May 21st: Oh The Humanity, Part Deux!

Beijing, possibly more crowded than Shanghai, an absolutely sprawling metropolis! The same old dichotomy exists here as well however, with a multitude of brand new sky-scrapers, not to mention the palatial government buildings (they don’t do things on a small scale here, do they?), but with an underlying rural mindset. I equate it to a teenage girl playing dress up, putting on her mother’s clothes and make up and almost looking grown up, but still possessing the mentality of a teenager.

I decided to be adventurous and stay in a hutong (part of the old city, these are essentially a network of alleys in the city center that still exists from imperial times). First off, find the place was a nightmare, literally! My train from Shanghai was 45 mins late, then it took another half an hour to get a taxi (because it was raining and there were about a 1,000 people (no kidding!) in queue. Even though I had the address written in Chinese, the taxi driver still didn’t know exactly where it was, so we drove around the hutong for ages, there were no street lamps, could barely make out the numbers, if there were any! I’m not ashamed to say, I was a little scared, at 11pm, in strange city, with a driver that didn’t speak a word on English!

My first day was spent at the Forbidden City, which is stunning, but the experience was tainted by the thousands of rude Chinese tourists who seem to think that pushing and shoving is acceptable behavior! The city  or the imperial palace as it’s now called, is enormous!  The architecture is beautiful, but most of the buildings that you see are not the original. Most were lost to fire over the years and had to be rebuilt; there are only a small handful of the original structures left and they are currently working on resorting them. My little camera couldn’t even being to capture the enormity of the place, and frankly the photos are crap in comparision!

It’s very hot and humid in Beijing and I spent most of the following day hanging out by the lakes behind the Forbidden City and climbed Jingshan hill, which gives you this incredible view over the old and new parts of Beijing.

Day three was a long, hot and exhausting one! Headed out at 7am to the Great Wall, took 4 hours to get there with traffic. I hiked 10-12 km( depending on who you ask) along an original, unrestored section of the wall, from Jinshaling to Simati. It’s the steepest part of the wall that’s accessible, with a 70-degree incline, and you walk through and past 20 towers. IT WAS BRUTAL! And did I mention scorching?

The view was spectacular, but I didn’t take as many photos as might expect, was trying not to fall off the side! Parts were crumbling, with numerous broken sections and some were so steep, you almost had to crawl up; one tower had no steps and we had to climb up on a pile of rocks that someone placed rather haphazardly to get into the tower, to get to the other side to continue the trek. We (myself and this German couple I met) rewarded ourselves that night with dinner at a posh restaurant and a delicious Peking duck!