Beijing Revisited

Quote of the Day:
(As we walk through Tiananmen Square) My sister: "Wait... is China Communist?"

My response

The night we arrived in Beijing and met our Beijing guide, Kevin, and our main tour guide, Lucy, who would accompany us throughout the entirety of our trip and who was our go-to person should any problem arise. After boarding the bus, we traveled deeper and deeper into the rings which comprise the city of Beijing, finally arriving at the Beijing Marriott City Wall, just a few blocks from Tiananmen Square. It was a bit jarring to stay in such luxurious facilities, considering the fact that this was China.

Beijing Marriott City Wall lobby

Bathroom in Yunnan in 2008...

...and bathroom in Beijing in 2012. Gotta love 10% annual GDP growth.

Luckily, real China lay just outside the hotel's perimeter.After exploring the nearby sidestreets and train station, immersing ourselves in the perpetual cloud of smoke and near-constant hawking of loogies, it was official- we were back in China.


Having previously visited Beijing in August 2009, I knew that this leg of the trip had the potential to be a case of deja vu, and therefore devised a list of goals to freshen up this return visit:

Goal 1) See Mao's body in Mao's Mausoleum
Goal 2) Ride a toboggan down the Great Wall

Goal 3) Visit Dr. Fish

The morning after we arrived in Beijing, our first stop was the great Tiananmen Square. During my last visit, many of the attractions in the square had been covered in scaffolding in preparation for the 60th anniversary of the PRC, and luckily this time around everything was obstruction-free.

Sadly, our guide Kevin told us our tour didn't have time to stop at Mao's Mausoleum, and thus we missed out on the chance to wait three hours to see a wax replica of Mao's body for five seconds. Maybe next time.

Goal 1 = miserable failureIf my first trip to Forbidden City had demonstrated the law of diminishing returns with each new courtyard looking like a near replica of the one which had come before, this visit to Forbidden City exemplified diminishing-diminishing returns.



Nevertheless, the highlight of Forbidden City has to be Chair #1. Without fail, there always seems to be about fifty Chinese tourists pushing and shoving to see the Emperor's chair in the first main room of Forbidden City... despite the fact that there are about ten more exactly like it throughout the palace. Submitting oneself to the de facto mosh pit crowding around the chair always makes for a good time.

The infamous chair

Upon exiting the Forbidden City, we took a pedicab ride past Houhai, a lake I'd stayed near on my last visit, to a hutong.

Traditionally, hutongs have been alleys housing many a Beijing resident, but in recent times, many have fallen to the wrecking ball to make way for new development or have been turned into souvenir shops. The hutong residence we dined in, however, had been spared because the government had decided to intervene in an attempt to preserve a piece of Beijing history (and bring in more tourist revenue, of course).

Our guide Kevin with the owner of the residence

One of the major Beijing sites I had missed out on in 2009 was the Summer Palace, which we stopped by following our lunch. Apparently the palace had quite the tortured history, suffering a number of attacks through the years, until Empress Dowager Cixi spent the funds intended for the navy on the reconstruction of the palace.

A giant rock in the palace which ostensibly brings good luckMarble boat for the Empress to relax on

Bypassing the more famous Quanjude and Da Dong for Peking duck (北京烤鸭), our group finished the day by dining at a restaurant called Hua Jia Yi Yuan. While the duck here may not have been quite up to par with Quanjude, the variety of dishes certainly made up for it and provided some much needed sustenance for the coming day of tomb-raiding and wall-scaling.

Random China Link: Family Living in Bathroom





.