CHINA – Beijing 10th – 16th October 2019

After two years of Glen planning and gently persuading me that this could be done, all of the hard work and preparation, packing up the house, braving up to tell the family and letting go at work, the short car ride, two hour MegaBus journey, ten hour flight and an hour long taxi ride…. we have finally arrived in Beijing!

Having not heard from us since we arrived i’m sure you are waiting to hear what we thought of the ancient Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square; one of the largest public squares in the world. After all, those were two of the places we came here to see during our nine mile walk on our first day exploring. However, for those of you who know me that’s not how my mind works.

Where to start? Light blue felt ‘carpets’ over the base of tree trunks on the pavements, what is that about? I would ‘Google-it up’ as my Mother-in-law says but Google is banned here! (Sigh)

Just when you think there is no one around a bike or car creeps up on you! Centimetres away! The mini ‘cars’, bikes and buses are silent! I don’t know if they are electric or whether we’ve reached the age when you loose your hearing at a certain pitch. The vehicles are for private use and business. They are so cute, especially the police cars and also the parcel delivery guys. On our first day here one pulled up by us and a crowd gathered around handing in parcels and taking delivery of others. We hadn’t realised the significance of the size of these mini vehicles until we moved to a different hotel down a narrow alleyway (Hutong) and realised it was the only size vehicle that could squeeze through.

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Food. Meat on our flight and here in Beijing is sweet even when hot (spicy), just saying. Menus here appear normal until you look a bit closer. As tempting as it sounded I just couldn’t bring myself to order the Jinji Saozi noodles! I thought it must be some sort of sea creature but on looking up the translation it means ‘Emergency Dice’ … none the wiser even now. Neither did I fancy the Sheep Misce Laneous Oriented! So Pork or vegetable noodles have been our staple so far and have been tasty and without any surprises! Although the noodles on the flight looked like they included slices of seahorse! Glen assured me it was just a mushroom!! Sorry i’ve just got to list a few more options we are faced with here…… Tin foil Armor and Powder, Return meat and cover rice, Burst Stomach Soup and Octopus Whiskers. Oh and Foxtail soup! Do they mean Ox tail? Was it just a typo or is this a different soup made from the bushy tailed animal we hunt back in the UK? We may never know.

Near our second hotel in the historic Dongcheng area we found a little Vietnamese ‘restaurant’ down a hutong (narrow alleyway).

We love Vietnamese food with its fresh ingredients, herbs and plenty of green vegetables. It was such an achievement, not to have happened upon it amongst the stalls selling pigs trotters, chicken claws and feet and Seahorses on sticks! (sadly true) but to have survived the journey down the narrow dark hutongs unscathed. Bikes and their little mini ‘cars’ swerve along silently a breath away from you. So anyway, Vietnamese noodle soup…. it’s not a meal you’d want to eat if you were on a romantic date (I noticed a young couple sat next to us, the boy had a small dish of what looked like tofu and rice but I noticed the beautiful young girl just sipped at a bubble tea) because when you eat noodle soup you have to put your head low to the bowl and slurp and suck and get those noodles in anyway you can before they slither and unwind from your chopsticks! But suck or slurp too fast and they will flap from side to side slapping your face and covering it in the hot broth, depositing bits of herbs and spices as they go! As I ate mine I looked down and noticed bits stuck to the table and splashes on my top and as I wiped away some liquid by my ear I just hoped I hadn’t flung a piece of coriander on to the young courting couple behind me!

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The street food here, so far, is limited to carts with baked sweet potatoes (with a Dickens’ London feel about them), anaemic looking corn on the cob and the ‘loose filling testing’ sticky mini toffee ‘apples’ and strawberries on sticks! Now I can’t help but think that the sticky fruit would make a good natural fly catcher here in summer, like those strips of sticky paper you used to see hanging in butcher’s shops years ago. I stood, as long as I could, by one stall that had flies circling the sticks to see if a fly landed and got stuck but Glen was going out of sight in the distance so I had to jog after him before I had proof!

So just to touch on the Forbidden City. Whilst walking around there the other day Glen said “the Chinese are generally disobedient. On the flight they ignored instructions re keeping their seatbelts on and staying seated and in the cafes they sit smoking beside or beneath ‘NO SMOKING’ signs”. However, as I looked around us I noticed that if you put someone in front of them with a mascot on a stick they will line up and follow that person in single orderly file, obediently wearing the identical colour caps they’ve obviously been given to enable the ‘stick bearer’ to spot them from temple steps five metres away. We found it very distracting and were constantly people watching! There were lots of sticks with beautiful ornate oriental fish ‘flags’. Then through the crowds we spotted two unusual ones. A stick with a Pepper Pig soft toy! (Miles, we thought of you immediately ❤️…. yes, yes I know it could have been George but still) Another had a big bright yellow Sun Flower Courtney!

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Our first day in Beijing was cloudy but warm, but not too warm luckily as we walked 23,300 steps before tea time! We could have caught the bus…. can’t think why we didn’t!

We have since caught a bus!

We had walked to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, then got a bit lost on the way back so walked a lot further than necessary! On a positive note It meant we talked to lots of locals to try to find our way back. They weren’t the normal two way conversations because no one could speak English!! There was a lot of pointing, drawing, talking loudly to make themselves understood and a bit of mime. Glen has since used the translate app and it’s a life saver!

We’ve not seen many westerners despite 1000’s of people everywhere, most tourists are either Asian or Chinese. We thought we would have to get away from the tourist areas to be a novelty to the locals but we’ve had people ask (gesture) to have their photos taken with us or we have just been stared at a lot.

The streets are very clean and the underpasses even cleaner! No littering or peeing in the streets here! Glen spotted a parent holding a toddler over a wheelie bin to go to toilet “wee-lie bin!” He said! Lol!! I saw a women running, panic stricken, beside a not so young child. She was bent over holding a clear plastic sandwich bag open in readiness, gesturing towards a corner in the Forbidden City with the intention of the child depositing his waste tidily inside it! I have to admit that my stare followed them behind the stone statue in the hope of seeing what his aim was like but he was old enough to be self-conscious so I kept walking and looked the other way!

I’ve noticed that babies and toddlers nappies stick out of the back of their trousers. Their outfits are purposely designed. I saw a baby in an ‘all in one’ outfit clearly shaped to allow the bottom of the nappy to show. I wanted to take a photo but thought it inappropriate. We also saw a toddler with a slit up the back of her trousers and her bottom clearly showing! She was obviously out of nappies now but was still at the stage of having potential accidents so needed quick access! It put me in mind of the P sign some people put on cars when they’ve just passed their driving test. I must admit that I did try to get a photo of the little toddler but she sat down on a step and I thought I would look dodgy if I hung around waiting for her to stand up (or bend down!!) again.

After that, as well as appreciating the beautiful landscape gardens and temples in the grounds of the Summer Palace, I did find myself looking at every child’s trousers to see at what stage of toilet training they were and to see if I could get a photo of the ridiculous trousers! I also unashamedly found myself inspecting every very old person to see if they reverted to the slit for easy access! Talking of old people, Glen gets in places for free or half price over here seeing as he is 60, result!

Older children are pushed around on some sort of seat on a stick on wheels and the elderly sit in adult pushchairs with tiny wheels instead of sturdy wheelchairs.

I suppose I really should be telling you about the architecture here and a bit of history about the Ming Dynasty or something but I’m more intrigued with the motorbike adornments! Bike coats as I call them! We’d seen a lot of people in Vietnam with their coats on backwards on their motorbikes in 2013 but here they have evolved in to properly designed versions that go over the handle bars and in front of you to keep your legs and hands dry and warm. It must get blinkin freezing here in the winter that’s all I can think!

This was a homemade version from a piece of carpet on a street cleaners bike.

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Also why do they wear the face masks? Most are like surgical masks but some are ornate and some are neoprene covering the whole face that velcro up at the back. Others are completely covered in a silk scarf type material with just their eyes showing. It put me in mind of a burka! Glen said it’s because of pollution and also to keep the sun off their face as they prefer to be white then tanned. I can’t see how that would work, surely they would get tan ‘lines’ like the panda eyes (timely Chinese reference) Donald Trump has from wearing his sun glasses!? On the way back from the Summer Palace we saw a lady with a technical, cutting edge mask on which had a 3M filter in it. I am wondering now whether they actually wear them because of the way the babies and children have their nappies hanging out which must mean you smell the contents easier!

Our first hotel was quite westernised and ‘posh’ and supplied these wacky toiletries

We moved to a cheaper hotel in an historic part of Beijing on the third night. We found they had thoughtful supplied not only toiletries but everything we might possibly need during our stay, including a fire escape hood! 😳

As we walked around the area it looked quaint and we felt safe. Although the local Schools had, not only armed guards but riot police at the exit as the parents were stood quietly waiting to collect their children. And a guard with what looked like a pitchfork for good measure! We’ve since seen the implement close up and it’s not sharp! But used to push people away or pin them against a wall by the look of it.

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The other day we walked down in to the subway to start our journey to the Summer Palace. As we went down the steps we could hear a crowd shouting and before I could see them I thought there might be some sort of riot, or demonstration but then I saw that it was just a group of people talking! They are so loud here! They are friendly enough but they push you along if you are in a queue, with smile on their face, but still! They bump in to you all the time, although if you accidentally bump in to them they don’t mind in the slightest! They appear not to have noticed let alone expect you to say sorry!

My new vocation in life is making people laugh by photo bombing. I’ve been doing it a lot here without thinking! I did it to a large group of women posing on some rocks for a photo by the lake and they all looked surprised then laughed. Spreading the joy.

Oh and finally, did I mention that we went to The Great Wall!? Smug face!

Note: After four days going cold turkey we got Social Media, FaceTime and Google etc back! Thanks to Glen and the VPN company he used giving him a work around.