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Beijing has been very good fun and we are so glad we came after not originaly planning to!! Before diving into what we have been up to, i thought i would infrom you of a few other things that may give you an enhanced idea of what China is like. . .
Firstly, the Chinese race as a whole are not pleasant. We have found them incredibly difficult to deal with and they are extremely rude and have no manners what- so- ever. They spit regularly (even inside buildings) straight on to the floor with unnecersary regularity and cough straight into each others faces. They also push and barge their way through like feisty little rats. They have no charm and are always, always grumpy. I am certain that the unhospitable nature of the Chinese will be mentioned regularly during the Olympics...
Also the chinese food is pretty disgusting. The meat is of such poor quality you cannot even make out what is it and there is very little variety. We have found no spring rolls, peking duck or dim sum so far... The food is however, fairly cheap-- however upmarket you choose to go...
Chinese internet is a joke. half of it is censored (sop we cannot even look at bbc sport) and the rest run sooooooooo slowly.
And it is cold, like being in the Scottish Highlands at times.
This is by no means a critism but more a comment.......... everything in china is huge..... from skyscapers to cities to the Tianemen square to the Great Wall of China. lLterally huge; except the people. (Both Shanghai and Beijing have populations in excess of 20million (officially- the reality is more).)
However, despite those moans we are having an awesome time both seeing and learing about some incredible places.
As approached to land in Beijing on the 6th we were greeted by the most amazing fireworks which we could see out of the window of the plane. They were going off for as far as the eye could see all over the city to celebrate the chinese new year. It made for a pretty spectacular sight! From the airport we then got a bus to the centre of town and then walked to our hostel which simply couldn't be more central-- we were amazed when we found it! We dumped our stuff in our dorm (which we share with a dutch guy travelling solo) and then headed out on the town with three of Ben's mates from St. Pauls who by coincidence overlapped in Beijing for two nights. We headed off to a few bars but then hit the streets to watch the fireworks going off everywhere... and i mean everywhere. every single chinaman had a huge box of fireworks and was letting them off in the street with very little thought for any sort of safety. It was very dangerous but an awesome sight/experience!! We have videos of these things going off all around and will put then up at some point when we found out how/a fast internet connection!! After that we then headed off to a club called Mix (the five of us) where we had a good time leaving at around 3am. When me and ben laft we planned to walk home but it was so cold (around -5) that we simply couldnt and after getting rather lost (for around 2 hours causing us to get dangerously cold) we had to get a taxi depsite having no money, which then meant that when we finally got back i (will) had to sneek into the dorm to get some money while Ben waited with the driver for me to return!! By time we finally got to bed it was about 5.. which made for a good introduction to beijing!
The next moring we rose at about 10 and headed off to Tianemen square, which we strolled around before going in to the Forbidden City. The square is huge (china style huge) and impressive. The forbidden city is 1 millon sq metres and was where the chinese royalty lived in voluntary isolation for around 500 years. It is an extraordinary place and very impressive. It is full after huge hall after huge hall and all of the buildings are of typical old chinese style with elaborate roofs etc.. only half of it is open to the public; and we still spent two hours strolling around within it. We have some great photos which we shall put up at some point. We then skipped lunch and headed off to try and rent bikes to go around the city on, however the place had been shut down and we would have been mad to rent tham anyway as it was so cold! So instead we headed off to the Ming City walls, which can probably be best described as impressive in their time!! We walked the 1.8km length of them that is left and went into the guardhouse at the end. After that we jumped in a taxi back to the hostel and slept for an hour or 2 before heading out to buy pot noodles which we then cooked and ate at the hostel. That eveing we chilled in the hostel bar and played pool.
The next day we got up in no hurry, leaving the hostel at about 11ish and immediately scrapped our plan to head to the Summer Palace, instead heading off towards the Olympic Park. We thought we could get there by metro (which we should have been able to) however, when it came to changing metro for the final leg of the journey we found some small print underneath the metro map which informed us that the tube we wanted to get was still under construction (depsite being fully marked up on the map) annoyed about this we kicked up a bit of a fuss at the metro station only for 1 nice guy to step forward and say that his girlfriend was coming to pick him up in a minute or to and he would be happy to give us a lift to the site... an offer we duly took up. When we got there we had to peer over a high fence to get a glimpse of the stadium which looks very impressive, however is clearly no where near being finished. There was still a crane inside the stadium and the area around the stadium is a chaotic building site. The aquatics cente is a fairly cool building, square in shape but with a sort of bubble texture to the outside of it. Hard to explain. We both decided that it will be a very tight squeeze and an impressive feat to have it finshed by the summer!! From there we got a taxi back to the metro station before heading off to Wangfujing food market where we had some lunch. Kebabs mainly. That afternoon we spent in the silk market which is HUGE and bought a range of things, ranging from Adidas tops to ipod speakers and belts. Came to a grand total of about 20 quid. Nice. That evening we were particularly lazy and had a beer with our room mate and then went to bed pretty early due to our early rise the next moring.
The next moring we got up at 5.30am to go to the Great Wall of China. We had booked this trip the day before for about 180y (around 15 quid) which included transport, breakfast and lunch. The trip we had chosen was a 10 km hike along the wall (supposedly the most scenic root) and was suggested by Ted (Ben's friend). The wall is 180km away from Beijing so as u can imagine the coach journey took some time (around 3 hours). It was definately worth it though. The sky was blue the whe way without a cloud insight (although this made it crisply cold) which allowed the most incrdible views out over the surrounding mountains/hills and further along the wall. The pictures which we have got are amazing. The wall is very impressive spanning from horizon to horizon at about 1000km in length. the walk took in total around 4 hours at the end of whih we had a quick lunch and then headed off back to Beijing. We got back at about 6, had a quick sleep and then went and drank beer in the hostel bar and played pool.
And there we have it... it is 11.40 am on sunday morning and we have our flight to Xi'an this afternoon.
Photos will go up as soon as we find a decent computer that is not all Chinese.
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