After arriving in Beijing (and all of us being super excited about being in China for the first time), I was going to the same hostel as J from England, the Austrian J was going somewhere different, and C was going to yet somewhere different. We agreed to check-in to our respective hostels and then meet up.
While waiting for C at the meet-up spot later, we got our “welcome to weird things in Beijing” introduction when a car stopped at the side of the road, a teenage boy got out, stood next to us while his dad (still in the car) took pictures, then they drove away. No words were exchanged. There’s apparently a custom of taking pictures with white people here. Interesting!
We had a lot of fun walking around and seeing signs with bad English, tiny little cars, and mops hanging out to dry everywhere (EVERYWHERE!). We walked through the back streets of the Hutong, saw people playing ping-pong at a park, and went to the “Beijing Times Square” in the evening, where we saw a great rainbow. The Times Square was definitely not as impressive as the one in NYC, though. That’s for sure.
The morning of day 2, we all met up to see Tianenmen Square, the mausoleum of Mao Zedong’s preserved body, and the forbidden city. At the first building in the forbidden city, we followed the “no cameras, no bags” signs and checked in our stuff. We were the only ones. People had professional-type cameras, and the guards said nothing, so we kept our cameras for all of the remaining sites. There are numerous buildings and temples in the forbidden city, and we couldn’t see all of them, but the complex was really incredible. You could spend an entire day there and not see everything.
After exiting the forbidden city and getting lunch, we followed the crowds to Jingshan Park, where you can climb the hill to a Buddhist temple with incredible views out over the city and looking down into the forbidden city complex. It’s also the park where one of the former emperors apparently hung himself, so there’s an interesting sign at the spot.
For dinner in the evening, we went to the famous Wangfujing night market, where there are all kinds of weird foods for sale. Our adventurous Brit ate some deep-fried scorpions. Gross. We wandered into this weird area with lots of tables surrounded by numerous restaurants, and the owners are yelling for everyone to eat here/don’t eat there/etc. It was comedic and intense and actually off-putting, but we ate at one of them, anyway. The food was mediocre, and we definitely got ripped-off on the drinks, because the drink part of the menu was only in Chinese. I paid over $10 US for a pot of mediocre green tea, and I drank every last drop of it, after I found out the price.
A group of Chinese girls sat at the table next to us and kept taking pictures & videos of us, asking if they could be in a picture with us, “oh…you so tall…” and other interesting moments. It’s comedic, if you forget the offensive/racist part that people are staring at someone for the color of their skin. However, we let it roll off our backs and smiled/waved at them.
After dinner, we walked through the market some more and stumbled onto one of the most incredible experiences: Chinese adults dancing in public spaces in the evenings. According to our hostel employees, this is totally normal and happens almost daily. We found a square outside of the Wangfujing Cathedral divided into sections, with people practicing different types of dancing in each section. There was breakdancing, country line dancing, ballroom dancing, traditional Chinese, and techno. We even joined the line dancing group for a bit, which people loved, and there was quite a crowd watching us. It was hilarious. 75 year-old grandmas were giving it 100% at some of these dances, and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life.
On day 3, we went to the Great Wall, which really was great. After coming back in the evening, we ventured into this restaurant near the hostel, and neither we nor the staff will ever forget how much we embarrassed ourselves there. We didn’t know about “hot pot,” so we ordered food like it was a typical menu. Everything comes out shared, so the waitress arrived with plates of everything we’d ordered, produces pots of boiling water, and starts dividing everything equally—whether you’d asked for potatoes or not, some went into your pot. After we sorted out getting what we did/didn’t want into our respective bowls (hand gestures were the language), the waitress mixes up some peanut sauce, takes a piece of tofu out of my pot, and puts it in the sauce, then hands me the bowl. I didn’t know what was happening, so I thought she was marinating my food. I took the tofu out, put it back in the soup that was boiling, thinking these things weren’t done cooking yet. The waitress actually laughed, right in my face, then gestured that I was supposed to eat it. OK, I didn’t know. After we got things sorted and managed to start eating, the entire staff watched us, just waiting for those “crazy white people” to do something else stupid. Lesson learned: we ate hot pot and will now avoid walking past this restaurant, due to utter shame.
After dinner, Austrian J & C were booked on the same train to Xi’an (where the Terra Cotta Warriors are), which is just another example of how many times you wind up running into the same people on a trip. They went to the train station for their overnight train, and I walked around this fancy, rich area of town with British J, where we saw everything from Prada & Tiffany stores to people driving Ferraris.
On day 4, J and I ventured out to the southeast part of the city and saw the Temple of the Sun, a strange Russian neighborhood (all signs in Russian, numerous fur stores), and a large portion of the foreign embassies. For lunch, we were struggling to find a place with an English menu, and we ran into a small café in a nearby mall, where you pick your own food off of a buffet, then they cook it for you in a noodle/soup bowl. This was great (and cheap!), since the language didn’t matter while picking whatever we liked. There was also a Wal-Mart nearby, which was super weird, but also fitting, since everything at Wal-Mart is made in China.
After lunch, we went to the Temple of Heaven and the famous Pearl Market, both of which we found over-hyped.
When we returned to our room, a French girl had checked in, and we invited her to dinner with us at a noodle shop we’d been eyeing next to the subway entrance. Despite English names for dishes on the menu, there were no descriptions, but a Chinese-speaking American girl at the table next to us really helped us out, and this restaurant became a staple in the rest of our time in Beijing. It was dirt cheap, delicious, and the portions were huge.
Outside the subway stop/noodle shop, we ran into more elderly people dancing to techno and watched this for a while. Just unreal.
On day 5, J & I slept in (first time in a while!) then ventured to Bihei Park (an exclusive park only for the royal family, who had it built), then the Drum Tower & Bell Tower (we watched a drum show, which was super amazing), and then ventured to the Lama Temple. This is definitely the best temple in Beijing, and we decided that there would be “no more temples” on our itinerary after this. 1-they’re starting to look the same, 2-this was the best one, so going to others was now pointless. There were a LOT of people at this temple, and not just tourists taking pictures. There were monks singing, people praying, and people lighting a lot of really powerful incense.
We went back to the noodle shop for dinner and then met up in the evening with 2 Swedish guys who had been on part of the Trans-Mongolian train with J. They wanted to explore some bars, and I figured I’d tag along. We wound up at a Belgian bar, and I assumed “Belgians like fries” and asked for the food menu. I not only had fries but also ordered the “vegan pizza” on the menu. Awesome! We then wound up at a fancy rooftop bar that was extremely posh & expensive, so we left and went to a nearby nightclub to dance until about 2:30am. It was full of tourists and expats, with less than 20% locals, so it was definitely a strange experience.
The high point (or low point) of the night was trying to get a taxi back to the hostel with J, since the subway was closed for the night. After struggling to explain to the driver where we needed to go, the driver & I agreed on a price: 50 yuan (about $7 US). J, who had been drinking a lot, blurted out, “No way! No more than 70 yuan.” Our price just went up by 20 yuan. We managed to get back to the hostel in one piece, though, and I figured that our plans for the next day were shot, because J would be sleeping off his alcohol.
I was right. I spent most of day 6 solo and went to the “Vegan Hut” for lunch, finally finding some dumplings without meet in them. After lunch, I went back to the hostel to check on J (still sleeping) and do research for the next stops on my itinerary (which is being made up as I go). In the evening, Austrian J walked into our hostel, having returned from Xi’an, and accompanied by a Russian girl he’d met along the way. I roused British J, and we all went to the noodle shop for dinner. After the Russian girl left, we watched “Queen Live in Budapest, 1986” on TV at the hostel until midnight, which was a very surreal experience. Is this my life?
On day 7, I had a meeting for my next stop: North Korea. The tour group discussed the ins & outs of the upcoming trip and got everyone prepared. After that, I ran some errands for snacks & gifts for our guides in North Korea (they may say “Death to America,” but we were told that the best gift to bring is American cigarettes) before meeting up with everyone in the famous 798 art district, which is housed in abandoned factories reclaimed by artists in the late 70s and early 80s. This area was obviously trendy & expensive, but it was also super cool, and I really liked it. We tried getting dinner there, but this café advertising “unending potatoes” turned out to be just a really bad translation, and it was the equivalent to a small order of fries, so it was less than filling.
After C, the Russian girl, went her separate way, I went with J & J back to the night markets, because they wanted to try eating some more deep-fried bugs, and I got some great steamed sweet potato dumplings. Delicious!
After packing and getting everything set for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (full name of North Korea) and double-checking that I have my visa + my exit card for China, it’s bed time.
Next stop: North Korea, country #77!
