The sights of Beijing

In between my embassy runs I have been getting out and about in Beijing doing some sightseeing.

Below are a few photos from the Forbidden City, the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties, so called because it was forbidden for commoners to enter (signalled by its moat, walls and huge red doors hung at every entrance). It was built in the early 1400s and added to by successive emperors. The biggest and most impressive halls were being renovated, but there was plenty left to see.

I also made it to the Temple of Heaven which is an incredible structure...

I have been perusing the markets which is an experience in itself, and there are almost as many markets as there are bicycles (well maybe not quite - 9 million bikes is a lot of bikes). More than once I have made the mistake of enquiring how much something is only to end up walking away with it. If you express any kind of interest then its very hard to say you don't want it or don't like it. Shopping in the markets is definitely an art form I have yet to master, but I haven't yet walked (or ridden) away with a mini-Mao...

Although at times I can't help but wonder if I wasn't the sight to be seen. The overwhelming majority of the tourists over here are Chinese which means that I draw a few stares in even the most touristy of places. I had my photo taken surreptitiously by some guy on Tiananmen Square and starred in someone's home movie as I was coming down the stairs of a temple...

But I have also been doing a fair amount of bike spotting. Some of the best I have seen are a guy who had two large fish tanks on the back of his trike complete with goldfish, the men who have kumara cooking in metal drums on the back and the old guys who have throne style seats on the back of their trikes where their wife sits while they pedal furiously (Grandpa I think you should get one)...comedy. They will put anything on the back of a bike here - hours of entertainment!

Navigating Beijing

Beijing is an incredible city. Although somewhat in flux at the moment. With the amount of building, cleaning, restoration and redesign going on anyone would think the Chairman himself is due to rise from the dead...suffice it to say that it is an all out effort to make the city shiny and new for the olympics in August.

All of this is fascinating to watch. The building work goes on round the clock, there are bubble wrapped ticket machines and swipers in the tube stations to replace the two people currently on duty and streets are being developed all over. Aside from being a fascinating spectacle, this makes navigation a NIGHTMARE. Most of the street signs are in pinyin (romanised version of Mandarin) as well as Mandarin, but there's no AtoZ of Beijing. Tourist maps don't really exist, there are no iSites to plunder for information.

This basically means you find your way around in taxis, there are taxi books with common destinations in them in English and Mandarin which you can use to direct the taxi driver by pointing. If your destination isn't in the taxi book you have to go somewhere near and then walk or call someone who speaks English and knows where you are going and have them direct the taxi driver in Mandarin.

Alternatively if, like Emma, you have no idea whatsoever where a particular embassy is you walk and walk and walk and walk a bit more and pick up scraps of paper where people have written the names down for you and pester the guards and anyone else who happens to be passing to see if they know where you're trying to get to. Only problem is most people haven't heard of Azerbaijan....

So it took me 4 days just to locate the 4 embassies I needed - comedy. In that time I have also managed to get visas for Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Two down, two to go...

In my wanderings I have also managed to take in some of the sights, below is a view of the Forbidden City and the city to the south on a relatively clear day, pollution haze gets much worse than this.

More of my sightseeing adventures later.

Craig - am pleased to hear I have 5 Bridges stamp of approval (albeit unofficial, will table a motion for official approval when I return). In the meantime I'll keep my eyes peeled for any schools or Soviet style boot camps (!) that might provide twinning opportunities. In answer to your question I'll be in Beijing for about another week sorting out visas. The velo should (fingers crossed) arrive on Monday - whether I will be able to find the depot where I have to pick it up is another question entirely (that navigation thing again...) and I should be in the saddle sometime around the 11th or 12th of March.

Hong Kong to Beijing

The overland adventures began on Saturday with the train to Beijing...

After a silly all-nighter on Thursday my last couple of days in Hong Kong were slow and I was hoping to catch up on some sleep on the train, but wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I had feared a train full of people occupying every available space; a train in which I would not be able to stand up lest I should lose my seat, where the floor would be covered in spittle and the iron bunks would fold out from the wall with a creak or two giving no confidence in their supportive abilities. As ever, I was entirely wrong. It was a through train so there was no-one standing in the aisle eyeing up my seat, the hocking and spitting was restricted to the toilets and the bunks were better than the ones in the hostel in Hong Kong. Although we did see a few that would pass for the Tube in rush hour, like this one with people climbing out the windows.

The whole experience was thoroughly civilised. Air stewardesses (or whatever the train equivalent is called) kept us in line, barking orders at us in Mandarin (English has all but disappeared), pointing out the sights, serving up some rank looking rice and gristle for purchase. They even turned out the lights at bed time and came in to wake us up in the morning - possibly slightly unnecessary.

Outside we left behind the skyscrapers of Hong Kong and headed into the land of the identikit tenement block. From the sunshine, through the snow...

and thankfully out the other side (Beijing is cold but dry at the moment). Two words to describe the view - flat and grey.

24 hours later and I stepped off in Beijing - awesome.

alo missee copee watchee??

No I don't want a watch or a fake gucci bag or a chess board or any other item of clutter that will add to my already excessive 17kilos of luggage. Wandering the markets and malls of Hong Kong without the ability to purchase (for fear of never making it up any hills ever, let alone anything bigger than a hill) is a bizarre but vaguely liberating experience. There is no doubt that this city is all about consumption - clothes, bags, shoes (mmm new shoes), cameras, computers, you name it. And its all very cheap which makes it even harder to resist, but resisting I am.

Having managed to get a visa for CHina before I even left the airport (main purpose of this little detour) Ive been enjoying my unemployed status, reading, walking, seeing the sights, people watching, going to museums and galleries and honing my people dodging skills....the list goes on. My fear of not being able to cope with so many people after the space of New Zeealand were largely unfounded (once a Londoner...). It is great to be in a big city again, and one with a functioning public transport system although I could do without the pollution - the air is rank with fumes which create an atmospheric haze (aka smog) across the city.

Ive also been to Macau, the old Portuguese trading port just across the water. Hong Kong doesnät feel particularly British to me (if you ignore the presence of English and double decker buses), but Macau feels very European at least in the old part of town. The streets are tiny and there are almost as many igrejas as there are mopeds. The new part of town is basically one big casino now (no I wonät be returning early having blown all my hard earned cash...).

The olympics are everywhere over here, advertised by some latern pandas doing every sport imaginable. Said pandas are to be found at every major attraction (will add some photos when I have my technical issues resolved). The government is clearly going all out on this one. I read in the paper the other day that they are currently looking for 18-24 year old women to hand out medals at the games. Not just any old women, no...these women must have equally proportioned faces (equal distance from forehead to nose, length of nose and nose to chin. eyes three tenths the length of their face etc etc) and their body must not be an abnormal shape (it didnät say what constituted an abnormal shape...) comedy - think they'd let me try out?

Anyway times up. Will post photos soon.

PS Keyboards are Qwerty, some have characters as well, but having some trouble locating punctuation as you may have noticed!