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Day 1
Tuesday Feb 6
Arrived
in Beijing around 10 PM about 2 hours late. Customs & baggage
went like clockwork & we were met by our son & his fiancée.
He has been in Beijing for 3 weeks & she was on holidays from her new
job at a big US accounting firm in Beijing. They were technically
married less than a week before our arrival but that was government
office deal in Shijiazhuang. I dare you to try to say that
btw. Of course, the
public marriage was the reason for our trip. We poured into 2
taxis - they are very small in Beijing - for the late-night 20 minute
ride to their condo on Xi Dawang Rd in Southern Chaoyang, 2 big blocks
south of Chang'an & its handy subway stop as well as its Soho office
tower & mini-mall. Less than 100 RMB with toll charge.
And NO TIP! We drop the bags & doubled back to the Soho to a
cheap noodle place for a late dinner. I don't even remember what I
ate or the name etc due to the 24 hour travel day. During the walk
back to the condo, we really notice a strange vaguely familiar
smell. We first smelled it at the airport, but it's
everywhere. Hmmm. Smells like something industrial.
Oh. That's pollution. From coal heating.
Klunk.
(The sound of my head hitting the pillow).
Day 2
Wednesday Feb 7
We leap
up full of energy . . . well, B & I do anyway. But horror of
horrors, they don't have coffee. Or a coffee maker. Argggh.
We slink around the corner to an upscale coffee shop to feed our
habit. Festooned with couches & stuffed chairs this place is
seriously up market. And seriously expensive, as we dole out 80
RMB per coffee. It was good, but not that good. And it was
beside a barbershop which more often than not will offer men other
'services' besides a haircut from what we're told. Ècaffé
European Italian Royal Coffee. Search out a Starbucks instead
. . .
We
finally roust the younguns & head toward the Forbidden City
on a cool (high 7C) misty day. We stop at the McDonald's on
Wangfujing for lunch on the way. McDonald's? I know, I know,
but they insisted that it was better than at home. It
wasn't. Then after grabbing the obligatory candied strawberries on
a stick, we made our way to the Forbidden City. We skipped
the 1st ticket booth inside which only gets you up the Tian'anmen
Gate. We got the right tickets at the next set of booths but
skipped the audio tour things. We decided we didn't need to know
every building & its history & preferred to meander at
will. My pre-trip reading + guidebook always seems to fill in the
historical blanks sufficiently. We spent the next 3 hours just wandering
around this massive sight. Through its miscellaneous gates &
buildings & gardens it is a great place to just explore. Along
the way, we ran across an exhibit of Imperial jewelry which was very
nice to see. Unfortunately, several of the main palaces were
shrouded & closed for renovations. I guess they want them beautified
for the 2008 coming out extravaganza. That just gives us a good
excuse to come back sometime.
It is a
truly astounding place.
We
wandered out back - north gate - near closing & found that taxis
can't stop on the road behind the palace. We finally get one on a
side street with a good day of touristing under our belts. Dinner
was at Xiaba Xiaba (another suggestion from the besotted couple)
a hotpot restaurant franchise geared to twenty somethings. The
staff yell greetings & farewells to every diner coming & going,
so it's not a quiet place. Hotpot is popular in China. You
order multiple plates of thin, frozen rolled meats & various veggies
& boil them in broth in your own bubbling pot on a hotplate.
Your plate is a bowl of peanut sauce. Not expensive, but I don't
remember the price.
Day 2
Notes:
No
tipping
Pedestrians beware
Just say boo & wave the hawkers away
You better know how to use chopsticks
Don't drink the water - even hotel tap water is not potable
Taxis are cheap & always seem to be available
Always have the destination address written in Chinese for taxis
Scratch the bar on the top of your restaurant bill & you can win
money (the other bar is a tax code)
Day 3
Thursday Feb 8
7:30 AM
finds the 4 of us piling into a van on our way to see the Great Wall
at Badaling. A bit brighter day but just as cool.
Another day for the long underwear & this time I brought my gloves -
a good thing as it turned out. While I had been leaning towards Muianyu from
my research, my daughter-in-law had arranged this one through her
mother, who has a good travel agent in China. 160 RMB pp. Only one other
couple came along, a pleasant English Sri Lankan couple just fresh from
touring Australia. Driving north, we pass the Yonghe Gong
Tibetan Lama Temple as well as a colorful collection of stores &
homes. In the northern suburbs we pass the site of the 2008
Olympic games. For a square mile around, everything is under
construction. Event venues, condos & more condos are being
slapped up to host the event. The guide promises us that we will
come back later in the day.
A
pleasant drive into the country brings us to our 1st stop, the Ming tomb
of Chang Ling. You approach along a narrow road with a
line of poplars (poplars are the ubiquitous tree of China it would seem,
since they also plant them along every highway). The tomb area is
quite lovely, surrounded by big hills/small mountains. Since it
was cold & off-season, the massive bus parking lots were empty, but
I can imagine in peak times this is not the case. The Chang
Ling tomb is unexcavated - or at least inaccessible to us mortals,
but the grounds are nice with several buildings to scramble
around. Our guide kept rambling on about the dos & don'ts of
the era & virtually everything ended with having your head cut
off. Fun times. I kept looking over my shoulder for sword-wielding
executioner-type dudes.
Then, of
course, it was down the road to a jade factory. Then another 20
minute drive to a government run eatery & cloisonné factory.
This is where the tour companies & your friendly & helpful guide
make money. You get a brief walk-through of whatever they're
making & then you move on to the showroom. Well-dressed,
English-speaking salespeople latch on to every loose person &
attempt to insert a vacuum in your wallet. RESIST! While the
factory tours are mildly interesting, the hard close techniques in the
showroom get irritating. The goods seem to be high quality &
the prices are just stupid. I watched a particularly unfriendly
couple from Texas buying big in the cloisonné factory. The
manager was hauled over to do the close. And of course they are
giving you their 'best price' which will be double or triple what you
will pay in the Beijing hutongs or markets for the same goods. We
compared. You have been warned.
After
this rigmarole, we finally wound our way to the Great Wall.
You first see it from the highway around Juyuon Guan as you drive
into the mountains. The appropriate ohs & ahs resounded in our
van. Fifteen minutes later we pulled into the Badaling Great
Wall parking area. Again, we were thankful for our winter
visit with only a smattering of buses & vans. It was
cold. We broke out gloves & hats - especially after one of the
hawkers snuck up behind me & plunked a fake bearskin style hat on my
irritated head as I was fumbling in my bag for my good ole Canadian toque.
The hawkers here were particularly hungry & they would come running
out of their huddles to hit on us as we 'ran the gauntlet' to get to the
ride up. There was even a wooden bear den for the usually dorky
photo shots. We paid an extra 60 RMB for the tram ride up &
down & even though it was pretty hokey, it was so damn cold we were glad
we did. Up on the wall, a fierce Mongolian wind was blowing.
This certainly didn't encourage a nice leisurely stroll despite the
sunshine. Small patches of snow were visible in hidden corners
too. The Great Wall is, of course, great. After only
20 or 30 minutes & one watchtower, we had all had enough of the
bitter weather & opted to head to the warm van. Thankfully the
British couple readily agreed. On the way down, the hawkers were
even more aggressive as they watched our tourist dollars walking
away. No "I've Been the Great Wall' T-shirts were sold to us
that day. My son came up with a plan for the hawkers. When
they won't take no for an answer, just keep offering 1 Yuan. For
anything. T-shirt - 1 Yuan. Snow leopard skin - 1
Yuan. Jade carving that's really just a cheap fake anyway - 1 Yuan. Just keep
walking & offering 1 Yuan. They'll get the hint.
But the Great
Wall was certainly a highlight.
Back in
the van, we wound our way over a twisty road & back to the highway
for the trek back to Beijing. True to his word, our guide took us
back thru the Olympic area but our destination was a silk factory.
Time for another wallet-suckage attempt. We got the story - 1 worm
or 2 for you, madam? Then the sales floor. We did some
dickering with them but ended up passing on a 5000 RMB offer for king
with cover & pillowcases. More on this in my Xi'an
segment.
All in
all, it was another great day of touristing. If I were to do it again,
I think I'd just arrange a cab. There were taxis waiting at Badaling
so it is doable if you can overcome the language bit. I would
agree with many posters that Badaling would be a circus in prime
season - it had all of the hoopla albeit frozen hoopla - so Mutianyu
might be a better choice. I don't know. We went when we went
where we went.
We
quickly checked into our hotel & then trudged over to a local
Carrefour supermarket/everything store for some supplies.
Yikes. Now this place was a serious zoo. It was
packed. If you're Canadian, think Boxing Day X3. Ditto for
Americans & Black Friday. Wall to wall, cart to cart shopping
in high gear. All ages, all talking at once. I couldn't
escape fast enough. The same place also had a Bread Talk - Chinese
boutique bakery chain - and a Pizza Hut which we sampled in Beijing
Redux. More on that later. Btw one great thing Beijing
has, in some areas, is footpaths over busy roads. These allow you
to cross mid-block & they're also much safer than crossing at some
intersections - especially at night. Ditto the tunnels around
Tian'anmem Square.
For
dinner, we decided Beijing duck was our goal. At the insistence of
our daughter-in-law, we skipped all the Guide Book versions & went
to a local chain restaurant called Jin Shan Cheng near the China
World Trade Centre. It was a great choice. The
appetizers were good - fried pumpkin & some eggplant dish - and the
duck was superb. Sliced with style table-side too. Well
worth the piddly 137 RMB we paid for dinner for 4. For those
astute readers, you will note that this is less than we paid for 2
coffees on our 1st morning . . .
Day 3
Friday Feb 9
Now it
was down to the reason for the trip. It was arranged that the
mysterious, well-placed, bride's father would pick us up at
11 AM for the 5 hour drive to Handan for the wedding on
Sunday. He arrived an hour early with a big minivan & a pool driver. So, we packed our bags in the van &
inserted 6 people & set off. We spent the 1st hour driving
around Beijing to find a suitable welcome lunch spot for us. After
an attempt or 2, he settled for one. All of this time he was barking
instructions to the driver or into his cell phone during frequent calls. Oh, have I
mentioned that the Chinese are cell phone obsessed? Not so
different than anywhere else in the world, I guess. I was very
happy to leave my Blackberry at home in Canada, thank-you. And we
never got around to getting the proper card for my wife's GSM
phone. Somebody always had one we could borrow. And speaking
of phones, I dove into the Yellow Pages at the hotel to look something
up. Silly me . . . they're in Chinese . . .
So, we
had a 'size em up' lunch at some nice restaurant near Beijing
University. Everyone was on their best behavior,
of course. Even our son, the groom, had only met him briefly once
before. We knew the bride's mother was very nice &
approachable, but he was the enigma. He was very gracious. After lunch, we skirted
Beijing on an outer ring road & headed south for the long haul to
Handan. If you are wondering where the subtitle of this ode is
from, this is it. Do Not Drive Tiredly - is a sign on Chinese
highways to discourage accidents. They also have Do Not Drink
& Drive signs. The highways are very good, but trucks lane hog
the left lane which is posted at 120 km/hr. Many cars opt to pass
on the paved right-hand shoulder. We even passed a police car
doing this so it appears to be accepted.
To
continue see Handan.
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