Winter Vacation I - Beijing

Look at my photos fom Beijing here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kristin.laufenberg/Beijing2010?feat=directlink

My vacation started with nine days in China, as part of a tour group with the company China Spree. Also part of the tour group were three other EPIK-ers from Daegu – Jeannine, Chris B. and Elizabeth – and Jeannine’s sister Anna, who came from Minnesota to visit her sister in China and Korea. We had decided to join a tour group because it seemed like the easiest way to see multiple cities in China. Even though I like independent travel better and am fairly competent at getting around by myself, frankly I was a bit intimidated by the thought of navigating around China – especially since many famous sites, like the Great Wall and Army of Terracotta Warriors, are actually outside of the major cities. I also did all the planning for my trips to Taiwan and Hong Kong, and just didn’t have the time or energy to figure out China on top of everything else.

So after researching and comparing companies, dates, and prices, China Spree seemed like the best option. Using a cash discount, we paid about $680 each for the land-only tour package (excluding airfare) and met the rest of the group in Beijing. I think it was a pretty fair price – it included seven nights in 4-star hotels, the majority of our meals, entrance fees to all the sites we visited as a group, the soft-sleeper overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an, and the flight from Xi’an to Shanghai. We also had really smart and helpful local guides in every city - Shirley in Beijing, Amber in Xi’an, and Mei in Shanghai (they were all Chinese, we just used their English names). Our tour group was about 35 people.

The first day, Saturday the 13th, felt a lot longer than 24 hours. Jeannine and I spent Thursday and Friday of that week celebrating her birthday with our other Daegu friends. We were careful to get home early on Friday night, by 1am, so we could freshen up, finish packing, and make it to the Daegu bus station by 4:30am on Saturday morning. After 4.5 hours on the bus we were at the Incheon airport.

Jeannine and I had different flights and even though they were only an hour apart and we had planned to, we couldn’t find each other once we arrived at the Beijing airport. Luckily, we were able to make our separate ways to the Beijing Huabin International Hotel. Poor Jeannine had to go back to the airport later to meet her sister’s flight, and I went for a brief walk around our hotel with Chris. We kept it brief because it was freezing, and there also wasn’t much to see or do. We were expecting more hullabaloo because it was New Year’s Eve, and while there were a lot of fireworks and firecrackers (and the noise and smoke to match) not many people were out and about. We heard and saw fireworks almost every night of our stay in China – apparently they’re not regulated during the New Year, even within the city limits!

The next day we breakfasted at the hotel (all our breakfasts were full hotel buffets, generally pretty good) and gathered with the rest of our tour group and local guide Shirley. That whole first day is very hazy in my memory now, and I can’t even use jet lag as an excuse (there’s only a one-hour time difference between China and Korea. By the way: China is gigantic but only uses one time zone! I had no clue). We saw the Summer Palace and a pearl factory in the morning, and then Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City after lunch.

The Summer Palace was really beautiful, and has a lot of interesting history associated with it. It was a summer retreat from Beijing for the royal family, and is basically a huge garden with temples, pavilions, lakes, and the infamous marble boat that the ‘Dragon Lady’ built with funds meant for the imperial navy. The Dragon Lady was the Empress Dowager Cixi; she started out as a very ambitious concubine in the royal harem and ended up overthrowing the ruling group of regents in a coup. She ruled China until her death in 1908, in the last of the Chinese dynasties.

After the Summer Palace we visited a pearl factory. Tours in China are infamous for these arranged shopping trips, where tour guides get kickbacks from shop owners for bringing their groups in. I think it’s almost impossible to avoid, and China Spree pulled it off by telling us about them ahead of time and also pretending they were ‘cultural experiences.’ Each factory we visited was about something special to China (pearls, jade, and silk), we had to learn a bit about whatever was being sold – the historical significance of each item, how to tell real pearls from fakes, etc – and we were only allowed to stay for 40 minutes in each factory, including the discussion and shopping time. Whatever. It’s all part of the experience, I guess!

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City were both just massive and kind of overwhelming (Tiananmen Square can hold one million people! I can’t even picture it). Especially by the time we walked underneath Mao’s portrait, through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, and into the Forbidden City, I was just out of it. The Forbidden City is said to have 9,999 rooms (in China, the number 9 – the greatest single-digit number – is traditionally associated with the emperor or royalty) and takes up 7.8 million square feet, so even at your best visiting this place can take all day. The thing that I remember most from that whole day is how cold we all were, just frozen to the bone all day long. Except for lunch we were outside all day, and it was so windy and bitterly cold. I wore layers but definitely underestimated how bad it would be.

On Tuesday our first stop was a jade factory. We learned a bit about jade – it’s very valuable and symbolic to the Chinese (they say that ‘Even gold has a price, but jade is priceless’) and a sort of national treasure. The medals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics were even made with it. FYI, the way to tell a piece of high-quality jade is to clink it against something else –the best piece has a higher-pitched ‘clink’. I bought a ring from the factory.

After the jade shop, it was time for the Great Wall! It was amazing, of course. We visited the Badaling section, which is among the most intact and developed sections of the Wall, and the part that most tourists see. We had the option to climb either a steeper portion or a flatter one; I chose the steep side, and parts of it were seriously steep, like I wanted to use my hands as if I were on a ladder! It was very cold and windy again (up in the mountains) but I was warm while I was hiking! The farther I went, the fewer people there were, so I got some cool pictures that actually weren’t full of other tourists. The Wall is beautiful, and now I’ve seen one of the 7 Wonders of the World! I don’t really know what else to say about it; it’s just something that has to be experienced. It’s worth any amount of hassle or money to come to China, even if the Great Wall is all you see.

Once we got back into Beijing, we stopped for a photo opp at the sites of the Beijing Olympics – the Bird’s Nest and Water Cube buildings. We didn’t go inside either of them, but just had a few minutes to walk around. The Bird’s Nest is especially cool; it really gives you a sense of how important the Olympics were to China and all the effort they went through to prepare Beijing for the spotlight.

After dinner that night we had the option of seeing a performance of the Peking opera. I went with a few others and just loved it. The actors did their makeup in the lobby before the show so we could watch them, and the three acts included some traditional singing as well as acrobatics and martial arts. The costumes and performances were amazing, but my favorite part was the music – the small orchestra was just off-stage, and the music was very intense and bare. As opposed to Western opera, where the music accompanies the singing and the actors follow it, in this show the music accentuated the actor’s movements and facial expressions; the musicians took their lead from the actors as there was very little singing or dialog. It was so beautiful and controlled; I could have watched that all night.

Our last day in Beijing, Tuesday the 16th, was jam-packed. We had the option of staying with Shirley for a guided tour, or having a free day in Beijing. Jeannine, Anna and I planned our own day, and filled it with all of the main sights in Beijing that we hadn’t seen yet. We headed out bright and early to the Temple of Heaven Park. This complex was built in the early 1400s. The most important building in the whole park is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. This building, besides being really beautiful and old, has three tiers, is 38 meters tall and completely wooden, and is held together without any nails or cement! Every year, the emperor, or ‘Son of Heaven,’ had to drag himself out of the Forbidden City, walk in a procession through the park, and conduct the annual prayers and rites of worshipping heaven and praying for good harvests.

When we arrived at the Temple of Heaven, there were very few people there – mostly old folks doing their morning tai chi – but as the morning wore on, the pavilion in front of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests started filling up. During the Spring Festival, or week-long Chinese New Year’s celebrations, they re-enact the emperor’s procession through the park up to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests – complete with music, hundreds of ‘soldiers’ in costumes, and the Son of Heaven himself. It was really difficult to see because of the crowd; my pictures are good, but that certainly wasn’t my view – I was holding my camera over my head and just pointing and clicking. I still really enjoyed the show though – all of the soldiers, in different kinds of gorgeous costumes, moved in groups to face the Hall of Prayer and perform different kinds of salutes to the music. It was all very rigid and strict – it reminded me of something like a changing of the guards ceremony, only more extravagant and set to music.

We left the Temple of Heaven complex and moved to the White Cloud Temple. Jeannine got a great picture of me buying our entrance tickets; you had to get them from a white van parked outside the temple, so it looks like I’m buying drugs. Inside, the temple was packed and crazy with New Year worshippers stocking up on luck and prosperity to last the rest of the year. We bought coins and threw them into a well, aiming for some sort of drum that was hanging in it, and walked along a wall with carvings of the 12 Chinese zodiac animal signs, rubbing each one and paying special attention to our own sign for luck. This is the year of the tiger, and my own birth year, so according to Chinese superstition either really good or really bad things could happen to me this year.

Then we went to an area north of the Forbidden City called Shicha Hai. It’s a really pretty, scenic area that’s good for walking and has tons of historical stuff like temples, mansions, and gardens, as well as three connected lakes. We saw paddle boats, but they were frozen in the lake and people were ice skating instead! We did walk around taking pictures for a bit, but the main reason we came to Shicha Hai was to visit some hutong. As my guidebook says,

“A journey into the city’s hutong [translated as ‘narrow alleyways’] is a voyage back to the original heart and fabric of Beijing. Many of these charming alleyways have survived, crisscrossing east-west across the city and linking up into a huge, enchanting warren of one-storey, ramshackle dwellings and historic courtyard homes…According to official figures, hundreds of hutong survive but many have been swept aside in Beijing’s race to manufacture a modern city of high-rises. Marked with white plaques, historic homes are protected, but for many others a way of life hangs precariously in balance.”

Shicha Hai is surrounded by hutong, as well as really aggressive rickshaw drivers touting hutong tours. We decided against the rickshaw ride and just walked around instead, snacking on dumplings and taking pictures. I tried some mysterious drink that was being sold on the sidewalk in front of a tiny store – just a little clay pot, with a piece of paper rubber-banded around the rim. I punched a straw through the paper and it turned out to be home-made yogurt – it was so good! I finished it and returned the clay pot to the store for the next customer.

Within the hutong in Shicha Hai were the Drum and Bell Towers. They’re just across from each other and you guessed it – one has a bunch of huge drums in it, and the other has the most gigantic bell I’ve ever seen. In ancient times they were used both for musical purposes and to keep time for the city. Although they’re not skyscrapers by any means, both towers are pretty big, and to get to the top of each one we had to climb the LONGEST, scariest, steepest, most rickety flight of stairs. I was winded by the time we got to the top, and just hanging from the railings on the way down! Each one was worth it though – in the Drum Tower they have a team of drummers perform every half-hour, and the views from each Tower were great.

To wrap up our day we had a delicious and extravagant dinner of Peking duck. Peking duck is one of China’s most famous dishes, and rightfully so – it was really expensive, but so delicious. They carved our duck in front of us (we even got a serial number for it before we left!) and showed us how to wrap it up with onions and a dark sauce in a thin little pancake. They served us the meat, skin, and the head to eat! There were also plenty of side dishes, including more meat and dessert at the end, so we were stuffed by the time we left.

After dinner we met the rest of the group at the hotel and left together for the train station. We had an entire car to ourselves for the overnight ride to Xi’an. Our tickets were soft-sleeper, and apparently are a very hot commodity. China is a huge country with millions of migrant laborers; we were told that especially during New Year’s, overnight train tickets are almost impossible to get as laborers will fight to get even standing room on an overnight train to get home to their families! And to get soft-sleeper tickets, you have to know someone in the ticket department! I don’t know much about the different kinds of tickets, but our soft-sleeper compartments had four bunks with bedding in a tiny room (I think the hard-sleeper has six bunks) and we could control the light and heat. It was definitely cramped, and there were only two bathrooms (no showers) for the entire car, but it was a fun experience – rail is the way that most Chinese travel around China, but it’s just something that we do very rarely in the U.S.

So that was Beijing! Next stop, Xi’an!