Adventures in Asia: Beijing, China

Our plans for today were much less firm than our plans had been yesterday.  Andrea had visited the Forbidden City back in 2008, and she was unenthusiastic about seeing it again, although willing if I wanted to.  On Tuesday, when we had walked through Tiananman Gate and along the Forbidden City's moat, I had not felt especially compelled to go inside.  It was quite crowded (it is the most visited museum in the world, I read), and relatively expensive (about $12), and looked rather overwhelming.

Since then, however, I had I realized I wanted to visit Jingshan Park to take advantage of the views it offers of Beijing and especially of the Forbidden City.  The fastest way to walk from our hostel to Jingshan Park was by cutting through the Forbidden City, so I decided we may as well do this.

So after breakfast at McDonald's we headed up Qianmen pedestrian/shopping street and into Tiananmen Square.  As we walked I told Andrea about Mao's Mausoleum, in which Mao lies in state.  The mausoleum lies in the middle of Tiananmen Square, and we had looked at it on Tuesday without knowing what it was.

I had brought it up simply because it was interesting, but as we talked about it we both started thinking we should try to visit, so we stopped by en route to the Forbidden City.  The queue was long, but moved steadily, and soon we were inside the building (where unfortunately no photos were allowed).  Volunteers and guards ushered people along, making sure the line kept moving.  We passed Mao's body, looking a little orange but otherwise very dignified.  It was quite the interesting experience.

Back outside we continued our way across Tiananmen Square and into the Forbidden City.

There were certainly many, many people, but the Forbidden City is very, very big, so it did not feel terribly crowded.

We did not rush, nor did we dawdle, and we certainly did not pause for selfies (although we did have to dodge some selfie sticks).  We exited through the north gate, "The Gate of Divine Might."

Now we were across the street from Jingshan Park.

We entered the park and headed straight up the hill to the pagoda at the top.

From here we had an excellent view of the Forbidden City, as well as some of Beijing's skyline.

There is also a Buddha up in the pagoda, so it is an active religious site as well as an ideal lookout for tourists.

From Jingshan Park we walked and walked through hutongs and main streets to reach the subway.  The hutongs are fascinating, but also make navigation difficult, so we walked further than we had to.  Anyway, eventually we reached the subway and we took it to the Silk Market (where, surprisingly enough, they were advertising that Laureen Harper had shopped there!).

The Silk Market is much more upscale than Andrea remembered from her time visiting in 2008, so we walked around without doing any shopping.  We decided we would try out the Pearl Market the next day and hope for better.

We had booked (and even paid for) an acrobatic show through our hostel for that evening, but somehow the staff really dropped the ball.  We were in the lobby in plenty of time to meet our transportation, but the receptionist told us they had failed to book our tickets.  It was much too late by now to go.  This was probably my biggest disappointment of the entire trip, because it was simply incompetence that prevented us from going.  They refunded our money and we went for another walk in the hutongs instead.

One interesting thing about hutongs it that there are public washrooms located every block or so.

They are simply rooms with multiple toilets but no stalls, and no sinks.  Apparently most homes in the hutongs lack toilets, so these public toilets are not for tourists or visitors, but neighborhood residents!  I think most of the hutong homes must also not have kitchens, because we frequently saw people cooking and eating out in the street as well.