Beijing

Day 11

Forbidden City

Chandler’s Dad woke us up around 8:30 and we went downstairs to the restaurant to grab some breakfast. The plan was that we would go to some auction exhibition and look at all the stuff you could bid on. Apparently Chandler’s parents were interested in bidding on a couple items. This auction was huge. It was in multiple buildings, and it was like being in a museum, except everything was for sale. This was the exhibition part where you could actually like touch 1000 year old vases and ink stones used by emperors and whatnot. Needless to say, I couldn’t afford anything… We ran into some of Chandler’s parents’ friends at the exhibition and went out to lunch with them. Since I am writing this three days after the fact, every meal I’ve eaten with these people has been amazing, but huge. They order way too much food and for some reason expect me to eat a lot. Perhaps it’s because I’m American.

After lunch, Chandler and I branched off and headed towards the Forbidden City for some sightseeing. We were there from about 2 until closing at 5, and I don’t think we even scratched the surface – the place is huge, more than 7000 rooms. What we did see was pretty cool. All the buildings in the center of the city are for the emperor’s use and are palatial. Pretty much these guys had giant palaces with chairs in them. There must have been about 5 giant buildings with a throne used for different purposes and nothing else. It was very lavish, especially for something 500 years old. We were pushed out of the Forbidden City as it was getting close to closing time, and we went to the top of Jingshan Hill just north of the Forbidden City for an extraordinary view of the Forbidden City and much of Beijing. Jingshan Park was an imperial garden that the emperor used and even one emperor committed suicide there. It did provide an amazing view.

After this we made our way back to the hotel to meet Chandler’s parents so we could go out for dinner. We went to a place not too far away from the hotel and I got my first taste of Peking Duck. It was really good. All the Chinese people really like the skin, and it’s supposed to be the best part, and they always want me to try everything, and often let me try to best parts, which is great, but can be a bit too much food after a while.

Afterwards we headed back to the hotel because we were underslept and wanted to get some sleep.

Day 12

Hauirou / Houhai area

This day was amazing. We started fairly leisurely with a light breakfast and met up with some of Chandler’s parents’ friends around 11AM. We then proceeded to drive (in personal cars) about an hour and a half northeast of Beijing towards Hauirou. The trip alone was beautiful. After about 30 minutes we were driven out of Beijing and after another 30 minutes we were no longer on an expressway. We made our way to a tiny restaurant with fish ponds where we caught our lunch. It was some kind of trout, and it was prepared both raw and cooked, each were really good. After we had finished lunch, we took about a 30 minute hike up to an abandoned part of the Great Wall. It was awesome. There was absolutely no one there, and this part of the wall was completely unlike what you see pictures of. It was totally falling apart and hadn’t been fixed in probably hundreds of years. We climbed all over it. Despite the signage discouraging any climbing, even the Chinese people I was with were into it and wanted to climb around to look for bricks with dates on them (apparently they’re valuable). After some time here, we hiked back down to the restaurant where we had lunch and took a break for some tea before heading back towards Beijing.

When we got into town, we were dropped up in a bar district on a lake called Houhai that was supposed to be cool for young people and foreigners. Chandler and I walked around there a little bit and were not extremely excited about it. We did, however, find a really cool fruit/vegetable market nearby where we picked some odd fruits native to China that were quite good. There was also a grocery store here where we found 600mL Yanjing beer for 3 yuan (about 40 cents!). While we were walking around here it started raining though, and we decided to split for a different scene.

We went to Wanfujing, which was supposed to be a night market area. There were some stores and stuff and it was a designated shopping district with a nice mall as well. We walked around a bit for a little something to eat as neither of us was very hungry. We were kind of underwhelmed by the night market in Wanfujing and asked around for suggestions on late night activities. We were recommended a couple and ended up going to Huixiantang, which was very close to Houhai, and on the same lake (which is quite large). We walked around here for quite a while as it was quite a large area with many bars to choose from. We were kind of turned off by a large section of the area because everyone was soliciting your business by trying to get you to come in. We didn’t like that and returned to an area where the atmosphere was more nonchalant, but unfortunately this was the trendy and expensive area. We could only afford one beer here, and left around 12:30AM to get some sleep.

I’m still one day behind, but I need some sleep…

Cheers.