Beijing (aka: I’ve never seen this many people anywhere in my life)

July 4^th! Happy Independence Day, America! Obviously irrelevant in China, unless you work for the U.S. Consulate and get the day off! Woo! I made a three-day weekend out of it to go to Beijing, capital of the country I’ve been living in for 5 months. I took the high speed train and five hours later, arrived at Beijing West train station. Getting on the subway in Beijing was the first moment I thought, dear lord I’ve never seen this many people anywhere in my life (hey, there’s the title of the blog post!). Saga Youth Hostel is situated on a hutong, or alley and I was shocked to find such peace and quiet on a small street in the middle of a huge city. Most attractions close around 4 pm so I only had time for one activity that afternoon and I chose the Temple of Heaven.

 

The Temple of Heaven is really many other attractions within a huge compound. Aside from the temples and sights themselves, there were also many locals playing cards and other games in the park. Again, I was shocked by the quiet on the grounds which made the area a peaceful escape from the bustling China I’ve gotten used to. Before heading back I treated myself to some delicious Peking duck. I also wandered around Beijing, including Wangfujing, where vendors tried to sell me still-wiggling fried scorpions. No thank you, I said, because I was already eating ice cream and those flavors just do not mesh well.  Back at the hostel, it turned out that two of my roommates were also solo-travelers so we made plans for sight seeing the next day.

Saturday morning, I went on a tour to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. We took the “cable car,” which was pretty much a ski-lift, to the top in order to have more time on the wall instead of hiking up the mountain. The wall itself is immense and actually is over 600 km long, but the section we went to was about 5 km (10 km down and back) and consisted of 23 guard towers. In China, they say you aren’t a real man until you hike the Great Wall. Ignoring the lack of PC in that saying (lol), I totally understand because it was quite a hike. Like every other “hike” I’ve experienced in China, it was really tons of stairs (more like the Great Stairs of China, amiright?) and despite that my lungs are probably black from pollution, we made it to the 16^th tower, pretty good for the amount of time we had. 

We then took the toboggan down from the top which was fun but would have probably been more fun had we not been behind a man with a small child in his arms. Something I really love about hostels and traveling in these groups are that I meet people from various backgrounds and countries. Yet somehow, when we sat down for lunch, I ended sitting next to a German woman who happens to also live in Wuhan. It was a crazy coincidence considering outside of Wuhan, I’ve never met anyone from Wuhan. 

 
That evening, I went with my two new travel partners to see the Olympic Bird’s Nest and Water Cube. They were really cool lit up at night and not too crowded. We spent some time just wandering around different areas before heading back to the hostel. 

Flowers for Mao

Early Sunday morning, we headed to Tiananmen Square to see Mao’s Mausoleum. We arrived around 7 am, it opened at 7:30, and we waited on line until around 8:30 to finally get in, which was pretty good timing considering the hundreds of thousands of people behind us on line. After waiting on a line that wraps around the square, you go through security and then have the opportunity to buy a flower in his “honor.” You enter the building to a room with a huge statue of smiling and sitting Mao. Parents were hugging their children. Most people held their flowers and bowed before placing the flower on the table in front of the statue. [Sidenote: the flowers are collected by workers who bring them back to be resold]. You are then ushered to the second room where his embalmed body sits under an orange light in a half open casket within a glass case. Yes, I actually saw Mao's face in person. Then, when you walk out the door, there is a gift shop set up outside to sell Mao paraphernalia. Super interesting experience and really had us thinking. We capped off the experience with some Starbucks. 

Me and Me. Same spot. 15 years apart.

The rest of the day was spent walking around Tiananmen and the Forbidden City. We got an audio tour in the Forbidden City so we would have some idea of what we were seeing. A few hours there was enough, especially considering the ridicious lines (and me thinking omg I’ve never seen this many people anywhere in my life) before I got on the train back to Wuhan. I’ve been on my own in China for a while now but Beijing was my first solo “vacation” and I had a really nice time, a lot of it thanks to the other travelers I met along the way.