Beijing - China for Beginners

After quite a number of kilometres and hours spent in the train I finally left the Trans-Siberian Railway in Beijing. The square in front of the station was packed with people as expected and the sky was bright blue which was unexpected since the smog warning. So after all I didn't need to put on my breathing mask, a pleasant surprise. My hostel was situated pretty central and despite the jumble of Chinese characters I found my way walking there. Just as I turned into the right street a nice Chinese man pointed out the hostel for me I would have passed otherwise unnoticed. Getting help without asking for it was not a thing I had expected to encounter in China. But soon the first problem arose: my previously installed VPN client did not work. Which was rather bad because China does not only censor Facebook, Youtube & co but also everything relating to Google including the Android Playstore (and my Blog!!!). I never thought I would miss to "google" things. Baidu or Yahoo are just not the same and seriously "I'll yahoo it" sounds not as convincing. After all, you can find new acquaintances without Facebook and so I went to dinner with a Swedish and an English guy from my dorm. We found a small local place around the corner where we could order by pointing at the pictures of the food on the walls. (Those are really helpful for ordering without any Chinese language skills.) The owner even took a picture of us eating with his smartphone. That's more how I imagined China...

Back at the hostel we enjoyed the obligatory happy hour (two beers for the price of one) that we came back for every night, never missing it. While drinking my beer I remembered that I had no chance of contacting my friends Arthur and Kirstie without Facebook. We had met in Siberia and by chance they were supposed to arrive at the same day by a ferry from South Korea. At least I had sent them the address of my hostel so everything I could do was wait. To my big surprise they walked into the bar only a few minutes later!!! They had booked the same place to make things easier. To celebrate our reunion we naturally had a few beers more. At midnight we had even more reason to do so, Arthur's birthday, and I could finally hand him the battered can of Baltika beer, that I had miraculously discovered in Ulaanbaatar. (Baltika is our favourite Russian beer.) Since we were all pretty tired from our long journeys we went to bed early. A proper birthday dinner was supposed to be held the next day.

Before dinner we scheduled some sightseeing. We went to one of Beijing's biggest tourist attractions, the Forbidden City north of Tiananmen Square. From its completion in 1420 until 1912 every Chinese emperor ruled the country from there. During that time ordinary people were denied entry to the complex hence the name. The mere size of the whole site was already overwhelming (720.000 m², 890 palaces and a total of 8.886 rooms) in addition there were so many details on and in every building and very elaborate exhibits, mostly gifts that were once presented to the emperors. Supposedly, there were one million slaves and 100.000 artisans involved in construction. During our visit the sky grew darker and darker. One might think that is normal. We thought the same until we noticed that it wasn't clouds or dusk but smog and we could look straight into the afternoon sun. Of course my breathing mask was inaugurated immediately. At 4:30 pm the aisles around us were suddenly filling up with people pushing into the direction of the exit. We felt like a herd of tourist that was shepherded out by guards with megaphones, making sure that no one was left behind and stayed too long. Then a real chaos started as the crowd that streamed through the gates of the Forbidden City met the crowd of street vendors, rickshaw drivers and beggars waiting outside. After walking a few meters we realized that the whole street was lined with intrusive Chinese who were shoving their cheap souvenirs and all other things possible to be purchased right into our faces. Something like a personal space does not exist in China. We went around a corner and could move freely again continuing the way to our hostel a bit more relaxed.

My two room mates and an American joined our little celebration in the evening. The latter could speak some Chinese which helped us ordering. In the restaurant we went to no one was speaking English but they had the traditional Peking duck that Arthur wanted to eat for his birthday. We also got a waitress who only served our table and showed us with quick and efficient chop stick moves how to transform the duck meat, chopped vegetable with some sauces and small green 'pancakes' into a kind of delicious wrap. Of course we were drinking beer again, it came in big bottles but each one of us got a small glass too. Those glasses make a lot of sense since the Chinese toast "Gan bei!" (pronounced Gambe!) basically means "bottoms up". So it's wise to never use the big bottles to toast. Later we rounded up the evening with a trip to the famous bar street in Beijing. (We went there on foot and the promised 20 minutes walk turned out to be over one hour long. On the way back we treated ourselves to a taxi.)

Our time in Beijing just flew by, there are just so many things to do. Among other things I visited the 798 Art District with my room mates, now including also a Polish and a Brazilian guy (we became quite international). The district features a lot of galleries in an old industrial area, some of their exhibits were incredible, others we were wondering about if they really deserved to be called art. Particularly bizarre was a lonely, lost chicken we saw running through the streets. After all we had seen that day we thought it might be an artistic staging. Also all of us went together to the Summer Palace a little outside of Beijing. The walk around the lake was really beautiful although the icy wind made it impossible to enjoy in the end.

An experience I'll definitely never forget is our visit to the Mao mausoleum, including a dead, embalmed Mao. I am serious about this! Instead of being cremated as he had wished, the Chinese embalmed their favourite communist leader and for a few hours a day the public can admire him. After three security checks we had entered the inner circle where Mao Zedong, now resembling a wax figure, was laid out in a crystal coffin. Unfortunately selfies with the dead are considered inappropriate so I have no pictures. For us the whole experience was more important than seeing a corpse. I have never seen anything like this before, it felt somehow surrealistic. We had trouble to suppress our giggles while we walked with humble-looking and exceptionally silent Chinese past the transparent coffin, surrounded by soldiers with dark faces. (Stopping is absolutely not allowed!) Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to talk about a Mao-Zombie invasion on the whole way there. Exiting the building one could purchase all kind of different Mao memorabilia. The vendors and the sunshine helped us to find our way back into reality.

With Arthur and Kirstie I took some time to stroll around the streets and hutongs (narrow streets lined with traditional courtyard houses) to discover some of the 'real' Beijing. The food culture was particularly interesting for us. We tried to enjoy as much street food as possible whether it was steamed, fried or cooked. There were tiny round eggs on a skewer, huge portions of fried noodles, stuffed steamed buns and in a restaurant around the corner from our hostel my personal favourite was a soup which ingredients you put together by yourself choosing from a kind of buffet. But I have to disappoint you I neither ate chocolate covered spider nor dog or snake. 

On our last morning in Beijing we visited the Temple of Heaven where the Chinese emperors used to pray for a good harvest every year. We had to pay admission to enter the park, we were already used to in China. But when they wanted to make us pay for every single temple inside, we were furious about the rip-off and decided to see only the Temple of Heaven. Afterwards we walked a little through the park, since we had paid for it, until we had to leave for the bus station. I had been really looking forward to our next destination, the Chinese Wall! Leaving Beijing we soon realized that so far we had only seen China for beginners...