Backpacking Beijing, China

Upon finishing our Trans Mongolian trip, we were set to start our adventure backpacking Beijing around seven in the morning. Of course I was still backpacking with my two Swedish friends and I really had no idea they would be such a spectacle to the Chinese with their blonde hair. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be famous, just dye your hair blonde and go to China.

The famous Mao portrait

I think the look on his face just about sums it up….I love this photo

I didn’t get quite as many looks as them but when I stopped shaving for a couple days the stares started to pick up. When we arrived, we met up with a couple other Swedes and soon I was backpacking Beijing with four  blondes….Talk about standing out among the crowd. I can’t tell you how many times random photos were taken of all of us. Sometimes the Chinese would want to be in the photograph while other times they would just take some candid shots from a distance. By the end of the trip, I was calling my friends blonde freaks.

Inside my hostel… a bit different from the many others I’ve stayed in.

I had even heard of some other blondes I’d met that had
been asked for their autograph. I just wonder what ends up happening with the photos and autographs that are taken. Do they frame the shot and put it on their mantle? There’s no telling…
Anyway, back to Beijing…  After we left the train station, we
eventually found accommodation just south of the Forbidden City. The area we were in was quite nice with small shops and street vendors lining the streets and it only allowed pedestrian traffic so you rarely had to worry about getting run over except for the many motor bikes that were allowed to drive up and down the streets blaring their horns as they went.

I don’t know what is more special… the fact that this was my friends first time at KFC or just this photo in general…

One of the craziest things worth mentioning here is the smog that
lingered over the city. I just couldn’t get over it. There was so much
air pollution that you literally couldn’t see more than two or three
hundred yards in front of you in some areas. Out of the six days I was
here, we only saw the sun once and even that was only an outline in the sky. Most of the time, the high rise buildings in the distance would often
be just a silhouette. I really don’t know how the local people here can deal with it. There were many people wearing masks over their face but they only made up about 10-20% of the population. However, one thing that almost everyone does here is hock up and spit everywhere. It’s not just the men either, it was women too and all ages at that.
It was so rampant everywhere that I just decided to call their condition Chinalung. While here, I actually read in the paper that China has more occurrences of lung cancer than many other countries. To be fair though, it’s not just the smog to blame as many people smoke here and are still free to smoke both in restaurants as well as on trains and such places. Ok, enough about the smog… you’ll see plenty of it in the photos I’ve taken.

The Temple of Heaven

The temple complex was originally built in the early 1400’s

Since we arrived so early that morning, after walking around the
city a bit we decided to walk down to the Temple of Heaven. The
complex of temples sits in an extremely large park though you had to pay to get in
just to walk in the park. We spent a few hours just walking around and I did visit a couple of the temples while here. On our next day we decided to visit the area for the 2008 Olympic games. It was set on the far north end of the city and took three subway stops and quite a bit of walking to get to but it was worth it.

The ‘Bird’s Nest’ in the Olympic Park

Where Usain Bolt broke records….

And Phelps took Gold…

When you look at a map of Beijing, it all seems so small until you start walking block to block and then you realize just how large this city really is.

Please take a second to digest this information before you order anything…

Wait….There’s a Chinatown in China?

When we arrived to the center area for the Olympics, we decided to pay to get into the Birds Nest which was worth the entrance fee. This was the
place where the opening ceremony took place for the 08′ Summer Olympic games and although the place was empty when we got in, they were replaying the highlights of the Olympic games on the jumbo screen at one end of the stadium. The place was huge. Don’t ask me why but I really wanted to go down and sprint the 100 meter in the same lane that Usain Bolt ran when he set the new world record of 9.69 seconds. Unfortunately, they were only allowing people to go onto the track if they
paid to rent a segway to go around it. First of all, this was an
Olympic track where a mechanical device such as a segway has no place.

Sunset from inside the Bird’s Nest

This track represents a world stage where athletes come from around the
world to compete internationally. Secondly, segways are just ridiculous. Can you tell I was angry?

Leaving from the Olympic park, we decided to head to the night food market which was just east of the Forbidden City. The area around
here was much more busy and commercial than where we were staying.

The Night Market

When we arrived at the night market it was a bit crazy to say
the least. They had some of the wildest foods I’d seen yet. We had
planned to go to a restaurant later that night but once you get here, its hard
not to try the local foods.

Can you read the labels? Suddenly I was no longer hungry….

We ended up trying some dumplings, various meats as well as some weird fried ice cream but what we didn’t decide to go near were many of the other foods. Part of me thinks that many of the foods here were just on display for the tourists that constantly frequented the market, more as a novelty
than anything else but after spending more time in China, I realized
many of these foods are found in many restaurants.

Mmmm, nothing like some toasted crickets, fried grasshopper and roasted scorpion…

During my time in China, I definitely tried some crazy foods but tonight, I just
wasn’t in the mood for snake. Fried ice cream and dumplings would
suffice….

Heading north toward Tienanmen Square

The next day we headed to Tienanmen Square. After we got there I
realized just how immense it was and the fact that it was a true square
unlike the Red Square in Moscow. Of course, there were military and
security guards everywhere. Some standing guard, some marching along
their route throughout the square.

Center of Tienanmen Square

From the north end of the square, across the street sits the famous portrait of Mao and from there, just north of that is the Forbidden City which we were headed to next. Looking back on it now, I really wished we had come earlier in the day as there were literally thousands of tourists everywhere within the walls of the Forbidden City.

Entrance into the gardens of the Forbidden City

Walking the gardens

It was almost hard to imagine what things must have been like before this was opened tourists but we later watched the movie ‘The Last Emperor’ which, if you’ve not seen it, is based on the Forbidden City. It’s a great movie to watch that looks back to the history of the Forbidden City and how things developed in
the last hundred years inside its walls as well as the history of China itself.

Heading into the Forbidden City

The area within the city wall’s is huge and we spent about four hours
walking around but you could probably spend a day here. In total, I ended up spending about ten days in Beijing but honestly, this city is so large you could spend a month taking it all in. My last stop here however was the Great Wall of China… everyone’s must see attraction in China.

Looking out from atop the Forbidden City