BEIJING - Part II of f the latest China Epic, Shanghai, Beijing and Harbin

[munitalP]

December 29 2011

Breakfast at the Holiday Inn (Downtown) caters mainly for Asian guests with a few poorly executed European dishes available. The egg station offers fried eggs or omelet, which is ok, but they are both cooked in excessive amounts of oil and are literally swimming when served.

Other items excluding the Asian dishes are crispy tasteless bacon, normal tasteless bacon, tasteless boiled ham, soggy tasteless hash brown, tasteless baked beans and tasteless breakfast sausages. Mixed with some of the Asian selection and some toast, there is more than adequate to satisfy most people. The wait staff are far from English savvy, however make up for it in enthusiasm to help wherever possible.

We headed out the door and it started to lightly snow – it was a light dust so I decided to maintain my dress and stick with a woolen heavy hooded jacket, jeans and a couple of layers, a choice I would kind of regret later in the day, but did manage to survive without hyperthermia.

We used the metro to Beijing North rail station where tickets to Badaling train station were purchased. After working out platforms, we headed out to a diesel loco pulling a hand full of carriages and got ourselves seated in the dining car with coffee and tea served not long after.

The train ride to Badaling took just over an hour – don’t let the term High Speed Train fool you, this train was slow, old and rackety, but it got us there eventually and for about 15 minutes before arriving at Badaling, we were ooo’ing and ahhh’ing at sections of the Great Wall of China as we were passing.

A brisk walk in the cold to the Badaling gondolas took about 20-25 minutes. If it is icy, or there is snow, beware, it is very slippery and not suitable if you are not wearing decent footwear. The only other hazard are the pesky hawkers, but after brushing them off the only difficulty is dodging cars, busses and motorcycles heading into the car park. The ride up from the base station to a high point on the wall takes about 5 minutes of quite steep climb and soon you are deposited at another ticketing booth up on the wall. Ensure you have tickets before leaving sea level to actually get onto the wall as I am not sure they sold them up top, and the lift ride did not include access.

We climbed to the highest point available, and then down the wall quite a way (actually to a toboggan thing which you could ride back down to the car park area a few hundred meters below) until the cold and the snow made it too treacherous to continue so we got off the wall and onto a path at the base which meandered back up to the exit point for the ride back down on the gondolas.

All in all, we spent quite a number of hours on the wall. It was cold and snowing, and the weather didn’t put out at all. We waited for the train for our return trip for an hour in a cold station, but having previously experienced a professional tour, I would use this method again if I were to ever revisit the wall.

After a seemingly excessively slow ride back to the Beijing North rail station, we exited the station and onto the metro and got back to the hotel at around 6pm, just in time for drinks and canapés at the exec lounge. We decided a traditional Beijing HOT POT meal would be in order for dinner, so on completion of drinks and canapés, we got precise directions from the concierge to a hot pot restaurant that was his favorite. This was immediately followed by getting lost somewhere in Beijing thanks to our concierge offering less than adequate directions to our cab driver and our HOT POT meal turned into a Korean meal at a kind of fast (healthy) food Korean place, where to be honest, I really enjoyed the meal.

To keep up with the theme of the day, we decided to walk the few km’s back to the hotel as we had the general direction by consensus, so off we went through the back streets of Beijing in minus something looking for the hotel. We made it 45 minutes later and with brief goodnights, headed for bed after a long day and many walked kilometers.

 

[munitalP]

30 December 2011

By completion of breakfast, we had decided that the Ming Tombs, train tickets to Harbin and airline tickets HAR/PVG (hotel to organize for us) were on the agenda for the day. Mark had worked out the bus route to get us to the tombs; again we were refusing the extortion disguised as organized tours, so our journey started out with a metro ride to the Drum Tower bus station, then a bus through Beijing to soon be delivered to the Ming Tombs. The usual hawkers and sellers accosted us as soon as they spotted the group, but with learned precision, we brushed them off with ease and were soon on the grounds of the Ming Tombs, well at least one of the many Ming Dynasty tombs.

Again, this attraction failed to bore me and with a bit more exploring than what was offered by the organized tour I had previously been on, we found that there is a lot to see and do here, and the proposed hour or so quickly chewed up the morning and early afternoon. We waited around for about 20 minutes for a bus to arrive – the bus is frequent and cheap, but I wouldn’t take the bus again. It was just too slow. On top of that, I have never been on a bus that has stopped for fuel half way through the journey!

By the time we finally got back to the Drum Tower, we were all a bit on edge so it was decided a bit of retail therapy was needed, so we mucked about on the trains for a while and ended up at the Silk Road markets where the fun began.

I needed a camera cleaning kit which I found and bartered down to a good price – my method is simply offer 10% of the asking price and never exceed 20%. As the sellers start bringing their price down and when I reach my ceiling, I tell them that this figure is my final offer, and they will be disappointed if they counter offer. 100% of the time the seller counter offers, 100% of the time, I lower my offer! This led to me being called crazy, yelled at, and chased – but hopefully all in the good fun it was intended to be in.

The girls bartered some jeans to a good price, so after getting the legs shortened up stairs by a tailor, we were on our way to find a genuine Beijing HOT POT meal. At my previous stay at the Marriott in Beijing, there was a good hot pot restaurant in the adjacent shopping centre, so we grabbed the metro to where I thought the Marriott was, and sure enough, the Marriott was there - just not the one I had previously stayed at. A discussion with the bar staff over a beer had us heading to a street somewhere in Beijing where there were restaurants as far as the eye could see with more choices than time.

The restaurant we chose was ok, the hot pot was delivered in a two level conical soup server with red hot coals in the base keeping everything cooking. We chose excessive amounts of ingredients and lots of the local Yanging Beer – a yellow beer that didn’t taste too bad but left you knowing you had been drinking it the next day. I really enjoyed the meal and would recommend that if in Beijing, don’t miss this way of eating. Taxi back to the hotel and the day was over.

 

[munitalP]

31 December 2011

Over breakfast we decided today would take us to The Temple of Heaven – Kim and I intended on shopping while Mark & Chee TOH’ed as I don’t like the place (see previous TR on my thoughts), followed by the Forbidden City.

As with our normal MO, we used the metro and arrived at the TOH stop a few minutes later. The TOH was closed for new years celebrations so this put an immediate damper on the plans, so we wandered across the road to where a previously visited market was, and we wandered through there with hawkers trying to sell us many different genuine fakes such as iPhone 4’s, Nikon Cameras and other “stuff”. It was fun and I walked out with an infrared remote for Canon EOS which cost me about $8. Outside the market a street hawker came up to us while we were waiting for a taxi and tried selling Rolex watches. What a hoot – Kim decided that she would offer him $20RMB for 1, he countered a few times, but in the end, we bought 5 fake Rolexes for 100RMB – the 8 to 12 y/o nephews will be loving their aunty when we get home!

Our taxi ride across town deposited us in front of the Forbidden City where we joined the crowds and headed into the complex. Being my second time there, I actually enjoyed the FC more as I wandered off the beaten track and explored the outer buildings and areas more than the main buildings which attracted 99% of the crowds (including us last visit).

The FC is another cultural relic of China which is seemingly a pure money making venture. The place is looking shabby and one has to wonder if the fleet of Audis and Mercs outside belong to the “humble administrators” of the FC. The boasts of the millions of tourists having visited the FC simply equate to hundreds of millions of RMB being handed over to the ticketing booth which in turn does not really be seen to be filtering through to the upkeep of the FC. Broken tiles, missing cobblestones, cracked and broken structural items – am I being critical? There is a fine line between corruption and contamination, the contamination easily seen by sponsorship deals with AMEX (now gone) where signs explaining the cultural significance of a particular building or area have letters now blacked out but still clearly read - “proudly bought to you by AMEX”

Where are the tourist dollars going? Not in upkeep to a level needed, that’s for sure. If you want to see the FC while it’s still in a reasonable condition, do it now because if the Chinese Government does not step in to protect the World Heritage listed Forbidden City, the world will lose a remarkable complex.

From the FC, we walked part of the way back to the Holiday Inn where after cleaning up, we had a few drinks in the executive lounge as well as canapés, then used our free drink vouchers at the downstairs bar. All four of us saw the New Year in exhausted and sound asleep.

 

[munitalP]

01 January 2012

The first part of this morning was trying to get the hotel to fix their stuff up with train tickets. They had booked the Harbin leg for the wrong day and it was getting quite frustrating to say the least – I will expand on that in the Beijing wrap up. Not feeling confident that the hotel would get the bookings for the flights correct, we nervously handed over passports and quite a few thousand RMB for 4 HAR/PVG seats on China Eastern for the following week. Fingers crossed this would be done right as a simple train ticket couldn’t. Oh well, time would tell.

A cab took us from the hotel to Tiananmen Square where we walked around and took a few photos. Another big thing in China – I’m getting used to seeing big things… We headed to the Lama Temple by metro. This wasn’t such a great idea for New Years day as there were thousands of people all doing the same thing. The cloud of incense smoke above the temple looked like a good sized grass fire smoke cloud, and at the gates, we decided this wasn’t such a great idea. We headed outside the temple and flagged a taxi which whisked us through the Beijing traffic and delivered us at the entrance to the summer palace.

We strolled around the palace and some of the exhibit halls for the remainder of the day and climbed the 300 stairs to the incense Buddha, walked on a frozen lake, drank coffee and used a public toilet (ick!). On leaving I again reflected on the magnitude of everything China does, now and in the past, the size of construction and the detail in every respect, what a place.

A taxi from the summer palace took us back to the Silk Road markets where our mission was to buy a scarf for Mark and the girls wanted some tee’s. The market was fun again and items needed were purchased at low cost. Quality is yet to be determined. From the market, we went to an up-market officially unopened restaurant in a new shopping complex where we had an awesome Peking Duck and other goodies. The ordering was done by Chee’s friends so we ended up with some very tasty items, but the exceptional write home about was the duck which was roasted for us and carved at our table by the chef.

With dinner over, it was back to the hotel to pick up air tickets which had been correctly booked, changed train tickets and get ready for an early start the following morning for a train to Harbin.

 

[munitalP]

My thoughts on Beijing

Beijing is a beautiful city that still has old world charm from the people to the food to the tourist attractions. It maintains its snobby outlook on the world and its people don’t embrace visitors all that well – heck a few hundred years ago they even built a wall to keep visitors out! The city allows you to experience the old world charm, the back alleys where the ordinary people live to the opulence of the upper class with their black Audis and Mercedes Benz parked out front, the beggars in the streets, and the homeless in the parks.

The city oozes charm but the charm is a veneer, there is an undertone of not being welcomed as a tourist, you are being tolerated by the people who would be quite happy if you stayed at home rather than inconveniencing them at their home Beijing.

Get used to spitting , rude people, pushing, shoving, queue jumping, bad driving, poor service, dangerous road crossings, people coughing in your face, poor or no English (to match our poor or no Chinese) and if you can get over this, Beijing is awesome.

Holiday Inn Downtown

This hotel left me with mixed feelings. The suite was adequate, the fitting out although aged, was not worn, the suite was clean, fresh daily fruit, turn back with chocolates daily, however faced the road and even with double glazing, was quite noisy as the traffic never ceased.

Room heating was exactly that, heating even with the AC on full and set to 17 degrees, warm air still flowed. We conquered that by leaving it turned off and the lounge room thermal curtains left open. The minus temperature outside sucked the warmth from the room, the room sucked the warmth from the bedroom and the outside areas creating a happy medium of perhaps 19-20 degrees. Warm enough to be comfortable cool enough to sleep.

The location of the hotel is not suited if your Beijing experience is going to revolve around high end shopping – LV. PRADA and the other brands are a taxi ride away, however, if this is not a concern, this hotel is located quite well. There is a metro stop in the adjacent department store which sells mainly high quality goods with the attached price tags, there is a supermarket and a number of food joints around. Across the road is a multi level market and in the area many other eateries, shops and the like are within walking distance.

The staff though pretty much suck except for the waitresses and executive lounge staff who seem to be from a different mould. I had a serious run in with the concierge which has resulted in a letter being written to Priority Club, the reception people are quite rude as well and all in all, most staff are not at all friendly or willing to help if it isn’t clearly defined within their job scope. The manager, although thinking he was being helpful, offered lip service advice, assuring us that he personally would control ticket purchases etc, yet as soon as he turned his back to us, his promises were forgotten and the whole thing became a cough up.

The positives versus the negatives are on par, it is surprising how easily your stay can be screwed up by poor service. The final straw was our wake up call for the last morning – well they just plain forgot. They didn’t forget to ring the cab which was written on the same sheet of paper, or ring Mark, which was the line underneath ours, but the sure forgot to ring my room. To rub salt into the wound, they finally rang at 10 minutes before we were due to leave – apologizing for forgetting the wake up call, then, 5 minutes later rang again telling us the cab was getting impatient waiting, then low and behold, a knock at the door and someone wanting to check the mini bar! This Holiday Inn is off my list of good hotels.

Great Wall

Do it yourself. Take the train. Regardless of how many concierge try and convince you otherwise, its an easy process which gives you freedom to access the wall in your own time. There is also bus 919 which runs an unbelievable number of services to the wall – an option if you miss the train home or can’t be bothered waiting. Take warm clothes and sturdy boots, plenty of memory and spare batteries.

Ming Tombs

As with the wall, do it yourself. It is about a 100RMB taxi fee to the tombs or like us, experience public transport to give you the freedom to do what you want without being locked into a tour group. A must see when in Beijing.

Forbidden City

Again a must see – allow 4-5 hours and consider a guide.

Summer Palace

This place is big, to see the whole lot would take longer than a full day so on arrival plan what you are going to look at and your route. There is a lot of walking and some very steep stairs. Again footwear is important and if your visit is in winter, warm clothes – the frozen lake radiates cool air and keeps the surrounding areas quite cold. Use a cab to get to and from, it’s about a 50RMB cab fare back to the city.

 

[munitalP]

Photos



Train to Great Wall



Great Wall



Great Wall



Ming Tombs



Ming Tombs

 

[munitalP]

Photos II



Forbidden City



Forbidden City



Forbidden City



Forbidden City



T Square

 

[munitalP]

Photos III




T Square



Lama Temple



Summer Palace



Summer Palace



Summer Palace

 

[kpc]

I love the pics of the Great Wall covered in light snow; quite a contrast to autumn when we were there. Looks cold tho...

 

[munitalP]

Photos IV



Summer Palace



Summer Palace



VFE Restaurant (PM me for what VFE means if you cant guess)



Duck

 

[kpc]

VFE Restaurant (PM me for what VFE means if you cant guess)

Very F...... Expensive? made some friends at dinner?

 

[munitalP]

Very F...... Expensive? made some friends at dinner?

LOL - yeah. Some of Chee's friends who live in Beijing.

 

[oz_mark]

Very F...... Expensive? made some friends at dinner?

Expensive is a relative thing.

It was a damn fine meal though.

 

[moa999]

Assume VFE was at one of the famous Duck Restaurants.

I do recall as a student in 2000 (two weeks in January as well) I did Qinqdao, Red Capital Club, and one of the Park restaurants.
All VFE but relative to Sydney not that bad.

 

[Cruiser Elite]

Love the report - very timely - will be in BJ myself at 23:20 10/01

BUT

1.

My thoughts on Beijing

Beijing is a beautiful city that still has old world charm from the people to the food to the tourist attractions. It maintains its snobby outlook on the world and its people don’t embrace visitors all that well – heck a few hundred years ago they even built a wall to keep visitors out! The city allows you to experience the old world charm, the back alleys where the ordinary people live to the opulence of the upper class with their black Audis and Mercedes Benz parked out front, the beggars in the streets, and the homeless in the parks.

The city oozes charm but the charm is a veneer, there is an undertone of not being welcomed as a tourist, you are being tolerated by the people who would be quite happy if you stayed at home rather than inconveniencing them at their home Beijing.

I have never ever experienced anything short of TOTAL ACCEPTANCE and TOLERANCE from the Chinere people in every Chinbese city I have visited over the last 13 years I have been travelling there regularly - IMHO the Chinese are a wonderful gentle tolerant race of people.

It never ceases to amaze me how a fat ugly middle aged Australian guy as I am with zero Chinese language can be totally lost / disoriented anywhere in China yet I can stop and ask any young Chinese person - male or female - for assistance and they will bend overbackwards to help me. Reverse the roles - a fat ugly middle aged Chinese guy in Australia with zero english soliciting assistance from young Australian people - how do you think they would fare?

2.

Get used to spitting , rude people, pushing, shoving, queue jumping, bad driving, poor service, dangerous road crossings, people coughing in your face, poor or no English (to match our poor or no Chinese) and if you can get over this, Beijing is awesome.

That is the Chinese way - different cultures have different lifestyles and different values - never forget we are visiting THEIR country - and we really should not attempt to impose our values on them - as you say - if you can't embrace and tolerate or even enjoy the differences - then China aint the place for you.

As for the duck restaurants - OMG - I just cannot wait til I get my fill on Wed night.

Amazing how your pics just capture the Beijing as I know it so well - love the reports - but then I do just love Beijing.

 

[Cruiser Elite]

The first part of this morning was trying to get the hotel to fix their stuff up with train tickets. They had booked the Harbin leg for the wrong day and it was getting quite frustrating to say the least – I will expand on that in the Beijing wrap up. Not feeling confident that the hotel would get the bookings for the flights correct, we nervously handed over passports and quite a few thousand RMB for 4 HAR/PVG seats on China Eastern for the following week. Fingers crossed this would be done right as a simple train ticket couldn’t. Oh well, time would tell

Might I suggest it may well be better to book flights before you leave Oz - elong and Ctrip work exceptionally well - and you actually get to see ALL available flights, times and aircraft type - and you can earn points by paying with your credit cards.

 

[oz_mark]

Assume VFE was at one of the famous Duck Restaurants.

I do recall as a student in 2000 (two weeks in January as well) I did Qinqdao, Red Capital Club, and one of the Park restaurants.
All VFE but relative to Sydney not that bad.

It was a new (apparently) branch of Bianyifang

 

[munitalP]

Love the report - very timely - will be in BJ myself at 23:20 10/01

BUT

1. I have never ever experienced anything short of TOTAL ACCEPTANCE and TOLERANCE from the Chinere people in every Chinbese city I have visited over the last 13 years I have been travelling there regularly - IMHO the Chinese are a wonderful gentle tolerant race of people.

It never ceases to amaze me how a fat ugly middle aged Australian guy as I am with zero Chinese language can be totally lost / disoriented anywhere in China yet I can stop and ask any young Chinese person - male or female - for assistance and they will bend overbackwards to help me. Reverse the roles - a fat ugly middle aged Chinese guy in Australia with zero english soliciting assistance from young Australian people - how do you think they would fare?

2. That is the Chinese way - different cultures have different lifestyles and different values - never forget we are visiting THEIR country - and we really should not attempt to impose our values on them - as you say - if you can't embrace and tolerate or even enjoy the differences - then China aint the place for you.

As for the duck restaurants - OMG - I just cannot wait til I get my fill on Wed night.

Amazing how your pics just capture the Beijing as I know it so well - love the reports - but then I do just love Beijing.

Hey, don't get e wrong, I love the place, but the thing with a trip report from me, is I call it like I see, sometimes wearing my heart on my sleeve, sometimes not making everyone happy.

Your experience in China is far greater than mine so I appreciate that your experience may differ from mine, hence the use of the words undertone and tolerated.

Might I suggest it may well be better to book flights before you leave Oz - elong and Ctrip work exceptionally well - and you actually get to see ALL available flights, times and aircraft type - and you can earn points by paying with your credit cards.

Wish I knew about them sites earlier. Expedia was charging a cough load more than what we paid. MU turned out a good flight with MU recognising our scaryteam elite status giving us front row seating and F lounge access in Harbin

Whens that next beer?

 

[Demented Freak]

Great TR, looking forward to reading your thoughts on Harbin. Went there with some mates in 2010, amazing place to go in winter with all the fun drawbacks of traveling through a rural Chinese city. Aside from the Ice Festival, the Tiger Park is a good day trip to do (you might even get to see a live feeding if somebody's willing to buy a chicken/goat/cow).