The Old Summer Palace

For the first time in a long time we didn't hate Monday! We got up and after breakfast of a donkey meat roll at the same place; we caught the subway to the Old Summer Palace Park. 

It is not as popular as many other places in Beijing, but we believe it is totally worth a visit. Unfortunately a part of the park was destroyed by the Anglo-French troups in the second Opium war in1860, so only the ruins lay a mark of the existence of this odd place. 

In the area there was a huge garden in European style, complete with water fountains and villas; a place like this would possibly it go unnoticed back in Europe but here in Beijing it would have stood out like a white dot on a red carpet. We don't know if was for the ruins or for the many little lakes and channels around but this park was very calm, so calm that even the water stood still and the reflections of the vegetation around was mirror-like. 

After another morning of extensive walking, we decided to call it a day and relaxed back at the hostel in Beijing.

Picnic at Beihai Park

We wanted to visit the Mausoleum of Chairman Mao today, but after lining up at security to enter Tiananmen Square (again), we found that no bags are allowed inside. We were invited to leave our belongings inside the dodgy open lockers nearby, so we decided to leave it for another day and left the busy square.

Our backup plan for the day was a picnic at Beihai Park. The park has a great white stupa in the middle of an island in the lake and several little temples around it. 

Chinese people love their parks and seem to hang around them a lot, some of them listening to their own music, some other playing cards or mah-jong. We like to observe them as we walk around, probably almost as they enjoy staring at us like we are aliens.

We expected to see a lot more 'western' people around, but most of the times we are the only odd ones out when walking around or catching public transport. At the same time, we thought a lot more English would be spoken around the capital city, especially after the 2008 Olympics everyone is still talking about. Turns out we are wrong! A minimum of Chinese should be learned before venturing into this country, just to make life a little easier.

Dinner was special: after an aperitivo of scorpions on a stick at Dong Hua Men food market (very popular among tourists it seems), we decided to try a little local restaurant serving donkey meat. Needless to say, the food was delicious - we will definitely be back for a donkey treat before we leave Beijing on Wednesday. 

Saturday strolling at the Summer Palace

The Summer Palace is located at about 18 km north from Beijing. It took us about one hour to get there with the (slow) subway. The park is basically full of palaces, lakes and gardens, which used to be enjoyed by the imperial family during summer, when temperatures in Beijing would become too high to be bearable in the Forbidden City.

Cherry blossoms are blooming everywhere around the park at this time of the year and it makes the place even more beautiful, like a giant postcard. The park was extremely busy and lots of couples were walking around hand in hand, because it was so very romantic! 

We climbed up the tower to admire the surroundings and take some photos, then strolled for a few hours around the lake, climbing numerous bridges. Some of them have a peculiar shape which makes them higher than usual, just to give enough room for the emperor to float below it when passing on his boat.

Got back home that night really hungry and ventured around our neighbourhood looking for a some food. We found this tiny stall selling noodle soups and ordered a couple of bowls of what ended up to be one the best meals we have had so far.  

More touristy stuff - Temple of Heaven

Hoping to have snake meat for lunch at the near pearl market (it didn't happen), we headed to Temple of Heaven Park. It was a beautiful sunny day, but the wind was very cold and it sometimes carried sand and dust.

The park is huge and the highlight its the three storey round temple we all have seen in pictures somewhere. So many couples were having their wedding photos taken in front of it! 

It is very relaxing to walk around and we had a chance to observe Chinese people exercising in groups in the morning. Some were singing, some other dancing or playing games – a big gathering place basically. Chinese people are very cheerful, active and curious; they may need some getting used to for some of us at first because of the free spitting, farting and burping noises, but we do like them and we think they're fun to be around.

Lunch was at a local restaurant called 'Baozi Wang' (King of Dumplings), where the staff were a bit rude to us at first but warmed up quickly when they saw we could speak a bit of Mandarin. Their Baozi were nice, especially with a bit of chilli sauce.

We got home later that night to find out Max had a fever. Nothing an aspirin, a few oranges and a spoonful of honey could not fix – he was already up and ready to go on the following morning to explore the Summer Palace.

Settling down - first couple of days in Beijing

Touch down in Beijing on Tuesday 17^th March after a delayed flight and an almost-lost luggage in Hong Kong. Very exciting times ahead! We did nothing except from having a shower, having a walk around the block and buy some fruit at the local Chinese market which reminded us a lot of the Footscray Market in Melbourne... No no, not homesick yet.

After going to bed at 8pm (we were a little jet-lagged despite the time difference only being 3 hours) we woke up at 5am the following morning, our faces covered in mosquito bites. Our room was full of them even though spring has hardly arrived and the weather is quite cold still. Mission for the day – finding mozzie spray or a mozzie net.

We spent our very first day walking. We left the hostel at 7 and, after eating a deep fried pancake with lettuce and chicken for breakfast from a little food stand on the side of the road, went to the Uzbek Embassy in Beijing North and spend a couple of hours lining up in the cold to apply for a tourist visa - we will be visiting this country later on in late May/June. We'll have to go back on the following Wednesday to collect the visa and pay.

After this we walked to the Lama Temple a few kilometres away, it was very crowded and decided not to enter, then ended up back in the city to visit the Forbidden City.

Did you know that you need to pass a security check like at the airport between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City? They were not very bothered with us, but controls were quite thorough.

Long story short, the Forbidden City was the imperial residence during the imperial time in Beijing - dated 1406 to 1420. Common people were not allowed in the Forbidden City, it was only for the Imperial Family, the emperor's wives and concubines, his soldiers, hence the name. The complex is very large and contains almost 1000 typical Chinese architecture buildings. 

                                  

                                  

Visiting the Forbidden City was interesting, however we were a little disappointed to find that most buildings have been fully restored and look just like they had been build last week... it did take away that ancient charm. Vendors waiting for tourists like sharks at the exit gate was also not the highlight of the day.

We managed to buy bug spray from a pharmacy on the way home and learned that mosquitoes are called wenzi in Mandarin. The shop assistant was very nice and communicated with us using her English translator on her phone despite Alex speaking some Chinese Mandarin (she would just not talk), like most people here seem to do since English is not a very known language.

The Great Wall is really great

After doing a bit of research, we eliminated all the touristy Great Wall sites like Badaling and Mutianyu, deciding at the end to see Jinshanling. There used to be a 4 hours hike from Jinshanling to Simatai, however this is no longer open because of restorations in progress in Simatai. 
To get to Jinshanling, you need to catch a bus to Miyun County, then a mini-bus from there. Unfortunately the bus does not run during low season, so we had to bargain with the local taxi drivers to take us, wait for us and drive us back. Make sure you don't pay in advance!

The views from Jinshanling Great Wall were breathtaking and the hike was not easy but amazing. Then we got to the 'Five Windows Tower' where we were supposed to walk down to meet our taxi driver. We had a couple of hours of the 4 we had agreed left, so we decided to continue on to what we later on found out to be the start of Simatai Great Wall - possibly for us the most beautiful part of the wall! The site is very run down, no restorations seem to have been done whatsoever. This is the original wall and that's what makes it unique. We even spotted a couple of squirrels who live in the area. Parts of the wall are missing, it is not entirely climbable due to the fact that it is partly in ruins as not many tourists go there.

Vendors walk around the area trying to make some money by selling water, snacks, souvenirs and so forth. They can be annoying, especially when they start following you. However after chatting to one vendor-lady, we found out that they are local farmers who live around the wall.

There is no work for them during the cold months, so they walk up and down the wall searching for tourists to try and make a living. This particular lady we spoke to walks one and a half hours each way every day, plus ckimbs the wall all day to find visitors. We spotted about 20 people visiting the wall on the day we went and about 6 vendors – hope they have better luck during peak season.

That same night we tried Peking Duck at the popular restaurant QuanJuDe. The whole restaurant is majestic and it is fabulous to watch the chefs carving the duck in front of your table. Needless to say, it was a great meal, even though it was a bit expensive. The duck is very fat, but works well with the pancakes with oyster sauce and shallots, plus the cold temperature outside allowed for us to consume a hyper-caloric meal.

China - Visa and travel plans

So here we are with just over 2 months to go before we start our adventure!

We have recently managed to get our Chinese Tourist Visa - L type for 60 days. A bit of a headache but overall doable. No need for a Letter of Invitation for us Aussies (and for many other countries) but you do need to provide 

• a detailed itinerary (we just submitted a document typed in word with the cities we will visit, dates and how we will travel from one city to another) 
• flight bookings in & out of the country (we won't actually fly out, but booked a flight with a fully flexible policy that allows us to cancel and get a full refund once we have figured out how to travel out of the country via land)
• hotel bookings (we just booked the main cities with Booking.com - very flexible with date changes and cancellations). 

The application process at the Melbourne Visa Processing centre is pretty straight forward and the staff helpful. 

We got all of the info we needed on the website http://www.visaforchina.org/. With a bit of creativity and $98.50 per person you you can travel trough china for 2 months!

We are not going to follow it strictly as we want to be as free as possible during this trip, however this is the plan we have in mind:

We will be going slightly off the silk road when visiting Chengdu and Chongqing to try some very spicy food in the Sichuan region (ever heard of their super-spicy hot pot?)

Things we are excited about seeing during our Chinese slice of the trip are:

Beijing and the Great Wall

       

Xi'an

  

Huashan

  

Jiuzhaigou Natural Reserve

  

Zhangye Danxia (Rainbow Mountains)

  

Jiayuguan Great Wall

  

Dunhuang (Crescent Lake and Mogao Caves)

  

Max and I are particularly curious to explore the Xinjiang region, where China meets the surrounding cultures - this is where a number of ethnic groups such as Han, Mongols, Kazakhs, Uyghur can be found.

These photos have obviously been stolen from the web - we can't wait to post the ones we took!