Trip to Beijing

Even though I have lived in China a little over 2 years, I have never had the opportunity to go to Beijing and to be a tourist. I was in Beijing for a week in 2010 for the Red Cross Society of China Life Education course training, but we only had one day off, and since it was the worst pollution day ever (meaning you literally could only see about five feet in front of you), my friends and I decided to go to the waterpark inside the Water Cube that day. The only other times I have been in Beijing have been for a few hours overnight when flying back and forth from the States. 

So, on October 26th my roommate and I left on an overnight train headed to Beijing. We arrived the next morning, got checked into our hotel and headed out to explore as well as to find an import store called Jenny Lou's where we were going to pick up a few items for some friends back in Xi'an. There are a few Jenny Lou's, so we asked the concierge at the hotel which one was the easiest to get to by using the subway system. We followed the directions that the concierge gave us and ended up in the Russian-Chinese mob part of town. My roommate and I saw a few "sketchy" things occur as we quickly figured out how to get out of that area of town. We decided to try for another Jenny Lou's in a safer part of town, and after walking an hour and asking several people directions (in Chinese), we finally found it. (Side note regarding something I have learned about people in Beijing:  when asking directions of a Chinese person, if they do not know the answer to your question then they make something up in order to save face instead of just telling you they do not know - totally opposite of our culture).

For the next two days I had arranged for a driver (whom my friends had used before and were impressed with his services) to drive us to the tourist places. Ironically hiring a driver saved both time and money compared to taking buses. So, on the first day our driver, Harry, took us to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, to the Summer Palace, and to the Olympic Center. The second day he took us to the Temple of Heaven, the Pearl market, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City. The two days were busy with seeing several sights in a day, but the best possible way to see everything too in such a short amount of time. I know I definitely had a good time. My roommate and I headed back the next night on another overnight train.

Be sure to click on the link to see pictures from my trip to Beijing.