands of usually rural or middle class Chinese from the provinces who have never seen a westerner before. Cue photo time. Whether just a snap from a distance or posing with the mother in law this gets old VERY quickly and though it isn’t meant in a rude way it is a bit grating when you realise its only because you are a bit of a freak. The Forbidden City itself however, was hugely impressive with so much to see you could easily spend a whole day just wandering around marvelling at it all. Tiannamen square was a let down. No men with their shopping facing off with tanks anywhere.

The Forbidden city on a week day and thankfully relatively quiet.

Day 5: Ok so the real big sight is the great wall and it did NOT disappoint. We hit up the Jinshanling section rather than the Chinese coach tour haunt of Badoling in order to get a less crowded and less hawker fuelled trip. The Wall is amazing, though not visible from space, tracing its outline along knife back ridges in either distance is a sight to behold. Go see it, I won’t do it justice.

Steep steps some people felt the need to go hands knees up and down. Ridiculous.

Day 6: As Beijing could be called little china we pencilled in a couple of days to get our bartering on and get some souvenirs here on the cheap. Along with a return to the Pearl market (not for Pearls) we visited the Silk market (not for silk). That evening was duck take 2 with a Finnish couple we met at the wall and some Chinese Acrobatics. As expected that was as impressive as china has proved so far and the Chinese/American audience combo proved more excitable than a 3 year old on an (old) blue Smartie binge. Brilliant.

Duck and Beer. Not mutton.

Day 7: More shopping and an epic pizza with enough leftovers for our overnight train to Pingyao. Incidentally, cruel though it may be, since we have had to get used to eating everything with chopsticks very quickly it was extremely entertaining watching Chinese people try to eat pizza with a knife and fork.  They didn’t seem to get the point of the spiky bit at the end of the fork and mostly tried to use a sideways fork/hand combo to scoop pizza into their mouths. Chinese train classes are structured a little different to Russian. In order of classiness with the best first is Soft Sleeper, Hard Sleeper, Soft Seat, Hard seat. Soft seat is rare and on this and all but one journey we went hard sleeper (more on that next time…). It is basically Russian 3^rd class, open booths but with a 3 bed bunk instead of 2. Darker, generally quieter and with a duvet it’s much better than Russian 3^rd class.

As a result we arrived in Pingyao refreshed and ready for the next section of our journey.