And so, ten months before our stop in China, we had already booked a tour guide and driver for two days, and reserved a hotel room. We also did (very) extensive research on China's 72-hour visa free option to ensure we wouldn't get trapped in the airport.
When we arrived, we felt a little silly for all our preparations. The 72-hour visa free line took about ten minutes, and went like clockwork. Expecting a chaotic, crowded city with signs only in Mandarin, we were greeted by a modern, clean city, full of nicely landscaped parks, signs in English and friendly, helpful people. But we already had our guide and driver booked, so we put on our shorts, t-shirts, sneakers, sunscreen, and day pack and set out for two days of hardcore touristing, American style.
On our first evening, sans guide, we wandered over to Tiananmen Square and were promptly confused. The whole area is under a very communist lockdown, with several cameras on every post, police everywhere, and airport-like security checks to get into the square. Military police also cordoned off a huge area at about 5:45. Initially concerned, we eventually realized it was for the nightly flag-lowering. So, with thousands of Chinese from the provinces, we watched the flag come down then headed off to dinner.
The next day we found a great little diner-style restaurant catering to local office workers. We broke our fast on tofu soup, steamed dumplings with cabbage, and some sort of fried thingy (delicious).
Our guide arrived promptly at 9:00 AM, and we set off to see the sights of Beijing. The Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen (again), the Forbidden City, some old hutong areas, and a very touristy but entertaining acrobat show. We also found out that Brook is big in China: several groups of Chinese tourists asked to take pictures with him -- not Erin, only Brook (maybe it's the beard?) -- and like a good, benevolent American tourist he complied. That night we tried hot pot for the first time, with help from some very patient restaurant staff, and crashed hard after our full-on tourist day. Day two was a trip to the Great Wall, which really is great. And hilly. We did a nice 3-hour hike along it with our guide, pestering her with questions the whole way.
And what trip to Beijing, formerly Peking, would be complete without chowing down on some Peking Duck? And so, to complete our tourist experience, that evening we visited the birthplace of a famous Peking duck chain and ordered the whole show. It was delicious...
More pictures of Beijing and the Great Wall can be found here: https://plus.google.com/photos/103829313469224560701/albums/6062946706545928401
Our very brief stop in Beijing got us to rethink some of our previous notions about China - it was far more modern, and Westernized, than we expected; the people were happy to meet Americans; and it was very well organized. But our thoughts on the government didn't change much: Facebook is blocked, Google was banned (making it impossible to update our blog), we couldn't access the New York Times, and all that modern development came at a big cost to bulldozed local communities. We asked our guide how people in Beijing felt about Google being blocked and she said, "They don't like it, but what can you do?" Being American, that's a sentiment that's very difficult to understand.
No comments:
Post a Comment