Cultural learnings in Beijing...

Mcdonald’s brekkie in hand (don’t judge!) we finally managed to hop on a bullet train and head over to the capital for the weekend.   My second time going to this wonderful city, we had a packed schedule ahead of us to make sure we could see as much of Beijing as time allowed us.  Less than 6 months old, and with speeds of 312mph (that was the fastest our train went anyway) the journey on bullet train takes under 5 hours, so it is definitely a really easy way to travel between the two cities.

We arrived at lunch and whilst I had heard from people that the pollution in Beijing is worse than in Shanghai, I found the air not too bad. It was a brilliant day as the sky was clear and blue – perfect arrival weather!

We navigated ourselves around the station and finally found a taxi to take us to the hostel.  After some slight confusion as to where the hostel was we finally dropped our bags off and had our first taste of infamous Peking/Beijing duck! Note for anyone going to Beijing, Beijing drivers are not as western friendly as Shanghai drivers which we found out throughout our stay in the capital and whilst the magic words zhe ge (here/this one) and na ge (there/that one) work amazingly in Shanghai, I couldn’t imagine them being that useful here – we were so lucky that we had our friends Elle and Harriet who speak Mandarin the whole weekend!

As half of our group who couldn’t get the Friday off work were arriving later on in the evening, we decided that we would leave the touristy things for the next day and checked out the Silk Market.  Not quite a market full of silk, this packed building was full of fake clothes, bags, shoes – absolutely everything you could imagine and ten times more intense then the fake markets in Shanghai.  Here even looking at something seems to be a sign that you want to start bargaining for a price! 

 Cloake (fake Clarks) anyone?

After a few stressful hours in the art form that is haggling, we made our way back to our hostel to get ready for a quiet night of chilled drinks in a nearby bar, ready for our early rise and climb of the Great Wall in the morning.

Elle and Harriet suggested we go to the part of the wall called Mutianyu which is the less touristy area of the wall.  Luckily the hostel helped organise a minibus to take us there and an easy 1 hour drive later, we were greeted by the sight of the Wall.  We took a cable car up and walked along this world wonder for a few hours, joining the groups of tourists taking photos.  Again we managed to stir a lot of attention with the Chinese tourists with some even asking if we could have photos with their children!

 It was nice that it wasn’t that crowded, and again we were so lucky with the blue skies.  Another reason why Harriet and Elle suggested this part of the wall to us, was the less conventional mode of transport available for getting off the wall – an amazing steel toboggan run! It was so much fun but probably not what the Chinese envisaged when they started to build the Wall all those dynasties ago!

After grabbing some noodles and dumplings for lunch, we checked out the Olympic village before going back to the hostel to get ready for an amazing duck dinner with an old intern who used to be with us in Shanghai! Amazing is the only word that I can think of to describe what we ate.  Not only did we have duck, but hairy prawns, ribs and other sorts of exciting and tasty dishes.  As the restaurant we were in was near the student area, we decided to continue on this reunion with drinks before heading on to a Chinese club.  Like most clubs it was packed, hot and sweaty but the Beijing drink prices made it worth it.  Here 10rmb can get you a Vodka lemonade (about £1 pound) and 20rmb a cocktail (about £2) making us realised how expensive Shanghai actually is. 

Sunday was another day of being tourists as we wanted to try and fit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in before catching the bullet train home.  Both breath taking, particularly the Forbidden City, the only thing that disappointed me was the numerous flat screens that lined the square and were placed around parts of the Forbidden City for advertising.

The whole weekend went so quick, but we were all so glad that we managed to fit our trip to Beijing into our tight and hectic working schedules.  The one thing I would say is that I would have loved to have gone to the Summer Palace, and that if time allowed perhaps 5 days would have been a perfect amount of time to take in the whole of this cultural city!

Zai jian!

Marie xox