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Beijing
Entry 30 of 30 | show all | print this entry |
I've been home over a week now...I guess it is time i write this.
We arrived in Beijing by overnight train from Xi An. Our entire time in Beijing was way too rushed, I will definitely have to go back and enjoy it a little more. On our first day in Beijing we had a morning tour of Tienanmen square and the Forbidden city. It was an interesting perspective to hear about Chairman Mao, Tibet and the Tienanmen square massacre from our tour guides. it is a very wide spread feeling (which probably holds quite a bit of truth) that western media has really blown these situations and stories out of proportion. The Forbidden city was massive. I didn't realize that it would be acres upon acres....if i can remember correctly the city was 144 acres in the middle of Beijing. The area was full of Chinese tour groups who were being given a tour of pretty much every square inch of the complex. At one point i had a tour guide stop me and ask if his group could have photos taken of me. within seconds there was a line of couples ready to have their photo taken with a real foreigner in the forbidden city. this was quite hilarious to the rest of my group who stood there laughing and taking their own photos. Later that afternoon we had a cycle tour through Beijing and through the huotong alley ways, which makes up the ancient part of Beijing. i was quite surprised that other than in this one area, most of Beijing is quite open and spacious. it wasn't a crowded feeling city at all. it was also meticulously clean! the subways were spotless and we even saw a group of people cleaning Tienanmen square with toothbrushes. when we asked if this was due to the upcoming Olympics or if it was always clean we were told this was normal.
The next day we headed to the wall. we were starting in Xiangshui, which is a section of the wall closed to the public. there is about 7000-10000km's of wall (depending on what you count as wall and what you don't) and only 6 km are re-constructed. most people will only ever see the reconstructed part of the great wall. we got to spend a day and a half on the unreconstructed part of the wall, which as you can imagine after 2000 years needed some work. it was not an easy trek. i expected flat easy going surface and we were still climbing mountains, but this time on a crumbling surface. i was scared of kicking the wrong brick and causing all 7000km's to come crashing down domino style. we had the entire wall to our selves for a day and half and really enjoyed it. then we came to the reconstructed part. after a day and a half of hiking through steep, perilous and overgrown conditions, we weren't the prettiest looking things to come climbing out of the shrub and over a "danger, no admittance" sign. we were welcomed by tourists who were dressed to the nines for their 1 hour wall walk. they were starting at us like we were aliens. it was quite funny. several of them took their cameras out to take pictures of us climbing up from the 'wreckage'. we were quite angry to see 'our wall' taken over by so many people.
I think the best part of the wall was being able to take a tobaggon ride down from it! there are wheeled carts on a stainless steel race track that you ride down from the wall. it was awesome, and probably the highlight of the reconstructed part of the wall.
We loaded back onto a bus to head back to Beijing for our final night together at a Mongolian restaurant. which was an amazing meal, but we could have lived without the loud Mongolian serenade that it was accompanied by. it was very sad to say goodbye to my group, but even sadder to say goodbye to my vacation. i had a looonnngg flight home with too many stopovers....but I'm happy to be back in Canada... for now.
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