That place is dense. People like ants, thick air, intensive
scents and noise. I did not even try to capture the character of the place on
photos, as they cannot catch a fraction of that sensation. If ever next time,
I'll try filming. It has to be experienced to be understood. We were there for
4 days only, but with temperatures reaching 35 deg our walks were limited
because so exhausting.
We've been to hutongs and it is actually surprising that so much
of Beijing is still made of those, although modern buildings eat into their
territory. As much as they might be interesting for a foreigner, they are still
basically slums, and I stand by my opinion cast after seeing those in Suzhou
earlier.
We went to Tiananmen
Square and were discourage by long queue to go through security checks. Well
until we got to the Forbidden City gates, the queues were even longer, and we
ended up being cuddled in the Chinese crowd for half an hour, just to be
stripped from water bottles at the security check.
We went through the Forbidden City, but it is so large, and it
was too hot and too crowded to really enjoy it.
We came back to Tiananmen Square in the evening for flag lowering
ceremony. Funny, but the checks closed at 19 sharp (that day sunset was 19.23),
so again we had to queue to the only one left open. There is actually nothing
exciting about the ceremony, maybe only the fact that right after it finishes the square closes,
so the policemen themselves, their cars and loud tannoys order the crowd to
leave immediately, what lookes a bit like spreading a demonstration.
On the last day we planned to see the Summer Palace, but went to
Beishi Park instead. Much closer, much smaller (and cheaper, at 20 Y), and
still exhibiting a lot of 'Chinese gardens' idea.
The food was of course one of the highlights: it is different, at
least tastes interestingly, but usually is simply delicious. And even if something not up to taste
was ordered (those pictures in menus do not look very similar to what lands on
your plate), it is so cheap, that it doesn't hurt to get another dish.
It is so sad the Chinese forget how to cook when opening
takeaways abroad :(
Useful tips
How to get around Beijing? Use subway (underground). It is
frequent, fast, air conditioned and dead cheap at 2Y a trip. It is a bit tough to plan the trip in advance, as all the available pieces of information are in Chinese only (like the official map), but on the trains the maps and active travel display have romanised descriptions too.
How to buy a ticket for Beijing subway? Single trip tickets can be
bought from machines or at the ticket office. A trip starts when you enter at
one station, and ends when leave at another, you can change as many times as
you want during a trip. If staying for longer like us, the multitrip card (called yikatong over internet, but described simply as IC card in Beijing
itself) is the choice.
Where to buy yikatong/IC card? Here is the full list of places tobuy/recharge/return, but if you arrive at the main train station here is a
quick guide: from station exit turn left and go across the square in front of station
building. Pass entrance C of the metro,
walk across the bridge to the other side of the road to the A (north-eastern)
entrance. Right after security screening there is ticket office, the window on
the right issues IC cards and refunds when returned. It is important, as only
few places refund IC cards and there is balance of 20Y (plus whatever left
from you credit) frozen on them.
Where to stay? With our budget of £50
a night we actually struggled to find something in that price bracket: all the
popular booking services offered either 5 star suites or 2 and below shitholes
(being suspiciously cheap) here. We booked Howard Johnson Paragon directly at hojo.com.
I stayed in their hotel previously so knew what to expect and indeed we got
decent room. The best asset of this hotel is its location, right opposite the
train station, with large shopping centre underground and direct access through it to subway loop line (2) station.
Forget about internet access there though, it
just did not work, being generally useless anyway due to China information
blocking policies. Also changing reservation with this franchise is an unusual
pain, but we finally managed to change last night of stay into late checkout. Next: Great Wall of China at Huanghuacheng
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