Forbidden: The Great Wall of Duck in the Bird’s Nest – Beijing
Hello all and welcome back to the blog, I now find myself in Beijing and have had a rather exception four days here before I fly on to Xi’An to see the Terracotta Warriors tomorrow!
There’s a lot to cover so lets get stuck into the thick of it – I arrived really late on Saturday night after waiting over an hour for the take-off of my China Eastern flight from Shanghai to Beijing! We did eventually get airborne however and despite some turbulence, which caused the rude idiots behind me who kept grabbing the chairs infront of them to cover themselves in their drinks – deserved, the flight went off without much hassle.
The extra time spent waiting meant I just made the last airport express train of the night and the last Subway train to my stop before they closed down for the night. I arrived coming on for midnight in the hostel and was soon sound asleep.
I spent most of Sunday slamming my head against a metaphorical table trying to work out how I would get to Xi’an and then on to Shenzhen, I had the May Day holiday with a lot of Chinese familes going home and the Xi’An flower festival to deal with. This left me without the option of the train unless I fancied standing for 14 hours which has never been on my list of things to do!
I ended up with a flight from Beijing to Xi’An with China Eastern and then on to Shenzhen with Hainan Airlines. Here’s hoping for timely take offs this time around! I also ended up in the Shaoyuan Youth Party Hostel as it was the only one with 3 nights available, this would have been my kind of place while touring Australia but on this more sober tour of Asia I reckon I’m going to want to kill half of the population of the hostel!
From there I caught up with a friend of Linda’s, Jeremy, who lives in Beijing, we headed out to a place that serves pretty much anything on a skewer which is great as we all know that good things come on sticks! I did find out that what I’d assumed was some kind of cheap spam like meat on a stick was in fact Lotus, and actually quite delicious but it does help when your company for the night speaks fluent Chinese!
The next day I caught up with an old friend from my Kentucky days, Tom Fearon, who I’ve now had the pleasure of catching up with on three continents. Our first port of call for the day was the Forbidden City where Tom’s crazy Canadian friend Mike met up with to have a good wander around and take a series of ridiculously posed photos which rather bemused the Chinese tourists doing the taking for us.
The Forbidden City was great, though it seems impossibly large as to have been the playground for one man! Apparently any males who worked there were castrated so as to not want to use the Emperors Ladies though I didn’t get that from a history textbook so it may not be completely correct!
We climbed up the hill behind the City and had a good look out on quite a misty day before heading off toward Tiananmen Square for a look around. You can only go and visit Chairman Mao’s Dead Body in the morning and I wouldn’t have fancied cueing for hours and hours anyway so we instead headed on to the Chinese Olympic Park from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Most of you who know me know I’m a huge sports buff and I’ve always had a love for the Olympics, its the only time I will watch sports like boxing, weightlifting and table tennis but there’s something specially about any sport when its the Olympics!
So I had a wonderful time walking round the Water Cube used for the Olympic swimming events and then taking a good poke around the Bird’s Nest itself. Its a magnificent stadium but for some reason inside it feels much smaller than Wembley in London or Commonwealth Stadium in Lexington, KY do, I think it might be the way the roof is done rather than it actually being small but regardless its an amazing design and well worth seeing!
That night I was going to have a quiet one before I ran into an Aussie by the name of Ashley at the hostel who was recruiting for a team for the pub quiz that night at a bar not far away. I do love a good pub quiz and agreed to go along! On the way there we went past the football stadium where Beijing Gouan where playing, this meant the hawkers were out in force and when you can get a a fake jersey for 50 yuan (5 pounds) it would be rude not to.
So I went to the pub quiz wearing the green of Beijing Gouan football team. We had a wonderful time, plenty of banter and laughs. Though I will never be able to explain it or why it was funny I would like to record the legend of the book “Stalin: Your Friend and Mine” as something that was hilarious at that time and place.
We were languishing around the bottom of the order for much of the quiz but smashed the music round at the end with classics such as Black Box – Ride On Time and SNAP! – The Power to drag ourselves up to a respectable fourth out of ten or so teams. A respectable finish we thought!
The next day was exceptionally unproductive for me, I read my book, checked the internet, ate some food and had an excellent lazy day. On the night I met up with Tom, his girlfriend Shaojieng (which I know I have spelt wrong – sorry!), Mike and a girl he works with Hui for Peking Duck in what was once known as Peking.
It was stunning, melt in the mouth duck, we shared a whole duck between five with various accompaniments. I could have quite happily ordered another but it would have been greed and love of the taste rather than hunger. Along with the duck we had Tibet Green Barley beer – a delicious brew! It came to about 130 yuan each, or 16 quid, you wouldnt get a quarter of a duck in England for that. Bargains.
From there we headed across to a bar called “Grinders” which was much classier than the name might suggest – no stripper poles were in evidence and the beer menu was extensive. I tried a couple I haven’t before, Harbin a North-eastern Chinese brew and Preta Bohemia, a nice Portuguese Stout.
Last night I headed to bed looking for some kip before getting up early for the Great Wall early, which was going well until around 4am in the morning a girl in my dorm who I have affectionally given the title: “The Rottweiler” for both looks and personality who can be found boasting across the hostel bar so all can hear that like she had SEX last night – no shit? People do that? Wow. Roll eyes.
Anyway she stumbled in, smashed the lights on, flopped around a bit in her drunken state and quickly passed out. She then started snoring, but it was worse, it was like a dying lawnmower, a continuous drone of clanking metal coming from her throat. It was so bad that despite putting in ear plugs I didn’t get another minute of sleep and around 5:30am I gave up, got a shower and sat outside reading my book until it was time for the tour at 7:30am.
Tom joined me for the tour to the Mutianyu part of the wall and unsurprisingly I slept for a good chunk of the 2 hour bus journey out there. Once there we bought our tickets and headed up the cable car to the top on a boiling hot day. Like an idiot I had forgotten my hat and was going to get a pink scalp until a hawker came up selling caps with the Red Star on. For the princely sum of 15 yuan (a quid fifty) I now looked like some kind of Chinese Che Guevara replete with hat and scraggly beard. Awesome.
From there we hiked along 19 towers of the Great Wall in a journey that my calves, quads and hamstrings will not soon forget. We took amazing photos – including some kung fu shots that saw me fall over and smack my head off the wall, discuss the world and everything in it and have a thoroughly enjoyable day out.
The Great Wall is ridiculous in scope and size and it would be as China used 20% of its population of 1.5 million at the time, 300,000 men to build it. Wow. Its simply an incredible achievement and one I’m really glad to have visited on this trip.
To finish the day on a perfect note the way to get down from the wall is to take a toboggan run, no steps and cable cars for myself and Tom. We had a thoroughly good laught careening down the mountainside in a slide on wheeled toboggans, when I get chance to upload the videos to facebook they are rather comic. Including one where I have a minor accident with Tom, that saw me as fault as the driver behind. Tom didn’t get my insurance details thankfully.
After sleeping all the way home I’m about to grab a shower and meet Tom at Hard Rock Cafe Beijing to put the final touches to an amazing visit. Beijing definitely comes reccomended!
Love and Toboggans!
J. Xx
