Beijing Part 3: Hutongs, Palaces, and lots of traffic…

At Forbidden City

Beijing dazzles and puzzles at the same time. The monuments ensure an authentic and historic experience, while the great expanse of winding streets and people who speak only Chinese can confuse and overwhelm.

Beijing is sometimes strange because the old and the new are present: buildings and historic sites dating back to hundreds of years ago contrast sharply with new constructions.

The Bird’s Nest (Olympic) stadium as seen from the window of our tour bus

We had the opportunity to explore the Hutongs of Beijing, which the old part of Beijing where the streets are densely packed with ancient culture. As part of our activities, we rode in pedi-cabs (Chinese rickshaws) and weaved in and out of the small streets, stopping at four different locations within the Hutongs to engage in different cultural activities, such as Chinese yo-yoing:

Other cultural activities included Chinese paper-cutting and Chinese calligraphy. The fact that most of the people at these places did not speak English allowed the students to practice their Mandarin language skills, while I mostly stood back dumbfounded and waiting for someone to translate. It was an amazing cultural experience, particularly when the teacher of our Chinese calligraphy class explained the ancient art form:

…And I got to wield a brush and attempt to write some Chinese characters of my own:

In addition to the cultural activities, we also visited a number of monuments in the city such as the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, and the Bird’s Nest.

We also took in two shows: a kung fu show and a Chinese acrobat show.

One day we hiked the Great Wall of China (if you haven’t seen those posts, read them here and here).

There was also a service component to the Beijing trip, where we went to a community centre for mentally-disabled adults where we got to sing and dance and I and the other supervising teacher got to dress up like this:

At the community centre I also got a second chance to try my hand at the Chinese yo-yo, at which I had failed miserably at the first time around, and also had the chance to try another activity similar to the yo-yo.

A stop at Wangfujing street, the commercial shopping district of Beijing, is a must, with its abundance of stores and malls, and yummy and sometimes bizarre delicacies located just adjacent to the main drag. At the food market one can eat the full range: from plain old chicken to scorpion and even cat(!), which one teacher on the field trip learned the hard way, when she mistook the feline cuisine for beef (hence another reason why Mandarin language skills are so important)! While I opted for a soup on that day instead of something more “exotic”, I managed to get a snapshots below of the snake skewers that were for sale at the open-air food market.

Anybody up for snake tonight?

While I adored Beijing, one thing became a major concern: the traffic. Being such a vast city, with such a large, bustling, and thriving population definitely comes with its downfalls, and Beijing traffic is one of them. Longs rides of over an hour to get from place to place became standard. A near-fatal accident, where a transport truck nearly plowed into our tour bus as it was making a right turn, was shrugged off by our driver. Regular occurence, as and the saying goes, no harm, no foul. Those with very little time in Beijing would do well by limiting their travel time by either consolidating their itineraries (through exclusion of certain activities or doing certain activities on certain days) or leaving very early to beat the never-ending traffic.

Beijing is a funky, interesting, and culturally-rich place that gave me the boost I needed after living in pretentious, stuffy, overly-westernized Hong Kong for the past 8 months. Quite the breath of fresh air and a definite must-see on the hit list!