gargoylekitty (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gargoylekitty) wrote2010-09-12 11:07 pm
gargoylekitty) wrote2010-09-12 11:07 pm
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Weekend in Beijing
While none of the family live(d) in Beijing, it turned out that my aunt had a friend who lived up there with her son and a spare room, so one weekend my cousin and I went ahead and bought two tickets on the over-night train to Beijing(a first for her as well!). Being cheap we got ones that meant we had to share a car with other people, we had the top bunks and some old folk had the bottom ones, though all in all it wasn't a bad trip.
That said... roughly two days in Beijing.
Since we wanted to wait for our host's son and his girlfriend to join us in going to the Great Wall, him having other things to attend to that day, not to mention having a car which would get us there easier, the first day we went to another rather well known spot, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. If I'd somehow, lol, forgotten I was in China, this, the whole city really, was the place that would be like a whack upside the head in reminder.
I suppose that's a bit of the point of a capital city.
Didn't exactly get many good pics of the area in general. Too many people. The area is huge though. The street, like a lot of streets in Beijing for that matter, had a crosswalk under the road as there's no way you're getting across on the street itself.
Huge Mao.
I love shíshī(and really any type of 'guardian' statue). They're fierce.
The Forbidden City was built more than 600 years ago, during the Ming Dynasty, and acted as the imperial palace for roughly the first 500 of those years. It consists of 980 buildings and covers 720,000 m2 (7,800,000 sq ft), aka, it's huge. Now it's primary purpose is as a musuem.
On a geek-related note, iirc, Ba Sing Se in Avatar: TLA is based on Beijing, the inner circle itself being loosely based on the Forbidden City(and the outer wall being the Great Wall).
This picture was, more or less, to note the yellow hatted tour group, lol.
Another! This one from the Qing Dynasty(aka, newer than the other).
A garden!
I imagine it looks a lot better during summer.
Sign says, "A single act of carelessness leads to the eternal loss of beauty."
Legs don't work that way. D:
We then headed up the hill, seeing a few things along the way...
Santa and the zodiac animals.
Some poorer areas.
...then reached the Bell Tower(Zhōnglóu)...
...and Drum Tower(Gǔlóu).
After that we headed back to the place we were staying since it was the son's birthday and there was a party. On the way though, saw these outside one stop and had to take a pic.
Cute.
The next day, we headed out early, stopping at a Starbucks for coffee(lol) and this Chinese fast food place and then onto the Great Wall.
All able-bodied individuals, and cheap, we decided it was only right to take the walking route up.
It was a bit of a hike, though worth it. One thing that sort of drove the choice to go up this way was this...
We're just walking along and go up another part and suddenly it's just there. It was just a 'whoa' kinda moment, lol.
...the person in the panda hat is my cousin. :\
Ngl, the Great Wall is awesome.
((Lots of pics, so going to filter a bit.))
We didn't really see many people at all. It was like the whole thing was to ourselves, at least as far as we could see. :)
This next pic needs a bit of background... okay, not much. The year before the guy's father had passed away and they'd thrown some of his ashes over the side of the wall around here, lit some incense, and carved his name in the wall.
I thought it was sweet(his wasn't the only name).
The alternative to walking up/down...
...and the walk back down.
Leaving there we explored the city a bit and ran into something my cousin just had to buy(for her boyfriend, Canadian, who'd been sad when these were banned from Shanghai during Obama's visit)
Not that he has anything against Obama, he just found it amusing.
After that, it was time for us to make the mad dash and barely avoid missing our train back to Shanghai. Before settling in for the night I remembered to snag some pictures of the sleeping arrangements.
Each bed had its own light in case you didn't want to sleep when everyone else was ready to, a little vent like those on airplanes for cool air, and a little TV that only played movies in Chinese, obviously(I watched this one American movie that had been dubbed for about an hour or so when the Jodi Picoult book I'd been trying to read became too unbearable.)
Slept not as good on the way back as the way there, had this weird 'rocking' sense of everything moving throughout the next day.
In conclusion, random things I observed in Beijing...
* Since the son works at a private/foreigner's type school(40-50% non-Chinese students, as opposed to the less than 1% non-Chinese students at my cousin's school), we went there for a sorta raise money/yard sale-type thing they were having. There I got the small 'whoa'/huh of seeing these two blonde-hair blue-eyed white kids shouting out at people to buy their stuff in fluent Mandarin. From hearing them talk, I got the impression it was their first language. Not that it was the first non-Chinese folk I'd heard speaking it or anything, but it was the first kids(kinda made me wonder if their parents are fluent as well or if the kids talk for them).
* Got into a fight/shoving match with an old guy on the metro who refused to accept that there was no room for him. Ended when he pushed me hard enough I stumbled against this woman and her kid drawing the woman into it who verbally tore him apart for causing that to happen.
* Saw this place called 'Smallville' with the sign having a font/style similar to the show's title so I'm pretty sure it was a reference.
* Witnessed the most pointless argument ever between this drunk white guy who knew no Mandarin and this old drunk Chinese guy whose English got worse the further from sober he was over global warming, lol. "It's all people's fault!" "No, no, no... people... people don't!" "It's people who did it!" "No, people can't do that!" on repeat for quite awhile. I think it was funnier in person than my explanation of it. XP
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Ha we need a lot more of these signs in the world.
I didn't know you went to China; actually I don't think I know anything about you at all except you're on SD, but thanks so much for posting these pictures. Guess I'll wander around the rest of your blog now?
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Spent the first few months of the year there visiting some cousins and for the New Year(Chinese New Year) we went to Thailand and Cambodia. It was awesome, even if it lead to more mockery material over my name(Asia).
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You are very brave to visit in winter, we usually flee the cold.
Hope you don't mind me wandering in from atla land :D
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