A tower on an unmaintained portion of the Great Wall, above Jiankou
The forbidden city
Another view of the unmaintained section of the wall
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Hong Kong and China. One weekend, a couple of team members and I decided to do a weekend in Beijing.
I did the planning. We had time only for the highlights:
- The great wall. Saturday was great wall day. I had done some research and found that the more touristy areas were supposed to be pretty jammed up, restored Disneyland-type places. So instead we booked a car service to take us out to a remote town called Jiankou, where we would hike up a hillside in a forest to reach an unrestored section of the wall. This was . . . incredible! It was a good hike, and the first view we had of the wall and the valley below was breathtaking. We saw the wall stretch over a ridge in the distance, and were able to climb into and on top of a crumbling old tower. From there, we trekked a couple of hours back to a restored section at Mutainyou, where we did indeed see hordes of tourists and hawkers (there is even a tram that takes you up to the wall from the parking lot). Our driver met us at the bottom of the hill (we walked – no tram for us).
- Peking duck. Saturday night, we went out for some famous Peking duck. I found Siji Minfu. We knew there would be a wait, so we put our name in (nobody there spoke English so we had no clue what was going on or how the system worked), and strolled around town for an hour and change. The duck was absolutely amazing. They served it a bit differently, with the skin separate. It was of a different level – even better than the (otherwise excellent) duck we get habitually in Hong Kong.
- Summer Palace. Sunday morning, I woke up early and took a taxi to the Summer Palace, which is a complex surrounding a lake that apparently a former empress spent time at. It was horrendous. It was just a big park that was not that nice. It was so jammed with people I could hardly walk around. There weren’t even nice buildings or anything. I spent 15 minutes fighting the crowds to higher ground, 15 minutes trying to figure out why this place was popular, 2 minutes deciding there was no explanation, and 15 minutes walking out, finding a taxi, and going someplace better.
- Hutong. Hutong are tiny alleyways near the center of Beijing. They are a mix of old and new – streets so narrow you can’t really drive cars through, with a mixture of cool local shops and modern restaurants. Some Hutong were quiet, and some were jammed with people. But there were few tourists to be seen, which was a relief. I ducked into a café and had a nice coffee and piece of cake, then ventured onward. The Hutong were a highlight of the trip for sure.
- Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City. Yeah, we had to do it. I met up with my co-workers Shaun and Alex after walking the Hutong (they had been out late the night before and slept in), and we got tickets to go into the Forbidden City. Yes, there were tourists, but the scope of the place was so vast, shockingly vast, that it didn’t matter. We wandered around awestruck. One of the most amazing things was that the courtyards did not have any trees. They were just huge open spaces paved with stones, so you had panoramic views of the huge buildings all around. And it was seemingly never-ending. We wandered and walked and wandered from one courtyard to the next. Eventually we made it to the museum, which had some pretty cool artifacts (though the majority of the collection was taken by the KMT). A friend had told us to visit some of the other exhibits, but we were pretty gassed from being outside in the hot sun for so long, so we walked out and on to lunch instead.
Beijing was a nice city, and we got very, very luck to go at a time when there was almost no pollution. The food was great, and there were cool things to see. I’d definitely go back.
