Some of the group who had chosen the South Korean option went off and did their own thing while we were in Beijing, but they were sort of replaced by others of our group who did not do the South Korean option but were doing the Beijing city tour. We met after breakfast and the group introduced itself to the new members, then first went to the large Yonghe Lama Monastery/Temple, not far from the hotel, where we toured around, often through clouds of incense, and saw a number of Buddha’s of varying sizes including one huge one that was 86’ tall. The monastery dates back to 1694 and was originally an official residence for court eunuchs before becoming a residence for large numbers of Tibetan Buddhist monks and evolving into the national center of China’s Lama Administration. After narrowly surviving the cultural revolution in China, it reopened to the public in 1981. After that, we went to the nearby Bell Tower, which dates back to 1272. About half the group climbed up to the top. We were told it was ‘only’ 75 steps (if memory serves correctly) but what we didn’t appreciate was that the first 60 steps were all in a solid single flight with no break and were each much steeper than normal western flights of stairs. So the 75 steps were a fairly aggressive climb. We enjoyed good views over the city and over to the nearby similar Drum tower, then after that, went back down and then climbed into ‘rickshaws’, two of us per each rickshaw. The reason for the quotes around the word ‘rickshaw’ is that these were propelled by a man pedaling a connected bicycle rather than by a man simply walking and pulling the rickshaw shafts directly. The rickshaws were perhaps large enough for two Chinese people, but were more cramped for us larger western folk, however we managed, and enjoyed a fascinating tour through an area of hutongs. While some of the hutong exteriors appeared to be semi-squalid, we regularly saw signs suggesting that external appearances could be deceptive. High-end security systems and cameras and expensive late-model cars rather contradicted the external appearance of many of the buildings. The hutongs in Beijing are steadily disappearing. They are generally in very central parts of the city, and it is overwhelmingly tempting for developers to buy them up, pull them down and replace them with higher density high-rise buildings. They are currently a curious mix of old and new, and due to the inevitability of their continued destruction, it must be a strange feeling for the residents and I’ll guess that few people wish to spend much money on capital improvements in the knowledge that sooner or later (and, most likely, more sooner than later, given the rate of growth and development everywhere we turned) they will be given an offer they can’t refuse and bought out. We stopped and then walked through some narrow lanes and went into a lady’s personal apartment where she crowded all 26 of us into a room and served us a multi-course lunch. The lunch was okay, and it was amazing how we all managed to fit into the small room and around tables. After lunch we returned by rickshaw to where the coach was waiting for us. I gave the rickshaw driver the recommended tip, and he reacted in a strangely negative way. I wonder why? We then went to a local market – a multi-story building selling everything from clothing to electronics to sundry toys and souvenirs, and spent time there. Many of us bought items, with it usually being a struggle to beat the stall sellers down to prices close to what we’d pay in the US for the same things. All sellers would start off asking ridiculously high prices for things – it used to be, many years ago, that if you could talk a seller down to half their opening price, you’d done well, but now it seems that you need to talk them down to a quarter or less their opening price and even then, you might still be paying over the odds. But the bargaining process was sort of fun and part of the experience. One of our group was first offered two t-shirts for US$105. These were ordinary basic t-shirts with a small amount of screen-printing on them – the sort of thing you’d pay perhaps $10 a piece for back home. A $105 opening price was insultingly beyond stupid, but presumably the stall sellers have developed a very exact art of how to bargain with us tourists. He eventually bought two for less than $10 in total from another vendor. At 2.30 we walked a short distance from the market to attend a tour briefing by the North Korean tour organizers. This was to be the first time that all 35 of us (it was to have been 36 but one person had to cancel at the literally very last minute, alas) would be together, and to my consternation, the 2.30pm meeting started with one person still missing. He eventually appeared at about 2.45pm, looking rather battered and confused. The taxi he was taking to meet us for the briefing was apparently in a fairly severe car accident and disabled, but he managed to struggle on to the meeting himself. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief at his arrival. The tour coordinator’s General Manager (an Englishman) gave an interesting, informative, and very witty presentation, and we collected our visas and sundry other paperwork before being taken back to the hotel. After a short break at the hotel, we then headed off for a group pre-tour dinner at a nearby Peking Duck restaurant – the Quanjude. It seems that the Quanjude and Da Dong restaurants vie for supremacy as the best large Peking Duck restaurant in the city, and having now eaten at both of them, there really isn’t much to separate one from the other. Both are expensive, both operate at multiple locations around the central city area, and both provide a panoply of appetizers followed by table-side carved roast duck. Most importantly, both provide good overall experiences. The food was great and also provided in great quantities – a huge number of appetizers kept appearing, followed by duck and then still more ‘nibble’ type foods. A slightly surprising challenge arose at the end of the meal, although it related only to me rather than others in the group. I’d negotiated a fixed price for a fixed menu meal – 330RMB per person (about $53) with drinks to be paid separately. So it seemed like it should have been an easy calculation to multiple 330RMB by the number of people present, and to pay a bill for that amount. Instead I was given a long page of calculations, all in Chinese, and a strange number at the end that was considerably more than I was expecting. The restaurant staff all claimed not to speak English, and so a difficult negotiation took place through an interpreter. I showed them what I thought the cost should be, they showed me what they offered in turn, and after some back and forth negotiations, they provided a complicated new calculation that came to exactly 10,000 RMB. This was a suspiciously round number, although it was delightful how it was supported by a series of seemingly very exact calculations. Recognizing that I was way out of my league, I shut up and paid up. After dinner, some of the group chose to walk back to the hotel, while others took the coach. The walk back was interesting, giving us some more up-close contact with locals and their life-styles, including at one point walking through a large group of middle aged women (and a few men) doing some sort of organized dancing on the sidewalk. |