Where in the World are V and M?: Made in China - The Great Wall of Cloudiness

Arriving in Beijing, the first thing we noticed was that it was very cloudy, as if it was going to rain. Also the city wasn't as busy as we expected. The cloudiness became the norm…. we later found out that this is Beijing smog.

Our hostel was located in a touristy and lively hutong (narrow streets and alleys making up a neighborhood). There were so many tourists (mostly Chinese) walking up and down the narrow main street and alleys. The hostel had nice facilities and our private room was spacious. The hutong had lots of restaurants, bars, cafes, juice bars, food stalls, clothing and souvenir shops. Towards the end of our stay another tourist introduced us to a small family restaurant that served scrumptious dumplings.

Front of our hostel - Beijing Downtown Backpackers

Walking along the hutong's alleys

We didn't get to try this mode of transportation but it looked like a comfortable chariot driven by a bicycle.

mmmm....street food!

On our first night in Beijing we joined a few other guests at our hostel and went to watch an Acrobat Show. Chinese acrobats are amazing and the show was fantastic especially because Vernon was called onstage and got to show off his non-acrobatic skills to hundreds of people. Unfortunately they do not allow photographs during the performance so we have no pics of his debut. He did get a small dragon trinket for his efforts... and handshakes from older Chinese men, they thought he was amazing :)

At the Heaven and Earth Theater to watch the acrobats.

After doing some research on tourist sites in Beijing, we started exploring. We walked to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square which were a few miles from our hostel. We would have preferred to take the public buses but our Mandarin at that point was nonexistent so we couldn’t communicate. The Forbidden City was packed with tourists and we had to meander our way through the crowds to get to the sites. Here is where it began – people started taking random pictures of us or the polite ones would ask us in Mandarin and sign language if we could pose for a picture. This quickly became the norm and we got used to turning away from cameras and politely saying "no photos".

Near the north gate of the Forbidden City a.k.a the Gate of Divine Might

At the Forbidden City exit

These two girls asked to take pictures with us at Tiananmen Square. We didn't refuse because at least they struck up a conversation with us even though their English was very limited.

Inside the Forbidden City which has several palaces. The smog forbade the sun from shinning through.

The palace belonged to the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

There isn't much to see other than these different parts of the palace. In some of the rooms, you can see the emperor's seat and other furniture.

It's called forbidden because the no one was allowed in or out of the palace without the emperor's permission.

THE HILL OF ACCUMULATED ELEGANCE. Yap, that's the real name of this man made rock.

On another smoggy and rainy day we took the Beijing subway to a site called "The Temple of Heaven". After that we went to the Pearl Market to do some shopping.

Beijing subway was fast, efficient, clean and awesome... and they also had English an translation.

We found lots of people playing cards at the Temple of Heaven.

A small group of people dancing to traditional Chinese music. Thai Chi I think.

Seven Star Stones. One of the Ming dynasty emperors placed these seven stones to the southeast of the Great Hall of Sacrifice. The people said that the stones were meteors which had fallen on earth but really they are just stones with motifs of mountains symbolizing the seven peaks of Mt. Tai.

Temple of Heaven Gardens

Looking out to the the Circular Mound Altar and the Imperial Vault of Heaven. Yes, this place is another World Heritage site.

Temple of Heaven was built in 1420 and used to be the place where emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties went to worship Heaven and offer sacrifices to pray for harvests and favorable rain.

The Pearl Market. This huge market is next to the Temple of Heaven. It has lot's of stalls and sells jewelry, clothing, shoes, toys, whatever you would want that's made in China at whatever price you settle on with the merchant. Buyer beware though. If you can bargain for electronics it isn't real. I bought a $5 Sandisk 8MG flash drive. I thought, what a bargain. Until I went to the hostel and found out that it was corrupted and nonfunctional.

Later that evening we went to a restaurant that served Peking (Beijing's old name) Duck to visit with one of my old co-workers. We took a taxi round and round to find this place thanks to our lack of Mandarin skills.

Peking Duck. This was actually not our duck but we stole a picture with someone else's duck. I think this is a big no- no.

Thanks to Stephanie, we had a wonderful dinner with her, her mom, and fiance Ken.

Yet another smoggy day we went to the Beijing West train station. We wanted to get out of Beijing and visit some other parts of China and taking the train was the most sensible way to do this (buses aren't reliable and flights cost too much). This train station was so busy, thousands upon thousands of people were all over this place. We waited in line to get train tickets for about 30 minutes (the fact that Chinese don't have a concept of actually waiting in line extended our time). We decided to go down to central China to see the Terra Cotta Warriors so we got tickets to Xi'an... see the next blog for that. This day was so long. (1 hour to the station from our hotel on the city bus, another hour and a half to the bus station we thought we'd use to go to Xi'an, then another hour back to the train station, a half hour to get our train ticket and an hour back to our hotel).

Beijing Railway where we caught our train to Xian and back

Finally, after a few days in China, we joined in on a tour to the Great Wall of China! If you do nothing else in China this is something you have to do. So we went. First we went to one of the Ming tombs and then on to the Wall.