Our hostel was top-notch; thanks for the recommendation, V and B! I don't think I've come across a more comfortable bed in a hostel, though you kind of had to earn it by first dragging your suitcase up a glorified ladder to the loft. Maddy and I have biceps of steel. And thighs of steel, after climbing the Great Wall. We're about 40% steel, and, in my case, 60% caramel digestive.
We woke up early to prepare for the day's adventure: a casual stroll along the Great Wall. Most of my prior knowledge of the wall came from Mulan and bigpond ads: built in the 14th century to allow Shan-Yu easy access to the Emperor (and to keep the rabbits out). Visible from space. These little facts combined to make our climb a fairly surreal experience. I felt like I was in an ad campaign for the 2008 Olympics.
The views, guys. The wall. It just sort of defies belief. After a three hour bus ride from the hostel, we piled out, pulled up our explorer socks and started climbing. Climbing with hands and feet. It's incredibly steep! You get steps if you're lucky, or even crumbly half-steps, but otherwise you've got to hope your runners cling to the smooth stone as you clamber up and up, from tower to tower. We walked from tower 1 to tower 22 in the space of about three hours, and only spotted two other tourists the whole time. We clearly chose a good time to go - or perhaps other people were scared off by the vertiginous cliff-scaling exercises. Apparently there's an easier section that includes a cable car ride. Psh. Give me life-threatening non-stairs any day.
We drove back to our hostel, or to a mystery location purported to be near to our hostel, got fairly lost, until saved by my (yes, MY) navigational skills. From there, we embarked on a different sort of adventure: a dinner hunt. Oh, the awkward times we had. First place we went to, we sat down at a table next to a gently bubbling cauldron of a fish tank. So far so good. When ten minutes had passed without sighting a single member of staff, we quietly picked up our bags and fled. We can only assume this wasn't actually somebody's home rather than a restaurant. Skittering back down the street, we next came across a little place with - hurray! - pictures of food on the wall. With great trepidation, I pointed to the picture that appeared to contain the highest vegetable content and raised two fingers. They'll make a diplomat of me yet. We got the noodle soup and bam! Pretty edible. And all for $1.80. (We decided to avoid the mystery meatballs.)
Wednesday started with Maddy complaining that she hadn't slept well due to the cold. Harden up, Maddy, I sympathized. And then we checked the weather forecast. Yeah, min -4, max 0 degrees Celsius. I'm a good friend. Wednesday was a day of extreme icy pain in the knees, fingers and feet. It was also a day we spent mainly outdoors, in near unbearable wind. Hence the crazy ice burn we got all over our legs. I didn't even know that was a thing.
But we suffered in style! First item of the day was Mao's mausoleum, because I can never pass up a chance to check out famous embalmed guys (hi there, Jeremy Bentham!) We'd been told to expect huge queues, but instead found a steady trickle of people. This decided us; instead of dumping our possessions (bag, phone, wallet) at the side of the square for a fee, we went into the mausoleum one at a time while the other waited outside. Maddy went first. I developed ice rashes resembling the Beijing metro system. And then it was my turn, and I followed the line through a squat security building and up into the columned, statue-flanked mausoleum.
Inside the entrance chamber, there's a largish Lincoln Memorial-style statue of Mao embedded in a platform wreathed with flowers. The real thing lies in the next room, and is a bit more crinkly and orange from what you can see of his face. Nothing too exciting, at the end of the day.
I met Maddy back out in the middle of Tiananmen Square, which has the mausoleum at one end, the Forbidden Palace at the other, and a memorial column smack bang in the middle. Apart from the knee-biting wind, the most notable thing about the place was the number of military personnel, policemen and guided tours. There's also the fact that we could taste Beijing. We could smell it, we could feel it in our lungs, and we could wipe it from the corners of our eyes. The air quality was not a plus, and I definitely wouldn't want to be an asthmatic tourist.
The pollution may partly explain the constant hacking, spitting and coughing that went on around us. It rates fairly low on the culture shock scale, but every time somebody sneezed without covering their mouth or burped openly, we remembered where we were. Something of higher culture shock value: squat toilets. I won't go into it, but work on building your thigh strength before traveling to China, ladies. And always carry toilet paper with you.
Our luck continued when we entered the Forbidden City: once again, no queues. We picked up audio guides - in my case, three times, stupid faulty guides - and stepped through the slightly shoddy, paint peeling, mammoth wall of an entryway. Inside, there wasn't anything shoddy about it. The dozen plus palaces had those iconic, slightly winged roofs, and were called things like 'Palace of Heavenly Purity', 'Palace of Earthly Tranquility' and 'Hall of Mental Cultivation'. There was also a Palace of Concentrated Beauty, which was of course referring to the sexy sexy concubines and empresses contained within. Freezing from toes to teeth, we stolidly kept at our palace viewing for around four hours, stopping only for a brief defrost with tea in the Imperial Garden. We spent a good long while examining any and every museum artifact housed indoors, and even longer trying to climb inside the heaters.
Once outside the Forbidden City, we walked around its perimeter to get back to Tiananmen Square. The perimeter was slightly less inviting than the palaces. On one side of the gigantic moat lay all manner of red, teal and gold; on the other side, all was grey. We hot-footed it to Wangfujing Street, the Bourke Street of Beijing, which was all about the neon and the shopping.
Pretty hungry by this point, we wandered down a side street filled with vendors selling all kinds of food, from jellied fruit to fried insects, meat-of-all-sorts skewers and fried icecream. It was like most intense Chinatown imaginable. People, red lanterns and food smells came at you from all directions. 'Assault on the senses' is accurate. Maddy and I found ourselves some dumplings before hurrying back to the main street for warmth and consumerism.
We found some really interesting stuff on Wangfujing Street, including tea, lollies, specialty hats, Zara... Zara opened worlds of opportunity by offering access to a huge, warm department store (key word being 'warm'). We spent quality time in Forever 21 and Uniqlo as well as in less familiar shops that took cute to the next level. Think silver runners with cat face tongues, men's jackets with cat paws wrapped around the sides, fur-lined everything, etc etc. We also hunted down jianbing (egg pancakes) per Scott's orders: deliciousness confirmed. I was very excited to come across a panda and white rabbits to pose with - took me back to my Chinese classes at school.
Following dinner - bok choy, chicken and mushroom with rice, and steamed pork buns - we headed back to the station, thankful to the shopping bags for their extra layer of insulation against the frosty frosty cold. Cue the packing, the hefting of suitcases down the loft's ladder-stairs, the turning on of the heater at full blast, and a bloody stupid awful sleepless night. Maddy rolled me into the taxi, then the airport, then onto our China Eastern Airline flight. To Japan!
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