Day 34 - Tiananmen Square & The Forbidden City

Tiananmen Square & The Forbidden City, 

It's our last full day in Beijing! It's also the day we pick up our Mongolian Visa's pending their approval.
We set off just after 9am for a day of sight seeing. Our accommodation is in Qianmen, walking distance to Tiananmen Square & The Forbidden City which is very convenient! 

The first stop is Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen square is basically a square in the city centre of Beijing, it's name comes from a gate & means 'gate of heavenly peace' the gate is found north of the square & separates it from The Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square has great cultural significance to the people & has hosted many symbolic events in history. One of these events is Mao Zedong proclaiming the founding of the people's republic of China which happened in October 1949. The anniversary of this event is still celebrated every year. In Tiananmen Square you will find the mausoleum of Mao Zedong, the national museum of China, monument to the people's hero's & the great hall of the people. 

When we first glanced at Tiananmen Square, it was absolutely packed! Some of the worst crowding we had see in China. The security checks started from 2 streets away & it took us an hour to get into the square. There was a line to stand in front of each thing, with the biggest line for the museum probably being over 2 hours. After a particularly nasty jab to the ribs, I decided I had seen enough. We made our way, battling through the crowds to get to The Forbidden City. As we walked by a section of the outer wall we were approached by a Chinese lady called Linda who showed us through to a less crowded entrance to The Forbidden City which involved a pleasant walk through a park. In exchange we took a side trip into Linda's art exhibition to view some of her work & her fellow uni students work. Linda is studying calligraphy & did both of our names, the symbol for Eternal Happiness, Beijing & the year 2018.  We gave her a 30Yuan donation to thank her.
I love what she did, I can't wait to frame them when we get home. 

We walked into The Forbidden City & we were truly amazed by the grand, vast structure. It is huge! The Forbidden City is an imperial palace structure that was occupied by the emperor's and their household for 500 years, from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty.
The complex consists of 980 buildings and covers 180 acres including gardens.
The palace flaunts Chinese traditional Palatial architecture, some of the best we have seen in the whole of China. In 1987 The Forbidden City was listed as a world heritage site & is listed by UNESCO as it contains the best preserved & largest collection of wooden structures in China.
Today the city houses the palace Museum collection & receives 16 million visits annually.
We spent a few hours walking through the city, getting lost, trying to avoid the crowded sections before deciding to leave. It took us 45 minutes to walk to the exiting gate & cross the 2 moats. 

After all our exploring we were starving!! Nothing a plate of dumplings, noodles, sautéed vegetables & beer can't fix. Feeling very full, We waddled through Beijing for an hour to the Mongolian Embassy. 

I was ecstatic to receive our passports & our Mongolian Visa's !! We hadn't really talked about a back up plan if they were rejected.
Rejuvenated we set off back to our accommodation to pack & organise our documents.

- Alli 

Day 33 - The Great Wall Of China

The Great Wall Of China,

This was always going to be a pretty big experience for us! We did absolutly stacks of research before leaving for China and again when we got to China. Originally we read about a place that offers a 2 day hiking and camping experience that sounded absolutely amazing.  Mostly for the amazing sunrise and sunset views that you could get from just outside a tent, it would be a rough cold night but totally worth it. We mentioned our plans to a few Chinese people we met as we travelled through the country heading to Beijing and were perplexed by their reactions to our plans. The Chinese are really against people camping on the Great Wall and find it very insulting to themselves and their ancestors that died making and defending the wall. It is said that millions of Chinese people died and were encased inside the wall during its construction.

More research by us led to a lot of unanswered questions, we couldn't find a definitive answer on if it was illegal and we started reading about how the tours that offer this service are actually bribing officials.
In the end we decided not to camp on the wall until we were certain we weren't going to offend the Chinese or end up in jail or with a massive fine. After spending 32 days travelling through the country and visiting some of their most ancient, spiritual places, it would be a real shame in the last couple of days to insult and offend them by the way we visited their most revered relic. The other factor for our decision was our insurance, if we do anything illegal and are hurt we wont be covered, camping the great wall and hurting ourselves could jeopardise our whole trip which is something we have spent years planning and working on. One night camping experience was not worth a year of travelling experiences.

After we had come to this conclusion we started to research hiking experiences, looking for an authentic experience that wouldn't make the great wall feel like a theme park. We started to read reviews and blogs from people who had done day trips to hike a deserted but restored section of the Wall, a section that was 'secret' therefore not commercialised and overcrowded. Some of the hostels in central Beijing offered these tours, one such hostel was called Leo's Hostel and we read a lot of really good reviews.  We decided to book here because the location was really good too. Walking distance to the Metro, Tianmen Square and the Forbidden City. After arriving at our accomodation we asked a couple of different people who had been on the tour at Leos' and even saw a few pictures. It was vital for us that we had honest & current feedback before booking the tour. We were very happy with what we had heard and even spoke to one person who had done a more commercial Great wall experience for 100 YUAN with the crowding and then also did the 'secret' tour at Leo's without the crowds. We booked Leos' Secret Tour on the day with the best weather, the tour included private bus transfer to the wall and back to the hostel, admittance on the wall, a Chinese local who speaks English met us at the wall to tell us some history before going on to the wall and lunch in a restaurant.  We spent a total of 3 hours on the wall and hiked a section with 7 watch towers in various states of restoration. It was really cool to see the different sections of the wall, there was one section that we weren't allowed to go on for obvious reasons that was totally unrestored, a huge pile of brickwork crumbling into the earth & being repossessed by nature.

 As it turns out the section of wall we visited was only about 8km away from the very poplar crowded section of the wall at Badaling, which is 80km from Urban Beijing. This tour ended up costing us a fraction of the price at 280 YUAN each.  As you can see from the photos there was almost no one around! We were extremely lucky to have had this experience and been able to hear the wind, birds and peaceful silence, so different to other Great Wall experiences we had read about.  What an amazing world wonder, what an amazing piece of ancient history. What a sight to behold. It's magnificence is truly overwhelming. Even the wilderness surrounding the wall is vast and rugged. I spent quite a lot of my time on the wall trying to imagine how the men building the wall felt as they navigated the extremely rocky, overgrown, wild & hilly terrain carrying giant slabs of rock on their backs. Did they think it was noble & did they feel honoured to die like this protecting their country? How did the Mongols feel when they finally reached a mountain summit to stare down a valley and up to the next summit only to see the wall looming down from above? What was it like to fight on the wall? These are all things that people from the 21st century will never have to endure or think about.

Now for some facts!
It is commonly thought that the great wall was built by the first Emperor Qin Shihuang, of the Qing Dynasty in 221-207 BC. He is the same bloke who commissioned the terracotta warriors.
The wall was actually starting to be built well before this, 770-221 BC, by dukes trying to prevent invasion from other states within China. Emperor Qin unified the walls to prevent northern invasion from the barbarian nomads, known to us today as Mongolians (The Mongols eventually did conquer China) From this point it received numerous extensions & renovations.
The lower class people of China, were given 2 choices. Build the wall and die or go to war & fight the Mongols. Millions of people, through forced labour chose to die building the wall, Their bodies forever entombed in the structure. Many Chinese legends exist around this, most famously the one about Meng Jiangu who howled and cried so hard in distress she caused the wall to crumble. Meng's husband, Fen Qiliang, was taken by federal officials to build the wall. Meng never heard anything from her husband & fearing the worst set off to find him. On arriving at the wall she discovered he was already dead, she never found his body, the wall had already claimed it.

The Great Wall Of China had an official length of just over 21,196 km's, today's most visited section is the Ming relic & it is just over 8km's long, stretching through 9 provinces. There is approximately 526 kilometres around Beijing providing the best places to see it. Its height ranges from 8 - 14 metres.

One third of the wall has totally disappeared, during a cultural revolution a lot of bricks were taken from the wall & used to build houses in nearby villages.
Most of the standing structure we see now is from the Ming Dynasty. When the Ming Dynasty was eventually overthrown in 1644, that signified the end of all military work, no more has been done since. A few sections were obviously restored for tourism, restoration work only started in 1957.
To debunk a popular misconception, one that I really wanted to believe. The Great Wall can not be seem from space with the naked eye. Not a massive disappointment as it's a much better view from earth after climbing to a high section and feeling the wind in your hair!

Below is the website for the Hostel that we stayed at in Beijing and who we booked our 'secret' Great Wall tour through <http://www.leohostel.com>

- Alli

Day 32 - Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven.

Today we managed to get ourselves out of bed at the bright and early time of 8:30am, which is kind of a record nowadays! Its hard I know you understand... As soon as we were up and had shuffled through the communal showers we were ready to embark on the day. Today we had decided to take it a little easy and visit a location close by as tomorrow will be our 'secret great wall tour' organised through the hostel. Since it was so close by we decided to walk. It was another sunny and pollution free day in Beijing, with a million pieces of willow tree fluff in the air. Once we arrived we gained admission for 15rmb each and entered the park surrounding the temple. As with most other attractions in China, the park grounds are massive! There are also secondary areas within the attraction that you have to pay for additional tickets. Considering we were setting a more relaxed pace today we made the best of the cheaper entry tickets and skipped the entire walk through, as it would easily have taken the whole day.

The Temple Of Heaven Complex, An imperial complex built during the years of 1406 to 1420 during the Emperor Yongles reign. The Emperor Yongle is also responsible for another imperial building in Beijing, The Forbidden city. The temple of Heaven is a Taoist Temple, despite the annual ceremonies & prayers are of heavenly worship and for a good harvest. Throughout it's history the complex has had extensions, restorations, 3 new temples built (Sun, Earth & Moon) & was occupied by Anglo French soldiers in the 2nd opium war. It was also occupied by the Eighth Nation Alliance, an occupation that led to serious destruction of the temples & temple grounds. After the downfall of the Qing, it was neglected & left in a desecrated state resulting in various temple hall's collapsing. Today the temple grounds cover 2.73 km's of beautiful parkland & have 3 sections of construction including the Temple Of Heaven.  

Once we entered the park we were greeted by the familiar site of many purple flowers enveloping the ground beneath the trees. As well as the familiar colours of pink and yellow blossoms, and deep leafy green foliage of the larger trees. We took many photos whilst wandering through the garden sections surrounding the temples and monuments, often getting into awkward positions  for the best angle! The gardens were fairly empty which was a welcome reprieve from the hustle and bustle of many of the scenic locations around Beijing. We were able to take many breaks along our way and drink some 'ice tea' and snacks we bought from the super market. Very tranquil and relaxing indeed. Its a strange realisation that you need to seek out these moments of quiet while on holiday. I guess you would think we would have all the time in the world to get some quiet moments in, but it just doesn't work out that way! Theres always something to do or somewhere you need to be. China can be pretty suffocating with all the people sometimes.

After wandering around for some time we decided to enter one of the paid sections (another 20rmb each). We were then able to see inside one of the temple structures, which included many rich coloured walls and architraves. Ancient relics lined the walls which we managed to grab a glimpse of before the queue jostled and shuffled us along! I can't explain how different the personal space is over here. Everyone is pushing and shoving, and it just seems common place. You can bump some one fair in the face and turn around and they have carried on like its just another day. Quite strange! I guess thats how it needs to be for everyone to manage to get where they are going!

We continued on in a clockwise fashion around the park. Encountering another stunning marvel of architecture. A large temple, which we later found out was a location for the emperor to fast and obtain from his various royal pleasures. He would enter this sanctuary 3 days prior to the formal 'Heaven Worshiping Ceremony'. This structure boasts a massive external moat, as well as a smaller internal moat (which we couldn't see as the building was closed to the public). Once again we find ourself amazed at the magnitude of the structures and earthworks that are conducted to create these monuments. I guess the old adage of 'many hands make light work' rings true again.

After doing a thorough round of the grounds we walked back to the hostel and stopped off at another one of the many spectacular restaurants here in Beijing. Its amazing to be able to indulge in such amazing foods and stuff our bellies full every day for as little as 30aud between us, including a 500ml beer each. We can't wait to return home and cook some of this food for you all!

-Tom

Day 31 - Yiheyuan (New Summer Palace) & Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace)

Yiheyuan (New Summer Palace)

The summer palace is situated 15km's northwest from Beijing, also known as 'The Museum of Royal Gardens' it is the largest & best preserved royal park in China. The Summer palace radiates with grandness of Chinese traditional  horticulture, landscape & art. The construction started in 1750 & initially it was a royal garden, for royal families to rest and entertain guests. In the Qing dynasty it became the main residence for the royal family.

When we first arrived entering through the massive perimeter gates on the north entrance, we were greeted by the usual ticket booths, massive lines, people pushing & novelty shop owners yelling "hello hello hello". To be honest, we were both still feeling a bit rough from the other night & this was the last thing we wanted to do.

After buying our ticket & entering the official palace grounds, my first observation was the dirty lake, the dust & the Repair work that was being done to the stairs, a bridge & a section of building. After walking through the front garden area we came to a hill (Longevity hill) with stairs leading up to a building complex, a complex of towers, pagodas, temples & large halls with the traditional tiered roofing, gold tiles & green, blue & red detailing.  It was a bright display of traditional buildings that you would expect to see in a Chinese temple or palace. As we walked between the buildings admiring the detail, we had to walk over and through some rock passages that connected the buildings. We couldn't enter any of the buildings and all the windows & doors had been permanently sealed over. Past the buildings we walked back down the other side of the hill heading towards the lake.

We quickly realised the palace perimeter was a lot bigger than we first thought. I have attached a map that might help to comprehend how big the palace grounds are. We spent a few hours walking in the various courtyards, entering a few  temples sitting by the lake, admiring the art work and the beautiful Chinese Plants & trees, a lot of which are blooming & showing off new pink flowers of various shades.

Yuanming Yuan (Old Summer Palace) 

After we had spent enough time at Yiheyuan, though you could easily spend a full day here, we took a walk to Yuanming Yuan, also known as the 'old Summer palace' only located 8 km's north west from from Beijing & east of the present day Summer palace. Before we went to the old summer palace, I had not done any previous reading & I wasn't sure why there was 2 palaces & why one was old & the other was new, I didn't really think too much about it. The old Summer palace was a beautiful big scenic park, no big crowds, no loud noises, it was where we found our Zen in Beijing. It mostly consists of gardens, trees, lakes and smaller ponds connected by various traditional Chinese bridges.

We found a seat next to a lake with some swans, in the sun and shared a packet of chocolate chip biscuits while enjoying the wind in our hair and the smells coming from the flowers. Beijing has really turned on its charm for us, a perfect day of sun, a slight cooling breeze & minimal pollution haze. It was absolute bliss. We spent quite a few hours exploring the gardens loving the feeling of being in nature, pretending like we couldn't hear the distant car noises from the road.

While exploring we noticed a lot of ruins, huge slabs of marble and stone lay in heaps and there was huge sections fenced off and slightly overgrown. We also noticed the distinct lack of a palace & I started to wonder if there was a story of destruction hidden in the beautiful garden. On arriving at our hostel, I was quick to start reading into the history of the Yuanming Yuan, the terrifying truth of what I read was very wicked, shows an atrocious indifference to life from both sides which is deeply saddening. Reading these facts brought to life a true horror. In October of 1860, during the second opium war, 3500 British and French soldiers stormed the palace grounds, looted an estimated 1.5 million ancient relics, then captured hundreds of the emperors slaves, courtiers and maids locked them in the palace and then burned it to the ground. After 3 days, all that was left was ash & ruins, where once stood a splendid, magnificent palace & garden, which boasted the most invaluable & extensive art collection in the whole of China. This act created one of the most enduring, deepest and demoralising wounds of China's history. The act was a direct retaliation of the imprisonment and torture of negotiating delegates, sent on the Qing dynasty's surrender.  The command to savagely and completely destroy the palace was given by a British high commissioner to China, Lord Elgin, a man that was said preferred revenge instead of peace. James M'Ghee, chaplain to the British forces, writes, he shall "ever regret the stern but just necessity which laid them in ashes". He later writes "a sacrifice of all that was most ancient and most beautiful”. The beautiful gardens endure and house the vacant slabs of marble & stone, ruins of the palace and are a harsh reminder of very horrific past events.

- Alli

Day 30 - The Hangover

The Hangover,

We woke up just before lunch, feeling very sick, sore & sorry for ourselves! I was expecting some sort of hangover, this was a lot worse than I was expecting!
After a shower and a short walk to get some noodles (our first meal of noodles that we were disappointed with) we retreated back to our bunk beds with 5 Litres of water, a litre of ice tea, some panadol & Netflix.

It was a truly uneventful day of recovery.
We braved the world once more  to search for some dinner. A few streets away we found a small restaurant with lots of pictures on the wall, a big menu, prices on display & some english translations.
We ordered a big bowl of Bok-choy sautéed in garlic & onion, a Tofu hot pot, fried rice & a bowl of soup that translated as corn & looked yellow in the picture.
The first thing to arrive was the Tofu Hot pot, we are both eagerly eating chilli again since our last scary hot pot experience in Hong Kong & decided it was time to tempt fate again.
It was delicious! They used 3 different types of chilli and there was only 1 red, tiny chilli with lots of seeds that had a delayed but particularly strong kick to it if more than one piece at a time made its way onto your chopsticks.
The next thing to arrive was our bowl of Bok-choy, this has become a staple dish for us & we pretty much eat it every day & still crave it. On the menu's it translates to the english word rape. The actual vegetable seems to vary quite a bit from province to province, sometimes its broccoli, lettuce, cabbage or a type of box-choy. It's all green, chinese, covered in garlic & delicious!
The rice came out shortly after that, just a typical fried rice variation with lots of vegetables. Its something neither of us really eat back in Australia, but its so cheap & delicious in China & really compliments the other dishes, especially the hot pots.
Last to come out was the soup. We honestly thought the food would come out in the opposite order that it did & that the soup would be more of an entree size. It was absolutely humungous!! we could of put both of our heads in this giant bowl at the same time and drowned in it.  It looked slimy and smelt like raw eggs. We both gave it a go, hoping for a miracle.... It was very watery with a weak taste of sweet corn & an overpowering taste of raw eggs. Turns out there was a lot of raw egg in the soup. I felt very bad for wasting food, I hope someone in the kitchen ate it. It was very obvious we hadn't touched it.

Apart from the soup, it was an excellent meal & we left feeling very satisfied & once again sleepy.
Though as it turns out we both stayed up past 1am reading & watching Netflix !
- Alli

Day 29 - Mongolia Visa, Wangfujing Snack Street & Sanlitun Bar Street

Mongolia Visa, Wangfujing Snack Street & Sanlitun Bar Street,

It was no surprise that we woke up feeling a bit seedy & reluctant to leave our beds earlier than 8am, but responsibilities called! We only had 1 day to submit our Mongolia Visa so that it would be approved in time for us to leave China.  We were very prepared with all our supporting documents printed, providing everything they required and much more, the application form we found online which we also had printed & filled out with a visa photo attached.
We were waiting at the office with our paperwork before they were even open. They didn't ask any questions, just briefly examined our application form, asked us to sign some paperwork in front of them, collected payment & told us to pick it up on Wednesday. It was so easy compared to the huge ordeal for our China Visa. I'm hoping from now on they are all this easy!

After our Visa mission was complete, we caught the metro back to where our accommodation was & decided  to spend our newly acquired day off relaxing as the weather was cold, very windy & raining continually!
We ordered cappuccinos in our hostel common room while I read my book & Tom did some budgeting. Another coffee success story, strong & well priced.

At 6.30pm we saw Luisa & Augusto again & agreed (despite the weather)  to head back out and find the elusive Wangfujing Snack street night market. A famous street in Beijing where you can go to be brave, or just watch the brave, as they devour all sorts of critters on sticks. We saw starfish, sea horse, crabs, octopus, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, lizards, snakes & whole baby ducks.  I felt a bit disgusted and uncomfortable with the insects on the sticks that were still alive & wriggling around before being deep fried & consumed. I didn't see a lot of locals here, it's very touristy & a lot of the people being brave & eating the food were from other countries. One of these brave people was Tom, he ordered a tarantula for 80Yuan, thankfully it was already dead before being fried! He described it as spicy, chewy & nice until he got to the abdomen which he said tasted weird. I was briefly brave and ate a tiny piece of leg, I couldn't stop thinking about what it was though & because of this I couldn't enjoy it or comment on flavour.
 It was an interesting experience!

After walking up and down Wangfujing Street we decided to head on to the next place, Sanlitun Bar Street.
A street of bright flashy lights, big glass Windows, various themed bars, sad songs sung by Chinese women, western music, pole dancers & men trying to lure you in from the sidewalk. Not unlike any other street you would find in an international district of a big city.
It was a good place to grab a few beers, after negotiating from 80Yuan down to 10Yuan each, listen to music & enjoy our Friday night out in a foreign country with some new friends. After a few hours, several beers later & a bottle of Jagermeister (that we all shared) we were considerably sloshed and hailed a cab to go home!

- Alli

Day 28 - Tai'an - Beijing

Tai'an - Beijing,

Finally Beijing, our last stop in China!
We woke up and crawled out of bed at 10.30am, packed our bags & checked out at 12pm. We then caught a taxi to the railway station, a different one to our arrival station.
We collected our tickets & went through security.
Immediately the security officers started yelling and pointing at the screen and stopped the conveyor belt with our luggage. They then started calling over police officers and gesturing at Tom's bag. For some reason this time going through security they had seen Tom's camping utility knife. We removed it from the bag and handed it over immediately, they then asked for Tom's passport and ticket. Tom translated a message explaining it was for camping & that they could have it. They weren't really talking to us, but continued to pass the knife and passport around, talking to each other animatedly & calling over more security. After about 15 minutes a police officer arrived who could speak english, he explained that we couldn't take the knife & seemed surprised that we happily agreed. We just wanted Tom's passport back & to board our train! It was very unusual that it was noticed this time, it has always been in the same pocket & we've been through countless security checks on planes, bus's, the metro, fast & slow trains.

We had a very big lunch of noodles before getting on the bullet train, we left Tai'an at 2.09pm & arrived at Beijing at 4.16pm. We were thankfully seated together this time and had very comfortable seats.  The train ride was pretty uneventful, the landscape passed by and became less green, the dirt is now a dusty brown. Closer to Beijing there are a lot of small dilapidated townships.

Once we arrived in Beijing, the train station was very large & quite hard to find the correct exit. We caught our most expensive taxi yet,  90Yuan to get to our accommodation in central Beijing. A great Hostel down a side street, surrounded by food, shopping & in walking distance to a lot of the big attractions. Beijing is looking like an expensive city, even our hostel was the most expensive accommodation yet, $22 AUD, per bunk bed, per night in a mixed, shared dorm with 2 other people.

We printed off our Mongolia Visa paperwork at a printing shop that was located 100 metres away, a total of 50 pages, only 2 pages is the actual application form & brought cold beers in the hostel common room. It was here that we met 2 other travellers, Luisa & Augusto who are here from France for 2 weeks.  We had a few more beers & spent a few hours talking in the common room, where our english attracted another person called Remi, before deciding to all head out together to explore Beijing. We initially set out to explore a night market, but after arriving in its location we realised it shut at 10pm, this seemed quite strange as all the night markets we had seen in other places all over China stayed open till midnight. Despite this, it was a great excuse to use the metro, buy a few more beers & walk around in the city.

We returned to our hostel just before midnight, crawled into our bunk beds & fell asleep.

- Alli