Beijing, Visit Two!
I'm back from another trip to Beijing, hopefully just stopping off for enough time to proctor and grade exams (and get sick again), before moving on to Shanghai and Hangzhou with a couple of friends from Weihai.
My primary purpose in going to Beijing again was to meet up with a friend from Vanderbilt, who was in Beijing half-way through a 12-day orchestral tour of China, but I decided if I was going to pay for the flights to and from Beijing, I might as well go a few days early and have my first go at couchsurfing.
I arrived late Friday night and was a little nervous after I received a text from my host that sounded like he had completely forgotten that I was coming. Everything worked out, though, and I met up with him and some of his friends at a Japanese restaurant before heading to a club for a little dancing and a few drinks. This was definitely the most international experience I've had since being in China, as his friends included some other Frenchies (he's French) and some Swedes, Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese, and Americans. Since he was busy with schoolwork, the next day I headed into Beijing with another couchsurfer, an American who introduced Barack Obama at his graduation ceremony, and walked the hutong (small back alleyways) of Beijing. It's incredible that areas like this still exist right in the middle of a city like Beijing, which has almost 20 million inhabitants, but they are fast disappearing as land developers realize their incredible value and push out the families that have lived in them for generations.
A meat shop in a hutong:
Some propaganda in a hutong:
The next day, New Year's Eve, I did a little shopping in Beijing before getting ready to party the night away. We had dinner in a Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant; I was expecting pizza wrapped in seaweed and sushi with pepperoni, but really, the only fusion that occurred was that dishes of both types were on the menu. Alas! Afterwards we went to a relaxed bar, where we hoped to chill before heading to a dance club, but unfortunately the club was too packed by the time we went and we were left with nowhere to celebrate the countdown. So, I yelled Happy New Year/Xinnian Kuaile in a cab with a French guy, a Chinese girl, and a Swedish guy at midnight. It was a little anticlimactic and disappointing to say the least. Being in Beijing, I had hoped for a party much better than I could have gotten in Weihai, but things don't always turn out as expected or hoped for. We headed to "Bed Bar" afterwards, which, as you can guess, is a bar where the seating consists of beds, but perhaps it is best that we didn't party too hard that night, for the next morning I had to wake up to meet my friend Ellen when she arrived at her hotel!
She was originally supposed to stay two nights in Beijing, and I had planned a full itinerary for the two days, but I knew full well not to really expect everything to work out, as it never does in China. She ended up with a couple of hours to eat lunch on the first day, and then the majority of the next day, before she had to fly out to Inner Mongolia. We went to an Indian restaurant for lunch, and then I dropped her off at the Great Hall of the People (on Tian'anmen Square!), where she would perform that night. I showed some of the tour chaperones around Beijing and then watched the Flag Lowering Ceremony at Tian'anmen before making my way back to the Hall for the concert. The sound quality wasn't great, but the experience of seeing a performance in such an important place was incredible. We had planned to go out dancing after the concert, but we were so exhausted we just went to bed.
Flag Lowering at Tian'anmen:
Concert in the Great Hall:
The next morning we awoke at 4:30am to be ready to leave at 5:30am for our day-trip to Simatai Great Wall, the same section I visited in October. It really is supposed to be the best section near Beijing, and this time I wanted to see it with some snow around it. Unfortunately not much snow was left from the previous few days' of snow, but combined with the near absence of smog, there was enough to make it even more beautiful than before. The drive to the Wall took three hours, and after a three-hour hike and the trip back, we had enough time to do a little shopping and collapse from exhaustion before she headed off to Inner Mongolia.
A funny sign at the Wall:
What an office!
Ellen and I on the Wall:
After Ellen and I parted ways, I made my way back to a different Couchsurfer's place and promptly went to sleep. I have thought a little about moving to Beijing next year, as there are so many exciting things to do, but this trip really reminded me that it is a large, exhausting city, and I have the same misgivings about it as I do about NYC and Berlin. The next day I slept in and met up with yet another CSer before catching my flight back to Weihai.
Like I said earlier, I hope to be off to Shanghai in a couple of days, and I'll even be back in Beijing in two weeks to meet up with Tyler. I will without a doubt have exhausted Beijing by the time I leave, as I plan to go at least two more times to meet up with other friends coming to China, and by that time it will surely have exhausted me as well.
I'll leave you with some more snowy Great Wall pictures.
My primary purpose in going to Beijing again was to meet up with a friend from Vanderbilt, who was in Beijing half-way through a 12-day orchestral tour of China, but I decided if I was going to pay for the flights to and from Beijing, I might as well go a few days early and have my first go at couchsurfing.
I arrived late Friday night and was a little nervous after I received a text from my host that sounded like he had completely forgotten that I was coming. Everything worked out, though, and I met up with him and some of his friends at a Japanese restaurant before heading to a club for a little dancing and a few drinks. This was definitely the most international experience I've had since being in China, as his friends included some other Frenchies (he's French) and some Swedes, Japanese, Indonesian, Chinese, and Americans. Since he was busy with schoolwork, the next day I headed into Beijing with another couchsurfer, an American who introduced Barack Obama at his graduation ceremony, and walked the hutong (small back alleyways) of Beijing. It's incredible that areas like this still exist right in the middle of a city like Beijing, which has almost 20 million inhabitants, but they are fast disappearing as land developers realize their incredible value and push out the families that have lived in them for generations.
A meat shop in a hutong:
Some propaganda in a hutong:
The next day, New Year's Eve, I did a little shopping in Beijing before getting ready to party the night away. We had dinner in a Japanese-Italian fusion restaurant; I was expecting pizza wrapped in seaweed and sushi with pepperoni, but really, the only fusion that occurred was that dishes of both types were on the menu. Alas! Afterwards we went to a relaxed bar, where we hoped to chill before heading to a dance club, but unfortunately the club was too packed by the time we went and we were left with nowhere to celebrate the countdown. So, I yelled Happy New Year/Xinnian Kuaile in a cab with a French guy, a Chinese girl, and a Swedish guy at midnight. It was a little anticlimactic and disappointing to say the least. Being in Beijing, I had hoped for a party much better than I could have gotten in Weihai, but things don't always turn out as expected or hoped for. We headed to "Bed Bar" afterwards, which, as you can guess, is a bar where the seating consists of beds, but perhaps it is best that we didn't party too hard that night, for the next morning I had to wake up to meet my friend Ellen when she arrived at her hotel!
She was originally supposed to stay two nights in Beijing, and I had planned a full itinerary for the two days, but I knew full well not to really expect everything to work out, as it never does in China. She ended up with a couple of hours to eat lunch on the first day, and then the majority of the next day, before she had to fly out to Inner Mongolia. We went to an Indian restaurant for lunch, and then I dropped her off at the Great Hall of the People (on Tian'anmen Square!), where she would perform that night. I showed some of the tour chaperones around Beijing and then watched the Flag Lowering Ceremony at Tian'anmen before making my way back to the Hall for the concert. The sound quality wasn't great, but the experience of seeing a performance in such an important place was incredible. We had planned to go out dancing after the concert, but we were so exhausted we just went to bed.
Flag Lowering at Tian'anmen:
Concert in the Great Hall:
The next morning we awoke at 4:30am to be ready to leave at 5:30am for our day-trip to Simatai Great Wall, the same section I visited in October. It really is supposed to be the best section near Beijing, and this time I wanted to see it with some snow around it. Unfortunately not much snow was left from the previous few days' of snow, but combined with the near absence of smog, there was enough to make it even more beautiful than before. The drive to the Wall took three hours, and after a three-hour hike and the trip back, we had enough time to do a little shopping and collapse from exhaustion before she headed off to Inner Mongolia.
A funny sign at the Wall:
What an office!
Ellen and I on the Wall:
After Ellen and I parted ways, I made my way back to a different Couchsurfer's place and promptly went to sleep. I have thought a little about moving to Beijing next year, as there are so many exciting things to do, but this trip really reminded me that it is a large, exhausting city, and I have the same misgivings about it as I do about NYC and Berlin. The next day I slept in and met up with yet another CSer before catching my flight back to Weihai.
Like I said earlier, I hope to be off to Shanghai in a couple of days, and I'll even be back in Beijing in two weeks to meet up with Tyler. I will without a doubt have exhausted Beijing by the time I leave, as I plan to go at least two more times to meet up with other friends coming to China, and by that time it will surely have exhausted me as well.
I'll leave you with some more snowy Great Wall pictures.
posted by Mysteries of The Orient at 7:17 PM
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