We'd booked the economy hotel option in Beijing and the Jian Guo Men Hotel turned out to be quite a treat. It's in a good location within walking distance of Tiananmen Square (well, in our book it is anyway). It also has an excellent restaurant attached which appeared very popular with the locals. On the menu were live bull-frogs and eels along with the more normal (to us) crab, lobster, fish etc.
We spent 6 days in Beijing relentlessly pounding the tarmac with tourist map in hand. The streets are much longer than expected and we soon became familiar with the underground system and even the buses. Although large, the city seems spacious and is certainly clean. Even the ubiquitous spitting is relatively rare as the government is discouraging it on health grounds. As with the other places visited so far, the subway is irritatingly reliable and rapid. It really is becoming pointless trying to compare these cities with London as they always surpass it.
Highlights of Beijing were obviously the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, The Summer Palace and The Great Wall. We also took in Tiantan Park and the Yonghegong Lamasery which don't feature so high on the tourist route but were well worth seeing.
What can be said about the Forbidden City other than that it's absolutely massive? We spent pretty much the whole day there and probably saw about 2/3 of it. Our progress around the palace was impeded by a load of jumped up 18 year old squaddies who seemed to delight in shouting at people, accompanied by a bunch of plain-clothed thugs. They were on crowd control duty whilst some visiting Western dignitaries were shown around by what looked like a police chief. Of course, "crowd control " really means making as much fuss and creating as large a crowd of curious onlookers as you can.
We went out to the Summer Palace the next day to stroll around the lake and look at the temples. Crowd generation detail were there and we were impeded for a while as the dignitaries strolled around.
Next day was Tiantan Park where we found ourselves amid a crowd of curios onlookers - you guessed it! Dignitaries! Still, at least we were visiting the right stuff.
In all the temples we visited, there are numerous artifacts on view but they are all appallingly displayed behind dirty glass windows and bars. The items are also mostly filthy which serves only to hide their obvious splendour. There have been some horrific dust storms here recently and this can't have helped but, none the less, it's a real shame the exhibits aren't shown better. The only shiny bits are the plaques that repeatedly inform us that it's only through the diligence of the Republic that the exhibits can be seen at all. Virtually everything was destroyed by Western imperialists - allegedly!
The weather had been fine and warm so we booked an excursion to the Great Wall. So it rained! Hard! At least it would keep the numbers down we reasoned. Not so. We couldn't get to the bit of the wall we wanted to see so we had to go to the mega-touristy bit at Badaling. We walked along the wall as far as you're allowed which is approximately twice as far as the majority of people. At least the dignitaries had checked the weather today - not a thug in sight. We were surrounded by Chinese tourists and their umbrellas though. On the way back, we were stuck in a traffic jam for 90 mins whilst 2 buses were scraped off the road. Just as we finally got under way, still very wet and now very cold in our unheated bus, the gearbox packed in.
Back in Beijing and also worth a special mention are the Hutongs. These are small areas of back-streets which have their own thriving communities. We found a food market with all sorts of delicacies on offer. Our favourite was scorpion shish kebabs. If this isn't your cup of tea, you could have silk-worm (chrysalis or fully formed) on a stick instead. Up above the melee of food selling and consuming a dude in a white smock on a balcony was whipping up the crowd with some Chinese rapport, Buddhist arm waving and frenzied sitar action. Immediately, we christened him "DJ Lama".
With the exception of the Great Wall, all the buildings and temples we saw were of the same style, which is pretty difficult to describe but, if you've seen the classic picture of Tiananmen Gate with the picture of Mao on it, then you've got the drift. By the end of it, we'd had temple overload and were ready to move on via Train #4433 overnight sleeper to Datong.
p.s.No! We didn't eat any!