I couldn't possibly leave China without visiting the capital and the Great Wall, so four of us, Marissa, Alexis, Phil, and I, decided to cram a Beijing weekend trip in right before finals as our last hurrah for studying abroad in China.
Beijing, the capital of China, surrounded by the Hebei Province, is the second largest city behind Shanghai in terms of urban population. It is the last of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. Pollution is suppose to be the worst in Beijing; however, we were fortunate and had better air quality than Shanghai on the days we were there.
Apologizes ahead of time for the lack of information in this post; it will mostly be a picture post.
High Speed Train (G-Train)
For our trip, we decided to take the high speed train (HSR-high speed rail) there and fly back, just to experience China's HSR once. China's HSR is very similar to Taiwan's. However, a few differences are that Taiwan's has three price classifications; business class, reserved seats, and non-reserved seats; whereas, China's just has first and second class and the setup/bathrooms are a bit different. For the most part, everything else is the same. The one aspect that I like about Taiwan's better is the luggage space that is located in the front of each train segment, since it makes it easier to have larger suitcases.
Summer Palace (颐和园)
Once we arrived in Beijing, we checked into our hostel, Sanlitun International Youth Hostel. The location was very convenient, located right next to the subway station, expats residency, restaurants, and shops. The hostel's "concierge" was extremely helpful; they tweaked my itinerary and showed us how to get everywhere and recommended us a few places to go.
Our first stop, Summer Palace. The Summer Palace mainly consists of Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake. Since 1998, it has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Marissa and Alexis
I believe this is Kunming Lake.
Summer Palace
Not too sure, why but somehow, Olympic Park and the Great Wall were on equal levels of "I have to see it while in Beijing" for me. It's probably just the water cube that caused my excitement; the Beijing Olympics will always be a historical moment...at least in the swimming world, considering 25 world records were broken, Michael Phelps made history, and more importantly where Nathan Adrian made his first Olympic appearance, just saying.
Ex-swimmers at the Water cube (made me miss it a little).
Beijing National Stadium: Bird's Nest
Temple of Heaven (天坛)
The Temple of Heaven is a collection of religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of Central Beijing. Many Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties held annual ceremonies for prayers to Heaven to ask for good harvest.
Marissa, Phil, me, and Alexis
Temple of Heaven
Bian Yi Fang (Lunch)
You can't say you've been to Beijing without eating Beijing Roast Duck. There are two famous places that people recommended to us: Bian Yi Fang and Da Dong. We just happened to be closer to Bian Yi Fang, so we went there, but both locations are easily accessible by subway.
Lunch is served.
So much duck...
Tiananmen Square/Forbidden City
Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world, with the Tiananmen Gate separating the Square from the Forbidden City. The Gate was built during the Ming Dynasty and has since been the site of numerous political and student protests, which made the location a revolutionary icon.
View of the Forbidden City from Tiananmen Square.
Pictured above is the secret police.
The Forbidden City is ...actually a city. It took us many hours to walk from the front gate to the back gate, and sadly everything eventually started to look the same.
Wangfujing is one of Beijing's most famous shopping streets. However, the main "shopping" we did was for food, since Wangfujing is also considered to be a night market. The reasons that people stop by this street is for exotic foods such as fried scorpions, centipedes, starfish, and everything else you would never think to eat. I mean there are normal things, such as fruit, dumplings, fried noodles, but why would you go all the way to Beijing just for normal food, why not be adventurous and try a bug or two? Jk...we didn't try anything exotic.
Centipedes, spiders, some other insects that I'd rather not know about.
Starfish...yummy? We'll never know...
The Great Wall
The one and only reason (besides the Water Cube, but that's an exception) we wanted to visit Beijing was probably the Great Wall. Due to the length of the history of the wall, please just check wiki, :) but as for my experience, here goes:
The most popular section of the Great Wall is Badaling, which is also the most crowded and recently re-constructed section, considering that that section has stair rails; therefore, we DID NOT want to go there. We wanted to go to the section that people rarely go to, Jinshanling, which is also 3 hours outside of Beijing located in the Hebei province. This section is probably the most preserved section of the Great Wall, practically stair less after 30 mins into our climb.
We booked a tour that included transportation there and back, breakfast, and lunch, but we had to pay for our own admission.
Finally get to check visiting the Great Wall off my bucket list.
Literally "climbing" the wall, since there really were't any stairs.
One of the Great Wonders of the World. Check!
HouHai
HouHai is one of the three lakes that make up Shichahai. We finished off our trip here at a small pub like cafe with a spectacular view. One of Beijing's many nightlife, cafe, and restaurant scenes surround HouHai.
I couldn't have asked for a better weekend trip. Everything was absolutely perfect, down to the people I was traveling with: the weather was gorgeous, pollution levels were low, we didn't get ripped off, we managed to see everything we wanted to see, transportation wasn't a hassle at all, and the hostel's "concierge" was beyond helpful and patient with all my questions.
Go Team Panda Cats!
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