Beijing - Part 1

It has dawned on me that I posted photos only from the 1st city (out of 6) that I visited in Vietnam way back last year. Hmmm, guess I grew bored from the sorting, arranging and uploading of photos. Hope this Beijing trip doesn't end up with the same fate. Anyhoo, it was only a 6-day trip and fingers crossed that I'd make it to the end and not lose interest before that.

Going on organized tours has never been my thing cos you're restricted by your fellow tour members, and I've never felt that way as acutely as this trip. When the average age of all participants is 50 (and that's after taking into account an 18-month old toddler), I had the sinking feeling that there was going to be a lot of resting, waiting and general lack of a spring in the step.

Not to be catty, but I was so right, and then some. Didn't realize senior folks had to go to the toilet so many times a day. Shall never take my ability to hold my pee for 14 hours on a train in Vietnam for granted ever again. The horror of a gross toilet can sometimes overcome any urge to relieve oneself.

But having said that, the trip was fun enough, the older folks friendly and jovial; pity the way we were rushed from historical site to historical site. I felt like before I could soak up the culture, I was being herded off to the next destination. The cattle associations are intentional because that was exactly how I felt amongst the thousands of people we encountered at each place. Simply madness.

The flight on Air China was uneventful; the piping of Chinese music into the cabin at the start and end of the flight, coupled with less than appealing stewardesses made me sleep all the way. However, the food, I must say, was better than I thought it would be.

Pardon the shakiness. Was experiencing a long bout of turbulence. And yes, the flight was cold, as evidenced by the poor ang moh guy in the background.

We finally arrive in Beijing after 6 hours, and had to endure a very abrupt landing because the runway is damn short!!! Here, I must caution all visitors to China. In order to prevent hundreds of people from cursing at you, please be aware that there's this arrival form that you must fill up before you can clear immigration. The forms are available at a counter before you reach the immigration checkpoint. Please do not be one of those stupid, inconsiderate assholes who arrive as a group, do not have the arrival card, and hold up the queue for 30 minutes because they are stupid and stand at the counter filling up their stupid forms, instead of moving aside and letting other people pass through. So there. Be forewarned. And I'm sure those people got a massive earache from all the cussing I did.


A long bus ride ensued and I got my first glimpse of Beijing. If you can't see the picture clearly (I was taking through the glass ok), the facade is all crumpled on purpose, like it has been hit by a train. Maybe the Chinese think it's artistic....

The atmosphere in the city is electrifying, to say the least. It seems like the entire city has rallied together to get the place spruced up and ready for the Olympics. You can see it everywhere; massive construction, souvenirs and memorabilia being hawked at every corner, even our China tour guide had an Olympic pin on her jacket the whole way through. Apparently, the government has passed an order declaring that all work not related to the Olympics has to be postponed and the workers have been redirected to Olympic projects.

Our tour guide, Long Jie, was very nice and chatty. Throughout the whole trip, she kept feeding us with ancient China history and for the most part, I found it fascinating. However, most of the group fell asleep promptly whenever she launched into another history lesson. Poor thing man. They only perked up when she talked about current day Beijing and it's practices. Also, things that we had to look out for. Like the beggars and touts that surrounded the tour bus whenever we disembarked, thrusting hands and merchandise in your face. And we had to be especially wary of anyone who got too close as they were all potential pickpockets. Yes, murder may have gone down in the city, but pickpocketing and robbings are still plentiful. And giving you fake money. Yup, very commonplace, especially for the bigger notes like the 50s and 100s. People get cheated all the time.

Our first stop was Wangfujing, this shopping district much like our Orchard road. You see shopping centres that range from Paragon to Lucky Plaza, side by side. And since they are government-run, the service is.... minimal. A common mantra in this city is "Start work on time, end earlier than stated". Simply because there is no incentive to work harder. You work less, you work more, you still get paid the same.


I thought those 2 guards in the 2nd photo were from the People's Liberation Army, akin to our Armed Forces. Turns out they're merely security guards; the equivalent of our Cisco guards. -_-''' And I was so excited at having taken a picture with them. was wondering why they were so friendly, though.

Fake flowers are also very, very common in China. Those next to my mum are fake, fake, fake. I suppose since China is so big, and flowers really do make a drab place look better, fake flowers make more economic sense, and they last forever too.

Wanfujing is also famous for its street food, which is simply heavenly. We only got to walk around for 1.5 hours which was a real shame because we didn't get to do much. I didn't get to sample much either because I had just finished a 10-course dinner. But if you do get a chance, skip the restaurants and head straight for the street food.

Day 2
The day started off brightly enough, but we were soon caught in a brisk afternoon shower. The weather was pretty cold when I went there, so the rain didn't exactly help. Despite the cold weather, the sun shone unbearably bright, which explains why I'm almost wincing in a lot of the photos.


And it's off to the Beijing Sports University first. Here's where they train all their future Olympic hopefuls. The training is of course gruelling but it's such a thrill to watch them perform. We caught a glimpse of the gold medal-winning female gymnastic team and even though they had not perfected their routine, they were still breath-taking to watch. Oh, and we got a tour guide for the school. She's a track and field hopeful, so I told her I wanted to take her picture just in case she got famous.

And yes, Chairman Mao is everywhere; busts, pictures, statues... the whole nation is still incredibly enamoured by him and it's evident in the differential way in which our tour guide mentions his name. Often in the same sentence with other greats like Qin Shi Huang (If you dunno who that is, tsk tsk; he's one of the great Chinese Emperors).


Next stop, Summer Palace. I really loved hearing the history behind Summer Palace. The Summer Palace wasn't anything great when Cixi's husband was in power. But she persuaded her son, Guangxu, to tell his father to use the money originally set aside for buying modern guns and equipment to fend off Western forces and use it instead, on upgrading the Summer Palace so that Cixi would have a nice place to live in. What a fillial son, eh? So Guangxu did as he was told and when the British came attacking, the Chinese military found boxes of sand instead of ammunition. So yeah, Cixi basically destroyed the Chinese empire and let Western forces in. All for a beautiful palace.

But the summer palace is lovely indeed, and is bordered by this long corridor that is adorned with thousands of paintings. The corridor runs along the Kunming Lake, and hence the royalty was ensured a jaunt along the lake even when it rained. How thoughtful.

Our last stop for the day was the Forbidden City. The grandeur of the palace was awe-inspiring. To think that the entire place was built without a single nail. Amazing.


Many of the buildings were undergoing refurbishing in order to be ready for the Olympics, hence we didn't even get to enter the main palace. But as we strolled through the palace, the guide was telling us about the history and practices that took place in the palace, which made the tour all that more interesting. The long corridors that signified how special the emperor was; even old court officials had to walk great distances, climb many stairs, simply to speak to the emperor. The fact that the emperor changed where he slept every night in order to confuse assassins; how the chamber maids would be locked up with the emperor so that no one could tell the whereabouts of the emperor. Was the royalty decadent? Perhaps. Thousands of people could be starving and the royal family was cocooned in the deepest boughs of luxury. But for someone who was purported to be the descendent of the Heavenly King, I suppose it could seem justifiable. Do you know that the Forbidden City has 999.5 rooms, 0.5 rooms less than the palace of the Heavenly King? This was to show deference to the Heavenly King and acknowledgement that he was still ultimately numero uno.

We ate a lot on the trip; it was only after the 2nd day that my mum told me we were on a gourmet tour, and here I was thinking that I was in China to soak up the history and culture.

Silly me.