Our flight departing from KUL was delayed, hence we were rushed to the connecting flight to Beijing, flitting by all the shops and past several not-so-friendly Hong Kong airline and airport staff.
It was around 10-15°C throughout the trip in Beijing, and slightly cooler and colder in Shenyang, mainly due to stronger winds since Shenyang is further north, closer to Harbin. We were picked up by 曹師傅, who ferried us and all our luggage to the hotel in the south of Beijing - 行者居酒店 (Xingzheju Jiudian). We had substantial conversation about the differences in culture, economy, food, education, and workforce between Beijing (or China in some perspectives) and Malaysia (particularly KL).
It pains me to say that I'm a bad blogger for not taking pictures of the hotel, but then again, it wasn't really sight for sore eyes. While the lobby looked decent, the front desk staff seemed unprepared for non-Chinese speaking guests, and upon entry into our room, it was to our dismay that the lighting was extremely limited, with no storage space whatsoever, and a dismal "bathroom" which is just a room with a sink, toilet, and shower system haphazardly placed. And to the left of the door to the room, was a goddamn window to the corridor. They carved out a small corner for the main pillar of the building, but for some reason thought it'd be a good idea to make it a window.
And while retrieving our room keys, we were told to not open any yellow (gold?) boxes next to the TV if we were not using them, as they charged 15 Yuan for each box opened. Lo' and behold. We had a feeling that this was some sort of hanky-panky love hotel, which was made even more apparent with the room layout that seemed to not encourage long-term comfortable stay.
There were no fast food joints within our block (the nearest one was about 2-3 blocks away), so we headed to the hotel restaurant (which was thankfully open) for dinner.
15 OCT
Our hopes for a decent breakfast/morning were also dashed when we went down for the complimentary breakfast - apart from some plain sandwich bread, plasticky margarine and jam, all other food items were Chinese dishes that would usually be served for lunch or dinner back home. There was no coffee or tea, only soy milk and orange juice (that turned out to be as hot as the soy milk).
We met our tour guide, Miss Aileen Wang, in the lobby - she was a nice lady in her 50s, who had a decent command in English and a penchant for ancient Chinese history. Our first destination was 天安門廣場 (Tiananmen Square), and into 故宮 (Forbidden City, or Imperial Palace).
Apparently, the Chinese national holiday had just passed (11 Oct), but it was still tourist season in China. Hoards and hoards of people were on the streets, wearing different items to signify that they were a part of a specific tour group, and we later found out that majority of these people were local Beijing citizens, coming out on a weekend for some quality time.
Thank god for underpasses, though. Given Beijing's wide roads and busy traffic, crossing a 5-lane 2-way main road bustling with cars, buses, and motorcycles in the dozens would be quite intimidating.
The crowd was particularly inundating when it came to actually going through Tiananmen into the Forbidden City. The Chinese don't particularly have a wide personal space circle, and have no problem just squeezing that extra bit in crowded places - which is something that makes most of us fairly uncomfortable.
The compound of the Forbidden City didn't look much different than that time we came in the dead of winter ... apart from the glaring differences in human traffic. The Aileen pointed out the reason indirectly - she was pointing out the glaring lack of trees in the compound to discourage intruders (also known as 刺客). The lack of greenery that transformed throughout the seasons rendered the palace a place of eternal stillness (apart from the raging crowds of tourists), with the buildings and pathways constantly being worn away by time, nature, and human traffic, and then rebuilt and refurbished and maintained by the Chinese government.
We went through the Imperial Garden which was just at the back of the entire Forbidden City - numerous 吉樹 (lucky trees) of various shapes dotted the compound, and there was a small 'hill' of sorts made from apparently imported rocks.
We exited to the back of the palace, where we walked along a road lined with tourist buses, counters selling tour packages to Badaling Great Wall, trams, and maple trees. It wasn't long before I actually realized that most trees lining the streets in both Beijing and Shenyang were either maple or ginkgo trees.
Waiting along the side of a road for our car was scary, especially given Chinese driving, but I noticed also how crisp the air felt despite buses and cars swarming the intersection. If this was somewhere in KL with the same amount of traffic, you could potentially just turn grey from all the dust and exhaust and carbon monoxide emitted from all the vehicles, but a lot of buses in Beijing ran on electricity, which was why the air didn't feel even more stuffy.
Lunch was at a place near the "Orchard Road" of Beijing - Wangfujin area. 趙先生涮肉 provided traditional charcoal Beijing-style hotpot, but as per the tour menu, our lunch was slightly disappointing (the food was good, don't get me wrong) while an old couple across from us munched happily opposite each other, dipping their thinly sliced meats into the hotpot in front of them.
Our next destination was supposed to be Jingshan Park, where a pavilion was placed upon a hilltop within a park that provided a view of the entire Forbidden City, but we skipped that destination (already more than 6000 steps just walking from the front to the back of the City) and went shopping.
Qian Men Emperor's Avenue 前門大街 is a shopping street lined with so many different stores, and little corridors that led to so many different hidden gems - from clothing stores, to stores that sold everything, to stores that only sold food, and in front of almost each and every shop was a small box with little white jars for sale - Beijing yogurt. Here, they sell for about 2-4 Yuan per jar, you drink it up then and there, then return the jar so they can reuse it (unfortunately, I made the mistake of not buying it here). I asked the tour guide, and apparently you could buy the disposable container version from only supermarkets (which we never got round to checking out).
We walked mainly through the smaller alleys in the back that led outward from the main street. Many of the shops seemed to repeat themselves throughout: local candy stores that had shelves and mounds of different types of local candy, stores that sold pretty much everything from ashtrays to fully functional electric toys, department stores that looked like all the rest of the shops but sold vastly different things are very turn and every step.
We stopped the longest at a crystals and precious stones store, where my sister was picking out crystal bracelets. We made a trip to one of the department stores, into the candy stores, and more before going back to the same store and she still hadn't come out. Turns out she won the grand prize in a lucky draw that allowed customers (who spent over a certain amount to qualify to draw in the first place) to purchase an item from a selection of gold and jade jewellery for a fraction of the price.
My mum and the tour guide were pretty much petrified, but as with many pendants my dad brought home previously, they all came with certificates.
We ended the tour with an acrobatics show called The Wonderful Han 漢風. Even before the performance itself, calligraphy pieces of a popular master were being auctioned off. The show starts with a young man wandering around and flipping the pages of a giant book, which seemed to open a portal in time back to Ancient China where emperor's still ruled the lands. Each performance seemed to signify a progression of the Chinese, from balancing lambs while in extremely flexed positions, to having 5 motorcycles performing stunts within a giant metal sphere.
The funniest, for me, was the Chinese yoyo performance. Ever since primary school, we're had Chinese yoyo performances, and fan dances for every single school event, so that performance was normal to me. What wasn't normal were the performers' headdresses. If you've seen some versions of Monkey King Sun Wu Kong on TV, you might recognize his feeler-like headdress that he sometimes wears, and it's also a popular costume feature for Cantonese opera 粵劇 (the more elaborate costumes). But instead of having two, they had one - right on top of their head, and to move them, they are had to constantly wiggle their head, which bears no connection to the yoyo performance, which is why I was left with the really huge question: why did the costume designer/producer think this would be a good idea?
Anyway this experience was different from the acrobatics show that we saw previously, which incorporated a few more stunt elements than the balancing/acrobatic performances we previously saw many years ago.
After the performance, we headed toward Vantone Tower 萬通中心 to a quaint place called 漢舍, which serves almost avant garde fusion style Chinese food. I have never had such delicious and moist fried fish before *drools
I'll end the post with photos of what we had for dinner:
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