Asia Awaits: Beijing Part 1

It is currently Autumn break from school and we decided that we would avoid the monsoon rains of southern Asia, for the coolness (and smog) of Beijing. As we did in India, we have a bucket list of places to see while living in Hong Kong, and Beijing was one of them, along with the Great Wall of China.

The pollution the day we arrived was SO bad that we all struggled to cope with the air quality. You could actually see it in the air - we were told it was because there had been no wind for the prior few days. We were lucky that this was the worst day, and the air quality did improve over our stay.

We spent our first two days exploring some of the 'must do's' of Beijing. Tianammen Square was our first stop but with the very long queue to get in and the security check point, it took a little longer than expected to get to the actual square. We had a guide with us, 'Joe' who was very happy to show us his city. He studied international journalism at university but has changed career pathes because his stories were always 'amended' before being published - a story heard consistently there. Joe was not comfortable talking to us about the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989, and told us that as far as the Chinese are concerned, 'nothing happened' and there were no deaths ! Scary stuff! Max was desperate to learn about why we were interested in Tiannamen Sqaure but we have waited until we returned from China.... Just in case they wouldn't let us leave 😮

The Square itself was very large and still had decorations from the national celebrations a couple of weeks earlier. The Square faces the Forbidden City, were there is a huge painting of Chairman Mao on the outside - very eerie! and given the City is the 'home of the emperors' I thought it odd that the Chairman's photo was on the outside.

Unfortunately, I got the day's wrong with our booking and we were not able to get in to the Forbidden City that afternoon - it would have to wait until the next day. However, it gave us the chance to walk through the streets of Beijing and see some of the crazy foods on offer as 'take away'!! Check the photos out below - those scorpions were ridiculous......

Walking through the streets we came across a fabulous local playground where people were playing table tennis, cards, board games and exercising - what a fabulous public space, in a city of 23 million!!! We also got to walk through and visit an actual Hutong (the Beijing narrow alley ways) and meet a local man living there. They are very small and many do not have running water, and use communal facilities. The old guy was happy to show us around and show us his pets - crickets, Lizards, fish, turtles, birds - it was quite the menagerie.

We finished the day with a lovely dinner at Dadong - of course, we were after Peking Duck and all the trimmings. The boys were quickly converted to loving Chinese....well, as long as duck was on the menu!! While in Beijing we also got to try out '1949 The Hidden City' which also had amazing food and a wonderful ambience.

The Forbidden City was HUGE!! But I have to say that we weren't that impressed with the actual interior, and the large crowds made for some frustrating times. The boys loved the story of the last emperor 'Puyi', and all about the eunuchs and their castration - you can imagine Max's comments on that one ....

They learned all about the Chinese flag and what the stars represent - the Government, workers, soldiers, students, and farmers of China. Let's hope some of the learning stays with them.

The next instalment will be our trip to the Great Wall.