Beijing - Happy National Day!!!

As I sit on the twelve-hour train from Beijing to Xi’an, it seems like a good time to reflect a little bit on Beijing. What the hell else am I going to do? In my last article, I wrote up to my first morning in my hotel, before meeting up with my group at the hostel. Let’s start off there.

To begin with, I lugged my haul over to the Nine Dragon, Xinmao Youth Hostel. It was only a couple kilometers away and it was a level walk, so it wasn’t a big deal. I dropped off my stuff and, since I had time to kill before my meeting, I headed on to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The only problem was that it was October 1 – China’s National Day – meaning there were literally hundreds of thousands of people at both. (Note: I looked it up afterwards. The total was about 100 thousand. It seemed like more, though.) I opted to start at the Forbidden City, but my trip wasn’t everything that it could have been because of the crowds. I took some pictures, but I would have preferred to have gone at a less busy time.

In the evening, I met the others in my group and after a brief orientation, we went out for our first Chinese dinner in China. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t much different than the Chinese food I’ve eaten in the United States, complete with Kung Po Chicken. It was still good, though, and a few of us went back to the hostel for a little Chinese beer. Okay, it was a lot of beer, but we had a good time.

My next day was a free day with respect to the group and I went back to Tiananmen Square and this time, I made it under the tunnel to the actual square. It was pretty impressive. I understand that it’s the largest public square in the world and I can believe that. There are lots of impressive public buildings surrounding the square and gardens, monuments and statues within the square. Unfortunately, there’s no statue dedicated to the dude standing in front of the tank, but you weren’t really expecting there to be one, did you?

After heading back to the hostel to check on some baseball scores, I hopped on the subway (see note) and went to the Olympic center from the 2008 Olympics. If you’ve followed this blog at all, you have noticed how much I love Olympic stadiums (Rome, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin . . .) so Beijing’s was high on the list. The National Stadium is known as the Bird’s Nest for reasons you can figure out from the photos. Across the open area in front of the stadium is the Water Cube, where the swimming and diving events took place. I took a tour of the Bird’s Nest and I have to say that the Olympic area is the most impressive of any that I have seen up to now, though that sort of figures since it also is the most recent. In any event, it is a beautiful area and I consider it a must-see if you happen to be in Beijing.

On the second night, we went out together as a group for a tour of a Beijing hutong, which was interesting. They are old neighborhoods of Beijing in very old homes with no working toilets and no heat. For this reason, the toilet reason that is, there are public toilets all over the place in Beijing. They are not necessarily the most fancy of places, but they do come in handy.

We had dinner as a group again and had . . . wait for it . . . Chinese food. Then we went to a bar and had good, old, trusty Tsingtao. It’s definitely the most popular Chinese beer abroad, and it’s likely the most popular Chinese beer in China, but there are plenty of others. (The picture is from the first night and I think I tried something other than Tsingtao. It's Chinese beer, though, so give me a break.)

That’s the first couple of days with the group and it’s probably enough for this entry. There will be more about Beijing shortly.

(Note: The Beijing metro is pretty awesome. There are ten lines (up from just a few lines five years ago), and they are expecting many more in the near future. Everything, including the announcements are in Chinese and English, so even though I only know one Chinese word (xie xie – thank you), I was able to get around everywhere I wanted with absolutely no problem. Also, it is very cheap with a ride costing only around thirty-five cents no matter the distance. I do love me a good metro.)