Wrapping up in Beijing - and moving to Chengde

I have now been in Beijing for over two months and am getting ready to wrap up my studies here. It’s not all over yet, though – I’m going to study another two weeks in Chengde starting from 12^th October and then I still have another two weeks to travel in China. Most likely I’ll be heading hiking in Yunnan.

Those two months have been long enough to have learned basic conversational Chinese, having seen the most important sights in Beijing,and even visited some of the areas outside of Beijing.  Since I last wrote a blog post, I’ve been to Shanghai, the National Art Museum, experienced the Beijing Oktoberfest (as boozy as anywhere!) , seen the world’s first ever Formula E qualifying race at Beijing Olympic park and made myself a brief Chinese-English dictionary for the Clash of Clans game.

My "Clash of Clans" mini-dictionary, page 1. Still work in progress but it will be awesome ;)

SHANGHAI

I took the fast train from Beijing to Shanghai. A return ticket is around RMB 1,100 on second class – around 220 Singapore dollars for a comfortable five-hour journey. Not bad at all. Chinese trains have been a very positive surprise for me  - they run on time, they are comfortable and you can even make friends along the journey.

Shanghai itself was beautiful (although I do admit it could be a little boring or along visit). The days I was there the air was much cleaner than in Beijing. Shanghai seems well organized, clean and modern compared to what is the general image of China. There are lots of restaurants and trendy little shops, fancy cocktail bars. There are much fewer sights than in Beijing, however. For living and working in the long run Shanghai would probably be nicer  for us foreigners than Beijing (also because the air is cleaner) but for someone who comes for the first time to China Beijing has been a more interesting location to be based in.

I hate to admit it but I walked into a Chinese tea scam in Shanghai. Although I suspected it from the begining, I for some reason decided to play along (my curiosity is really going to get me in trouble one day). the part I don't quite understand is that although by the end of it I was absolutely certain it was a scam, I still gave the money. What on earth made me do that! I am so stupid Oh well, I did have a lot of fun getting scammed and even learned a few new words of Chinese along the way. In any case, if you see this lady when you go to Shanghai, slap her on my behalf, she is part of the tea scam. If she is with two friendly men, slap them too, they are most likely the same two scammers. Friendly or not, they deserve a  little"nudge" :)

Apart from getting scammed, one thing I did in Shanghai that I particularly enjoyed was having dinner at Mr and Mrs Bund. This French restaurant at The Bund is extremely expensive on Chinese standards (no on western standards though) but completely worth it – the set menu and half a bottle of wine was over 800RMB per person but that included 6 absolutely delightful courses. I’m not much of a foodie but I can say I loved Mr and Mrs Bund and thought it was worth paying that little bit extra for.

I also liked walking around Jing’an temple and Yuyuan gardens. Although Jing’an is slightly further west it's easy to get to by subway. It's also relatively small and can be covered in about an hour. Yuyuan takes slightly longer due to its labyrinth like structure.  

Yuyuan Gardens (top) and Jing'an temple (bottom).

Admiring the skyline at The Bund both during the day and at night was of course a must – and completely free of charge. I would advise not to go to the Bund tunnel – I went and it was a 5min light show inside a tunnel accompanied with what I though was an incoherent story.  Oh well, it did not cost a fortune but I would describe it as “paying money for watching  fireworks on a big, moving screen”. I didn’t have time for much of anything else during my short visit – hanging out with my friend Petra who was in Shanghai for a work related training course was my main aim, after all.

Shanghai skyline deserves a second shot.
Photo courtesy of Petra Diener, the German Superwoman.

TIAN TAN – The Temple of Heaven

After returning to Beijing I went  to see the Temple of Heaven. Honestly, again, I’ve seen too many places and not found out enough on the background. I found Tian Tan pretty, yet the most interesting parts of it were:

1. Observing the Chinese people in the park do group singing. They even had their own little song books and a small band accompanying them.
2. Watching people queue for the Imperial Vault of Heaven (we could not find the place with the echo wall next to it – maybe we were just stupid and could not find the entrance. Perhaps you can still enter it. Yet with the number of people visiting Tian tan on any average summer day you can forget about hearing any echoes of your whispers).
3. Buying a miniature Tian Tan building kit and assembling it with my classmate Aimee.

All in all, it was worth a visit, it was pretty but not as impressive as I though it could have been. We continued our visit to the Drum Tower (and found it’s closed for renovation) and then to Jingshan Park to take a look over the Forbidden City from the top of the hill in Jingshan park. Jingshan park also has a memorial site for one of the former emperors who hung himself from a tree when the city was overtaken by invaders. Surely not the same tree anymore (?), I would think, although trees can live to be very old.

Men playing a local game (that remains a mystery to me), the group singing, and the buildings at the Temple of Heaven. The last image (bottom left) is the queue for the Imperial Vault of Heaven. It doesn't look long but it moved really slowly.

Our own Tian Tan finished. Almost as strong make as the real one. Will last for centuries.

OKTOBERFEST BEIJING

The evening of the sightseeing day ended with getting dragged over to the Beijing Oktoberfest. A good fun event. According to my friend Andreas who has been to the real one , the Beijing one is an exact copy – except for that they also have a couple of local Chinese acts on the stage.  An entertaining band, lots of beer in big glasses and good company – always makes a good evening. Despite my protests I got dragged clubbing (my friends told me I can’t get a taxi home since it’s raining and when it rains in Beijing everything turns into a chaos). I did have a very fun night out at a club in Sanlitun, despite having been that intoxicated that I even peed on a parking lot in Sanlitun. That’s what Oktoberfest does to you – ruins your good manners but guarantees a great nigh out.

ART MUSEUM

I would warmly recommend the National Art Museum to anyone who is at all interested in art. There seemed not to be any permanent exhibition so it will depend a bit on your luck what will be on display but we were very lucky to have a great representation of both contemporary and more traditional paitings. We saw landscapes from Gansu in an exhibition called “Kunlun Heart, China’s dream” painted by Ma Wanguo, architecture, traditional flower and bird paintings by Wu Changshuo – and my favourite, great exhibition of contemporary  artists.

FLAGRAISING ON TIANANMEN SQUARE

On a cold end of September morning I at some moment of insanity thought it would be great to see the flagraising at Tiananmen square. A daily event in Beijing at sunrise - therefore the timing changes every day. On the day I went down with my classmate Peter, it took place at 6.06am - which meant we had to be there by 5.30am and still got views mainly of the Chinese crowd gathered to see their own national flag raised with some of the most impressive buildings in Chinese history in the background (Tiananment gate and The Forbidden City).

There have been better days and worse days during my over two months in China, but I would still like to conclude with saying “Life is good”. Here, a sunny picture of my neighbourhood on a slightly chilly September morning to make the point why life is so good - when the sun is shining and it's a nice, cool autumn morning even the city that at first seemed so dirty can look beautiful. Sending some sunshine to everybody! :)