Beijing Day 6 - The Great Wall

You can't go to China without seeing The Great Wall. So that's pretty much all we did on our last day. A chartered ride picked us up at our hotel at around 5:00 am and drove us around Beijing to huff exhaust and pick up all the other passengers for the day. The section of the wall we hiked is about 2 hours away from the city. To get up to the wall, you take an old, rickety cable car to the top. There are several warning signs that tell you there will probably be technical problems on the way up, so you're not supposed to freak out when your stuck dangling in the air for a few minutes at a time.It's fairly isolated from what we could tell as we were the only people on the wall other than people selling water and souvenirs. Several times, Savannah and I were left completely alone. We hiked 10 km of the wall. When I first was the wall, I was surprised to see how it stays along the mountain ridge to maintain the highest possible ground. I had this ignorant idea that most of the wall was somewhat flat with a few hills to walk up and down. A year in Korea got us used to hiking up mountains on a regular basis, so we were somewhat prepared, but we forgot to factor in a hot Chinese Summer sun, the humidity, and the fact that it was high noon when we were climbing the peaks. I think we paid for a few Chinese kids' college tuition with all the bottles of water we drank. The wall itself has several parts that are left as-is and several others that have been restored. It's a good mix as I like seeing things in their unaltered state as well as seeing them at their full potential. It may sound cliche, but pictures just don't do this world wonder justice. At the end of our hike, we got some ice cream, then took a zip-line from one of the mountain peaks to a river basin below. Here's a video of us on the zip-line. It was a pretty cool way to get down from the wall. Our charter bus then took us out for dinner, then dropped us back off at home.

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Cable cars to the top

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A small stretch of the wall

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In front of a watch tower

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Another stretch of the wall

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Parts of the wall are pretty decrepit

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It's ok to cool off your belly in China. Men often roll their shirts off to cool off.

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The last couple kilometers were downhill. Awesome!

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Crossing a drawbridge over a river

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We made it!

We had to get up early the next day to go to Munich, so we took it easy the rest of the night. Here's a link to a slideshow of all 300 of our pictures from Beijing.

Beijing Day 5

For our second to last day in Beijing, we wanted to go to the Summer Palace. As the Beijing zoo was on the way, we decided to drop in and see some pandas.

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People around the zoo clearly don't pay attention to the signs that tell you not to feed the animals. In fact, the bears have gotten pretty good at begging. Here, you can see them make some ASL type signs for more food.

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A tiger is on the prowl.

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Safety restrictions are pretty lax here. You can stick your hand into the aviary with several hungry vultures and eagles.

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After the zoo, we took a boat up a water canal to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is exactly what it sounds like. It was a Summer home for the royal family long ago. It was gorgeous, but there was quite a bit of fog, obscuring some of the palace's majesty.

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A lotus garden

Once again, everything is embellished. Here are some of the more impressive structures.

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An incense ball at the foot of a lion

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Another pagoda

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Face on a water pot

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Buddhist symbol on a water pot

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Monkey?

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Every eave has a set of sculptures

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The palace is situated on a large lake

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There are several Buddha statues

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This boat is made entirely of marble.

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I hoped to get closer, but this was a close as I could get. I hope you can see the intricate work on the top of the boat.

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At night, we swung by Olympic Park to see the water cube and bird's nest.

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This is one of my favorite pictures of Savannah.

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We finished the night off with an obligatory Peking duck. It was one of the best meals of my life. The restaurant we went to is tacky, but has been making duck for about 400 years, so they're pretty good at it. A chef cuts the bird by your table. The skin is crispy at first, then just melts in your mouth. The duck is wrapped with cucumber, plum sauce, garlic, and mustard sauce. This was the best meal of our vacation to date. It was another perfect ending to another great day. It was also nice to get such a hearty meal before our adventure the next day; The Great Wall!

Beijing Days 3-4

This morning we got up and quickly made our way to the Forbidden City. It's called that because foreigners were forbidden for a really long time. I was skeptical about this trip, because we had seen several palaces and temples in Seoul. The Forbidden City is in a class of its own. It really is a neat place to check out, even if you have seen the older ancient Asian buildings before. The size is immense and the craftsmanship, although reproduced, is incredible. I was able to get some good photos while walking around.

Our next stop was to the Temple of Heaven. This is where the Chinese people of long ago would go to pray for a good harvest and general welfare. It's a beautiful park filled with elderly people dancing, singing, playing games, and just having fun. The temple itself looked similar to where we had just been, so we gave it a quick look then swung back by the hotel to get directions to a famous dumpling restaurant.

Din Tai Fung is a pretty famous dumpling house and was even rated as one of The New York Times top 10 restaurants in the world. We stopped by for dinner and got the house specialties. The food was good, especially the seafood dumplings, but we may have hyped it up a bit too much in our minds. Feeling the need for something more satiating, we went back to snack street for another round of goodies. Here is a clip of me eating grubs. Here I'm eating rotten tofu.

By the way, if you click on any of these pictures (or any from the other posts) you can see a larger, higher quality version. You also have an option to see some of the other few hundred pictures I haven't posted.

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Savannah and some guards

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Statue

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In front of the main entrance to the Forbidden City

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Not a single surface goes unembellished

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Crazy Haircut

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Guardian Lion

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The ancient equivalent of a fire extinguisher

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One of thousands of dragon heads standing guard

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A face on a water pot

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The largest single piece of sculpted rock in China - It was brought to this spot in the winter thousands of years ago so it could be slid on ice.

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Knocker

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Entrance to the Temple of Heaven

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Roof of a temple

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Snack street at night

Beijing Days 1-2

Our last day in Qingdao was a relaxing one. The morning was spent at the beach and in the afternoon we checked out a trendy neighborhood just north of our hostel. From what I could tell, it was one of the main shopping hubs for the city. We checked out a few of the shops, but before long, we found ourselves distracted by a large food market. We walked around, checking out all of the stalls. There were people selling Halal bread, animal innards, fresh fruit, candy, stir fry dishes, battered and fried stuff, noodles, and soups. We picked up our last meal in Qingdao at this market and decided on some stir fried green beans, a sampling of fried food, and chicken soup. After dinner, we went straight to bed because we had to be up early for our train to Beijing!

The next morning, the only thing we could find open for breakfast on the way to the train station was McDonald's, so we picked up a couple of quick meals. The meal at McDonald's cost the same as the entire feast we had the night before.

The train from Qingdao to Beijing was nice. It was a high speed train going about 150 mph most of the way. In total it took about 6 hours. We had a cute little baby behind us that entertained us with his squeaking duck toy for the first couple hours, followed by a drum solo on the table in front of him, and for a finale, he played a drum solo on the table in front of him with a squeaking duck toy.

We got into Beijing, hopped in a cab, and used the GPS again to find our hotel. The GPS has been a lifesaver for these cab rides in China. We've been staying in lesser known hostels or bed and breakfast style places, which is cool for us, but tough on the cab drivers. Our hotel in Beijing is called Kelly's Courtyard. It's a small covered courtyard with 7 rooms that open into it. There is a rooftop lounge, a koi pond in the courtyard, and a super helpful staff. The hotel is located down a small maze of hutongs (alleyways) that look a little sketchy, but are far from it.

We dropped off our bags, got cleaned off, then went to the center of the city to check out Tienanmen Square. It's the largest public area on Earth and it's easy to believe. Everything in China is so much bigger than what we've been used to in Seoul and back home. The most striking thing is how wide open the spaces are. Pretty much all of the sightseeing spots close around 5, so we were out of luck for any sightseeing for the night, but we were in time for the Wangfungjin snack street night market. Snack street is exactly what it sounds like, but the snacks are pretty weird. Off the top of my head, there were grubs, scorpions, ostrich meat, venison, seahorses, starfish, snakes, whole sharks (tiny ones), sea urchin, shrimp, chicken skewers, pork skewers, beef skewers, lamb skewers, chicken hearts, lamb kidneys, and a lot more. Of those, we tried the scorpions, meat skewers, chicken hearts, sea urchin, and starfish. I decided to try a couple more and got the grubs, rotten tofu, and lamb kidneys. We also found a “Chinese hamburger” which is more like a pulled pork sandwich with cilantro and peppers. All of the greasy food tired us out, so we made our way back to the hotel to crash.

Here are some pics from our day. You can probably tell how much we like to eat!

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Our courtyard B&B in Beijing.

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A view from our room out to the common area

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The first thing we see on our way to the main sights is Chairman Mao.

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Soldiers stand guard at all times.

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A view of the capitol building and Tiananmen Square

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A column dedicated to the people of China in front, Mao's resting place in back

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Babies in China don't use diapers, instead, they go to the bathroom wherever/whenever they need to. Their pants are "modified" to accommodate this.

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A soldier guards Mao's body.

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Exploding cars are not allowed.

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The entrance to a food/junk market

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Candy coated fruit skewers

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Police bust an illegal stall

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They have Tibetan yogurt here. It's really delicious!

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Fried starfish

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The endless stalls of the Wangfungjin night market

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Ordering pork dumplings

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Ordering "Chinese hamburgers"

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Eel skewers and a lady yelling at me for putting my elbow in her food

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Sea urchin

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Another look at a section of the food stalls.

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A gorgeous Catholic church

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The bicycles only light was a first for me. I'm pretty sheltered.

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Most people ride bikes and are able to get where they're going in almost the same amount of time as those people in cars.

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Mao's portrait at night.

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Sculptures

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Chinese sewer cover