concert at the water cube

If you’ve been with me long enough to have read about my first trip to the olympic venues you’ll remember how bummed I was that I didn’t actually get to go inside the two main ones, the Water Cube and the Birds Nest.  Still thinking about that two months later, I thought what a better way to spend my last night in Beijing than to go to the concert they have nightly inside the Cube!

Earlier in the week I made my way over there to buy tickets, but that ticket booth was closed and only had a phone number posted on the window.  I tried calling, but of course, they didn’t speak English.  Not ready to give up I asked around when I got back to the office and found out that one of the students had gone and he got his tickets from www.piao.com.cn.  Since it worked for him, figured I would give it a try.  The site isn’t the easiest to navigate, so after I finished my order I sent an email to confirm and make sure I had done everything correctly.  Within two minutes I received a phone call from an employee fluent in English and we made arrangements for them to deliver the tickets the next day.  Everything worked without a hitch and five of us atttended the show that Saturday night.

My Swedish friend Anna and I inside the Water Cube

The show was only about an hour long, but it was just cool to be inside a place where, only a few months prior, amazing feats were accomplished and records were set.  And it was something a little more unique than just walking around inside for a few minutes.   I would have been satisfied with either, but I’m glad I was able to attend the concert.  Rumors say it won’t be playing much longer, though I am sure they have something else planned to take its place.

candied haw

I couldn’t end this Beijing blog without ever posting about a sweet treat favored by locals which is called “candied haw” in English.   You see these things everywhere in Beijing, being enjoyed by both locals and tourists.  At first I were told they were mini apples, and since I am not a big fan of red apples, the idea of putting a bunch on a stick and coating them in hardened sugar didn’t sound too appetizing to me.  It wasn’t until my second to last week that I found out they weren’t mini apples, they were a fruit called haw.  Now knowing the truth, I knew I would get one the next time I saw one, which didn’t take long.

Haw is something we learned about in our Traditional Chinese Medicine course, and on the day we learned about it our teacher happened to be drinking haw juice. I was  intrigued so I later picked up some haw juice for myself.  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either and so I then decided to try one of the many choices of haw snacks.  I chose Haw Iron which looks like bite size fruit roll-ups and  liked them so much it is one of the three foods I stocked up on for my plane ride home.

So needless to say, I quite enjoyed the candied haw and bought another in my last days in Beijing.  One little tip though, make sure you are going to be eating it outside because there are quite a few seeds to spit out!

the great wall

Me sitting on the Great Wall of China, thanks to my camera’s self timer.

Only a week ago I was walking along the Great Wall of China, on the other side of the globe from where I sit now.  Thank goodness I didn’t decide to skip this site, because it was definitely a highlight of my three months in Beijing.

The three main visitors sections of the Great Wall in Beijing are Badaling, Mutianyu, and Simatai.  Badaling is the closest and therefore most crowded.  If you hear of someone going to the Great Wall and saying it was lame or overrated, they probably went here (I haven’t been, so this is just based on what I’ve heard and read.)  Mutianyu is a bit further so a bit less crowded.  Both Badaling and Mutianyu have been restored, but regardless, Mutianyu is where I would have gone except that is where WLE goes on their organized trip.  Since the friends that were going with me would eventually go on that trip for free, they didn’t want to go to the same location twice, and I can’t blame them for that.  So that left Simatai, the furthest and most treacherous, and also unrestored.  Sign me up I said!

Now that my mind was made up there was no stopping me from going to Simatai.  Finding out how to get there, however, was proving to be difficult.  After a little internet research I found multiple sites that said take this bus from this station and then it will take you to this place where you then can hire a minivan to take you the rest of the way.  Sounded like a pain, but I was willing, until I read something that said that bus no longer left from that station.  Since every source said you had to leave early because transportation to that destination usually ended by 8am, I didn’t want to risk it.  So I asked the WLE staff for help.  She called the tour guide company they have a connection with and they gave me two options, we could either hire a private car for the day for 800RMB and we could leave whenever we wanted, or we could join a tour for 260RMB each (including breakfast and lunch) that left early in the morning.  I originally had two companions for the trip and when I told one of them the options, he opted not to go at all.  When I told the other, he said join the tour.  So I called the lady back and said we would join the tour, and she then told me where we had to be… at 5:50am.  At this news, the other friend backed out as well.  But like I said earlier, nothing was going to stop me now, so I woke up at 5am the next day and an hour later was on a bus with about a dozen strangers, at least half of whom were from Australia.

About two hours in to the three hour ride, we started to see snow on the ground.  This is about the same time we all started warming up to each other, listening to each other’s travel stories.  What I didn’t know until we got there was that we had two options, going straight to Simatai or doing the hike from Jinshanling to Simatai.  Originally I just planned on going straight to Simatai because I wasn’t confident of my current physical condition, but everyone else was doing the hike and I wasn’t about to be the sissy of the group.  So we all got out and departed together.

It didn’t take long for us to all get separated though, going at our own pace and stopping to take pictures, so before I knew it, it was like I had the whole place to myself.  And that scene was breathtakingly beautiful.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots.

While I did have to stop a couple of times to catch my breath, I have done more difficult hikes and even a ten year old could do this if you go slow.   Despite some of the steep inclines I didn’t feel any pain in my legs.  Not util the next day that is, when I began to feel a soreness in my calves that lasted about 48 hours.  Parts of the climb were a bit dangerous, even more so in the snow, but as long as you aren’t stupid and pay attention to your steps you will be fine.

Everything about this Great Wall experience turned out better than I could have expected.  I am so glad I chose the site that I did, because I can’t imagine anything being better.  I am glad my two friends flaked because it gave me the chance to meet new people as well as walk the Great Wall at my own pace.  Going in the Winter… well, everything is prettier covered in snow.  So if you ever want recommendations about visiting, I would say do it just like that.  Do the Jinshanling to Simatai hike, and do it in the Winter.

If anyone has been to the Great Wall and has different suggestions, please feel free to share because I definitely plan on going back some day.

temple of heaven

Temple of Heaven is yet one more tourist attraction in Beijing that is so much bigger than you first think.  I really enjoyed it there, but watching the locals was way more interesting than the actual points of interest within the temple.  Moments after walking through the entrance gate I saw a few couples casually ballroom dancing.  Continuing on, I eventually came across this group.

I don’t know why, but watching people getting so much joy out of dancing always makes me feel incredibly happy and energized, ready to conquer anything.

As you can probably hear in the video, there were also people hitting things back and forth with paddles, and a few playing that hacky sack like game I was inroduced to on the Drum Tower/ Hutongs tour.  And of course, being in the feel-good mood that I was, I bought one!

my new toy

It was less than $1 and now I can play in the US whenever I want!

tiananmen square

The “Gate of Heavenly Peace” at Tiananmen Square is one of the most iconic images of Beijing (the thing with the big portait of Chairman Mao), so I couldn’t very well leave without taking a few photos of my own.  Those pictures look like any other you see though, so I won’t bother posting any.  I walked around the plaza a bit, not much to do or many pictures to take, but I did get a kick out of watching the other tourists pose for their obligatory photos.  More than one group attempting to capture themselves while jumping in the air.  On a nice warm day I can imagine it would be cool to hang out and play games or read, but it is the middle of December and too cold for that right now so I kept moving and walked through the Gate of Heavenly Peace.  Really all that lies between that and the Forbidden City is a handful of souvenir stands which you can see in the reflection here.

When I got to the entrance of the Forbidden City I was approached a couple of times by people offering to be my guide, but I turned them all down explaining that I had already been when they wouldn’t simply take “no” for an answer.  So I turned back and retraced my steps back to the plaza.  Around the perimeter of the plaza is the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, the Great Hall of the People, and the National Museum of China, but I wasn’t in much of a museum mood so it was back to the subway and on to the next site!

pure lotus vegetarian restaurant

Before I came to China I was a vegetarian, but I never intended to keep that up during my travels.  Food is culture and I didn’t want to miss out on anything, not to mention having to question everything before I ate it.  That could be the best decision I’ve ever made.  But if I was a vegetarian in Beijing, Pure Lotus restaurant where I had dinner last night would have been my haven.  The place is Buddhist in theme so there is no alcohol and no meat, but there are plenty of teas and fortified juices to choose from and it is amazing what they can do with soy products to make them both look and taste like meat.  Here are just some of the dishes we had:

yummy “sausages”

the best eggplant I’ve ever had

“steak” and potatoes, my favorite dish of the night

pumpkin ball things that sounded really good on the menu but were actually pretty gross

fake Peking Duck that was absolutely delicious

complimentary dessert, oranges complete with dry ice presentation

Yes, I know it looks pricey and it is, but if you go in a big group it isn’t bad at all.  Total cost for the ten of us was 1113 kuai (about $162 US dollars) and all our stomachs and taste buds were satisfied.

donghuamen night market

After surfing the internet a bit for things not to miss in Beijing, I realized that when we went to the night market a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t go to the one that I thought we had went to.  The night market you usually see on TV is called DongHuaMen and that is where we had been headed, only we got distracted by a smaller version we passed on the way.  So on Sunday we made a second trip to try out the real deal.

At first glance it looks like a long row of food stalls that you’ll never be able to eat your way through, but in reality most stalls sell the same things and, even though we were moving slowly, we walked from one end to the other in less than ten minutes.  In addition to creepy crawlies like we ate at the other market, this one offered lots of other goods on a skewer.  You can get just a regular meat skewer, or try some other animal part you aren’t used to eating like intestines or testicles.  The only “odd” thing I ate was snake (pictured above), but I filled my stomach on other goodies like baozi (stuffed buns), jaozi (dumplings), some random fried stuff, and rice in half a pineapple topped with sugar which was my favorite of the night.

Overall I found this place to be overrated.  Maybe it is because we had already eaten bugs and stuff so the novelty wasn’t there anymore.  But really I think it is because I didn’t find any of the food that night particularly great.  Go just to go, definitely eat a few things because I think it would be really boring if you didn’t, but don’t expect to be wowed by anything you put in your mouth.

got me some ass

I did it, I finally tried donkey like I said I was going to in an earlier post.  Figured that since I only had enough time left to eat it once, might as well do it right and go to the same place I saw on the Travel Channel.  Of course I had already hyped myself up for this before finding the address and realizing it is on the complete opposite side of Beijing from where I live.  After taking the subway to Sihui station, we got off and walked across the street to a bus station, jumped on bus #989 and it was about ten stops to Dong Ba which is where we got off.  By the time we had reached that point, we definitely got the feeling we were in the middle of nowhere.  And to feel like you are in the middle of nowhere while still being within the city limits of Beijing, well that isn’t easy to do.  But we found it, the only tall and lit up building in the area.

The food was good and decently priced.  The menu has much more than just donkey, but donkey is what we were there for so that is what we stuck with.  We tried donkey skin which was thinly sliced and mixed with veggies and really kinda tasted like a veggie itself.  We had donkey meat stir fried with scallion, donkey ribs that were so tender they slid off the bone without effort, and donkey dumplings.  Four dishes, three bowls of rice, tea, and a big bottle of Coca-Cola for 140 kuai (about $20 US).  Definitely worth the money, but was it worth the distance?

To be honest, none of us found that donkey had much flavor, nothing too unique about it.  The donkey and scallions dish, if we didn’t know otherwise, could have easily passed as beef.  But the menu was so extensive, so many parts I didn’t have enough room in my stomach to try in one sitting, I would definitely go back.

summer palace

We had been told that the Summer Palace is not worth going to in the Winter because it isn’t beautiful like it is during the warmest season of the year.  But considering it is the closest tourist attraction to where I live in this city,  I felt like I had no excuse to return back home without visiting.  So despite it being nineteen degrees farenheit when I walked out the door Saturday morning, I went.  And I am glad we didn’t listen to that person because, though I haven’t seen it in the Summer to compare, the Palace is quite spectacular all frozen over.  Granted I didn’t learn much history of the place because I was too cold to pay much attention to the tour guide, but I can always read up on that later.  I had no idea this place was so huge, and 75% of its total area is Kunming Lake which is completely man made.  There are a lot of good photographs to be taken, so if you have a camera, I say definitely do not miss this site, no matter what time of year you find yourself in Beijing.

countdown

Now that I only have ten days remaining in Beijing I want to make sure I don’t waste that time.  There is a tour of the Summer Palace this weekend, I’m making plans to eat at the donkey restaurant, I still want to try cupping,  and of course I intend on visiting the Great Wall next week… but what else is there left to do?  If anybody reading this has been here, what do you recommend?  If you haven’t been here, what would be the first things you would want to do if you were here?  What do people think of when they think of Beijing?  What kind of things are you curious about?  When I return to the US are people going to be asking me “Did you go here?  Did you try this?”  I want to be able to answer yes to as many of those questions as I can, so help me fill my calendar!