Three Days in Beijing
Day 8 - We had been told over and over that to get into Beijing
was going to take a long time. Well the
only thing that took a long time was for the local government to look at
everyone’s passport. When that process
was done, at 8:00am, we were able to retrieve our passports and leave the ship.
We were met by our guide, Harrison and the driver for the
three days. Harrison spoke very good
English and the driver did not speak English or understand it at all.
The first thing that impressed us was the amount of trees
and plantings by the sides of the roads.
Also, the main road was very wide, 8 lanes and there were no cars.
After 2 hours we reached the outskirts of Beijing and the
traffic increased. When we arrived in
the center of the city the traffic was like any other city, jammed.
The first stop was the Forbidden City. This is a beautifully preserved walled
compound of buildings, courtyards and pathways, once considered the center of
the universe and dates back to the 15th century. It
consists of 9,999 rooms (9 is a lucky number) spread over 250 acres. It was an amazing place to start in Beijing.
Then we went to a wonderful, famous local restaurant on Embassy
Row where we had Peking Duck. We were
told by our guide that this was the #1 food in Beijing that we had to try, so
we did. At the restaurant the chef prepared by the table the duck by
slicing off the skin for one serving, then another serving had skin with
meat, then the final serving was duck with no skin. He also served us the innards which only Barb
tasted. The duck was wonderful to both
of us. Peking Duck is a very white duck,
roasted with the wood from the Pear tree and based with a sweet and sour soy
sauce.
After lunch we then went to Tiananmen Square. It is the largest square in the world. After passing through security, we entered
the square and walked around just a little part of it. What an amazing sight. One of the buildings on the Square houses
Chairman Mao’s body, lying in state.
Viewing is only in the morning and one day we passed by in the morning
and the lines were very long – our guide said a three hour wait to view the
body.
Then we went to the Temple of Heaven. It is said to be one of the most holy places
in the whole country for more than 5 centuries.
It is set high on a hill in a huge park.
There were lots of local people in the park exercising and also a lot of
them playing cards and a type of checkers game.
That was all of the time that had been set aside for
tours so they took us to the Marriott City Wall to check in. They upgraded us to the top floor and it was
a great room. It had a shower with two
heads, one on the wall and one overhead.
I believe that this shower had the most water pressure that I have every
experienced and what a shower when you turned on the overhead.
We unpacked and when to Executive Lounge to see what kind
of food they had. There is no question
in our minds that this Marriott was the very best that we have ever stayed
in. The staff in the Lounge could not
do enough to help and serve us. And the
food – they had three walls of food, both Chinese and American. While in the lounge, we met an interesting businessman
from Minnesota who spent about 10 months out of the year traveling and a lot of
that time in China. We had fun talking
with him for almost two hours. We ate
dinner there both nights and that saved us a lot of money.
Day – 9 - The breakfast was just as elaborate as dinner
as we found out the next morning. Again,
they had both Chinese and American food for breakfast.
We were picked up at 8:30am and the morning was set aside
for the Great Wall. But first we stopped
at a Jade Factory that was on the way. Barb
got a bracelet and a ring that were beautiful.
Then it was back to the drive to the wall which took about 1 ½ hours and
then we had to walk up a hill for a little ways until we saw the Wall – it literally
took our breath away.
Words cannot describe the Wall. To see how tall it is, to see how steep it is
and just to see the magnitude of it is beyond description. Where we started from the wall the steepest was
to the left and gentler to the right. We
decided that we may only be there once so we went for the steepest section and
started our climb. There is no question
that it was strenuous, but the walk and then the views were well worth it. While we didn’t go all the way to the top of
the mountain we were on, we made it most of the way. This one of the most amazing points of
interest we have ever seen and also – we walked the Wall!! We bought a couple of small Jade lions that
will be placed in our house at the gift shop.
Next we went to very local restaurant to have a late
lunch. It is fun when you are the only foreigners
in the place and for sure no English is spoken.
We told Harrison things that we liked and he ordered for us. The food was wonderful, whatever it was we
ate.
Then we drove to a local part of town called a Hutong and
had a one-hour tour of this village within the town on a Rickshaw that was
powered by a person on bicycle. It was
fun as we drove in and out of the little streets. At one of the stops, the guide we had from
that area took us back into the area where we met a local family and saw where
they an 7 other family members lived. It
was an interesting experience.
On the way back to the hotel, we passed the Birds Nest,
home of the Olympics and saw several of the other main buildings. It appears that almost all of the buildings
built for the Olympics are currently being used for the general public.
For dinner, we ate in the Executive Lounge and then took a
taxi to a place called the Silk Market, which is one of the biggest clothing, purses,
jewelry, electronic, junk markets in Beijing.
It was a building 6 stories high and it was fun to shop there. The basic “store” was a 10 x 10 area and the
clerks could not come out of their areas to approach you. So it was nice walking down the aisle and not
having someone grab at you. They could however
shout out at you to come on in and try on something.
Barb found a couple of scarves and Ed bought 4
shirts. It is really fun to bargain but
you have to be prepared to walk away. I
think that they think you are very stupid if you do not bargain!! For instance, the two short-sleeved shirts
started out at 980 yen ($160.00) and I ended up getting them for $16.00
each! Bargaining here is not a meet in
the middle process. You have to stand
your ground and let them come down to you, or just give a little. It is fun.
After the market, we could not get a cab to go back to
the Marriott as they had inflated their prices drastically. We found a motorized rickshaw who took us
back for only double what we were charged to get there - the cab drivers wanted
4 times as much! It was really a wild
ride, cutting in and out, going the wrong way down streets with no lights in 8
lanes of traffic and really going fast.
We found out the next day that both the cab drivers and
the rickshaw drivers were operating illegally and that the rickshaw drivers had
a history of a lot of accidents. It was
quite a ride but we made it back to the hotel just fine.
We had drinks in lounge and then went to bed.
Day 10 - Once again we woke up to beautiful skies. This was the third day that the pollution
level was very low and the skies were very clear. Our guide told us that it doesn’t happen very
often so we were very lucky with the weather.
Last week, they had a pollution alert and even school kids had to stay
home.
We first went to a Pearl factory were we learned about
pearls and the different kinds and how to spot a fake. Barb bought a small necklace and then we left
to go to the Summer Palace.
The Summer Palace is the largest royal garden in China. It was once a summer retreat for emperors and
it is 720 acres of which three-fourths is water. Again, what an amazing place. We walked down a ½ mile covered walk-way that
had 8,000 paintings painted into the structure.
At the end, we took a dragon boat across the lake and the views were
breathtaking.
After spending a couple of hours at the Summer Palace, we
left to head downtown and another local Chinese Restaurant. Again, we let our guide order for us and we
had a great meal. As they had been so
great to be with, we bought a meal for the driver and our guide. The total cost for all 4 of us for a
wonderful, filling lunch was only the equivalent of $10.00 –amazing food prices
in China.
Then it was into the car for the 2 ½ drive to the port
where simply walked on the ship with virtually no one checking any document
except our ships entry card. We had
expected to have all kinds of customs inspections both going into and out of
Beijing, but it was harder to get in and out of San Juan then here. Of course we had all of the proper documents
and visas.
Just some random views of the two cities. Our overall impressions of Shanghai and Beijing
were that they were amazing cities. The
first and third largest cities in the world.
It is still very hard to comprehend how big they are. For example, in Beijing they have 6 rings of
expressways around the city. The 5th
ring was 229 miles around the city. They
are planning a 7th ring a farther out and it will be 800 miles
around the city. They
also do not have to go through any approval process or environmental process,
the party decides and they do it.
The main road going through the city of Beijing is 28
miles long, 16 lanes across!
The currency is also hard to deal with a $16 = $100
yen. So when you go to an ATM, and get 1,000.00
yen, you get a handful of money but it is only $163.23 in US dollars. Quick, figure out how much is 386 Yen. Thanks goodness for the currency app on the
iPhone.
It was amazing to us the number of Chinese who were at
these famous places. 95% of the people
at the sights were Chinese and very few foreigners were here.
Everything means something to the Chinese. When they build something, things have to be just
right. The number 9 is a very important
number and a lot of steps are 9 steps.
The local people have no idea of how many people died in
the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Food is very cheap and we enjoyed eating new things – yes,
even Ed!
The people revere Chairman Mao and still worship him;
but, they have hope that the new head of the government will end the massive
corruption that is in the government.
They have a totally different view of the Korean
War. China and North Korea did not
invade South Korea – South Korea invaded the North and China only helped as a
friend.
There is a hatred for Japan as Japan ruthlessly invaded
China and killed millions of its citizens.
In that regard, the US is a friend.
If someone hates your enemy, they are a friend to you.
The scale of everything in the two cities is that
everything is over the top, bigger, brighter and flashier then we expected.
China has gone from black and white to full blown massive
color in 3D – it is incredible to hear and see how they have rebuilt themselves
over the past 20 years – an amazing accomplishment.
They truly feel that they are on the verge of controlling
the world economically and that the United States is a “paper tiger” and they
might just be right.
Shanghai had less traffic than we have in Bloomington, while
Beijing has massive traffic.
There are more billionaires supposedly in Beijing than in
any other city in the world.
There are very few birds in the cities because they have
eaten them!!
They used to have a rule of only one child to a family
but now if you are an only child, you may have two children. Male children are preferred and almost all
children are taken care of in their younger years by the grandparents.
China is an amazing place and we hope to come back to
understand the people and the culture a little better.
Friday evening – we are back on the ship.
We boarded just ahead of the tour busses so we were in
our rooms by 3:00pm, unpacked and working on this blog. We had snacks while watching the people board
and then took a nap – remember that naps are good!
We woke to an announcement that this ships departure was
going to be delayed due to an illness on board.
We watched an ambulance arrive and take the passenger away. We were told later that someone had suffered
a heart attack. We can’t imagine getting
sick like that in a foreign country.
The show today was early and it was a singer who was very
good at impressions so it was a good show.
Then we had dinner and all three couples were at dinner
for the first time and we all had fun talking about our last three days. One couple is from England and the other is
from Scotland and both couples have traveled a lot.
Next was the casino and we both did well and left the
casino at midnight. Tonight we set the
clocks ahead one hour but tomorrow is a sea day so it will not bother us very
much.
Sorry we still can’t put pictures on the blog – hopefully
when we check in to the hotel in Tokyo.
