Beijing Beginnings

Finally, the journey began with my arrival in the soon-to-be capital of the world. Beijing although not officially part of the “classic” Trans-Siberian route (Moscow-Vladivostok), was my starting point, and being that this “tourist” version of the world’s most famous railway still travels some 8000km (including some 6000km trans Siberia), I consider it mere semantics. In fact, being that it was going to take 7 full days of train travel to complete the short version via Mongolia, I came to appreciate my choice even further, particularly when I was 2 days into a 4-day continuous stretch on a sweaty, smelly Russian carriage… But more of that later.

Beijing is massive. This becomes readily apparent when you start walking to your hotel, which, whilst appearing to be quite close to the Forbidden City on my tourist map, is actually quite a ways to walk. Particularly when carrying all one’s luggage and it’s raining. The folly of my judgement of scale came about due to the tiny dot-like nature of the Forbidden City in map form, and it’s frickin’ enormous city-like nature in reality form.

The forbidden city. Much bigger than it looks on the map.

Thankfully the greeting shower I received did help to clear Beijing’s most infamous feature, the all-consuming smog, for a few days at least whilst I was there, but that was the extent of my fortuitous timing. With less than 4 days in China, I was only ever going to be able to include the big hits, namely the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, and so it was that I found myself trying to squeeze in the two most popular tourist attractions, in the most populous nation in the world, in summer, during the school holidays, on a weekend… Needless to say, it was busy.

Chinese like their umbrellas. Rain, hail, or especially shine. Very dangerous for anyone over 5'8".

For the uninitiated, the Forbidden City is the old palace built during the Ming dynasty that served as the centre of Chinese politics for some 500 years up until the establishment of the Republic of China in 1912. As alluded to earlier, it’s frickin’ huge. Despite being a palace, it’s literally about the size of a city, measuring nearly a km in both directions (this was represented by a very small square on my map…) Surprisingly enough it was called the forbidden city as it was forbidden for any commoner to enter unless you were a eunuch member of the royal guards. Probably not worth it in my opinion. I mean, it was good, but…

Inside the Forbidden City. How times have changed... Now they let any riff-raff in.

Not to big myself up, but I reckon I would have been challenging for the other most popular tourist attraction that day, at least amongst the Chinese. I don’t know how many random photo albums or mantlepieces I’ll be appearing on as I lost count of how many families wanted their picture taken with the blonde dude. And it was snowball effect; stop for one, and suddenly every passer-by wanted a piece of the action.

Tiananmen square celebrating 90 years of the communist party in China. Not a tank to be seen.

My charms weren’t limited to snap-happy locals either, I had my fair share of ladies approaching my under the auspices of “practicing English” (nudge, nudge) or “sharing a cup of tea” (wink, wink). Although come to think of it, $50 for a cup of tea does seem a little expensive.  I had heard of some other poor schmucks that had been taken for a ride by some ladies who were only talking to them to scam some money, but my girl was really into me I could tell.  Must have just been a really classy establishment.

Guess...

Next up was the Great Wall. Thankfully considering the peak nature of my timing, the vast majority of tourists hit up the most proximate section of the wall to Beijing rather than the region I undertook a tour to, which was a little bit more out-of-the-way. So much so that our driver got lost en route. I can only imagine the conversation he had when stopping in the middle of seemingly nowhere to enquire with several farmers and ox herders along the way…

“Hey, I’m looking for the Wall.”

“Which wall?”

“The Great Wall. You know, of China. About yay big, and really long”.

“Oh yeah. That one. I think it’s over there, beyond them hills, through that paddock, and over that dry creekbed.”

“There isn’t a highway or road at least that takes you straight there?”

“You'd have thought so.”

We did get there however, and it was well worth the 3hr detour through some stunning countryside. The wall was built during several stages over thousands of years (as is understandable when you get a close-up appreciation of just how monumental it all is) but its most durable and robust sections were built by the Ming Dynasty to repel the Mongolians, whom incidentally they had driven out from the capital that Kublai Khan (Ghenghis’ grandson) had founded, Khan-Baliq, which is today none other than Beijing. (Thanks handy trip-info pack!!).

My group did a 6km portion which was a fair workout on slopes like these. Makes you feel pretty small however considering we covered less than 0.1% of the total in the best part of an afternoon...

I’m not sure how successful it was however, as particularly when you see the incredible terrain any barbarian hordes would have to travel thousands of kilometres over, I’m not sure how much resistance a 4m high wall would have provided… (“Well that’s torn it. Alright lads, back to Mongolia and quit your grumbling”). As can be imagined, trying to maintain an 8000km frontier proved difficult, as in the end, it took only one bribed sentry to open the gates and bring about the end of the Ming dynasty.

Awesome day for it. No smog.

Incidentally, on the topic of scale, it is complete garbage that you can see it from space. I have no idea how or why that myth persists, but according to wiki, if you were standing on the moon, it is the equivalent of a identifying a human hair from 3.2 km away… you would need some 17000 times better than 20/20 vision to spot it. Yet I still learnt it in school…

Despite it’s huge size, Beijing is generally easy to get around particularly if using the modern world-class metro (which is ALWAYS packed in my experience). Not so much if you’re walking however, particularly if you start wandering around the old hutongs, or small alleys that are located all around the city centre. It’s a really nice feature to have such historical remnants of the old city with their traditional ways, and it’s great escape from the mega-buildings littered throughout the rest of the city. Of course it’s really nice until you get lost for 2 hours in stifling heat and smog. It’s a frickin’ maze in there and forget trying to ask for directions.

Typical Hutong

Another great escape is the Summer Palace, a huge expanse of man-made lakes and gardens that feels a world away from the masses of humanity right outside. The huge lake was entirely excavated by hand and the reclaimed earth was used to build the hill upon which the palace is built. Ah, what can be achieved with vast amounts of expendable labour. The smog and haze had come back with a vengeance by this time unfortunately…

Smog. With the Summer Palace in there somewhere...

They get pretty specific with there temple assignments in the Summer Palace... This was my favourite, the "Temple of Timely Rains and Extensive Moisture".

I have to mention the Chinglish signs. I’m not sure what it’s like in other parts of China, but in Beijing perhaps as part of the preparation for the Olympics, it’s generally easy to get your bearings (hutongs aside) as all the major road signs are in English, even if very few speak any English at all. But seriously, if you go to that much effort, surely you could get an advisor to do a quick once-over before putting them in place (i.e. looks great, but who are the boncos?). Some really creative advertising on the metro however, there are television screens along all the tunnels that flash images in sync as you fly by so as when you look out the window at appears as movie reel of advertisements.

Couldn't have been too hard to do a spell check surely...

You wouldn’t be in Asia without some pretty funky and out-there food stalls and Beijing’s certainly offers some pretty creepy cuisine. Beetles, scorpions of varying sizes, sharks on a stick (i.e. literally, a boiled shark on a stick), horse, and of course dog… Snake was about as out there as I got, which you guessed it, tastes like chicken…

Some of the many and colourful food stalls.

I took it as a sign of China’s continued economic growth and newfound prosperity that very little bargaining seems to take place at the stalls I frequented. If they didn’t like the price I offered, that was it. Begone with you.

Beijing Railway Station, my departure point.

Of course if fried house pets don’t appeal, you can always visit McDonalds, and you have quite the choice of outlets. I counted over 120 on my McDonald’s sponsored map of Beijing. In some places I could see four from where I standing. As they say here in China, a journey of 5000 miles starts with a single sausage mcmuffin, and so with 2 consumed for good measure at one of the multiple Beijing Railway Station McD’s, I headed onto the platform to find my home for the next few days.

All good journeys start with a Maccas breakfast...

Next stop, Mongolia!

The Trans-Mongolian!!