First Days in China

Beijing and the Great Wall of China

Beijing has a population of 16 million and is located in the north east of China. It was our first stop on our trip to China and as Jim has written, it was much more a modern, booming metropolis than he expected. You can see new construction everywhere. Every month, more of Beijing's hutongs ( the narrow alleyways that are home to nearly one quarter of Beijing's residents) disappear as these backstreets are replaced by widened roads or apartment blocks.

In past, China's tourism has been predominately internal, that is, its own people travelling to historic sites and to the resorts within the country. With its huge population, the country has not needed to rely on attracting outside tourists. The Olympic Games of 2008 will change this forever. Signs and t-shirts promoting the Beijing Olympics are already at every marketplace! The government of China is providing English and other language courses for many of the public service people....traffic police must be able to speak a minumum of English in order to aide the huge influx of tourists expected for the games. You can almost feel the wealth and the fast growing economy as you walk the streets! If you are innovative, there are tremendous opportunities in this country as the number of middle class consumers increases rapidly and the number of 'seriously' wealthy grows!

We arrived a day ahead of the beginning of our tour and spent the day wandering the streets and hutongs and getting our bearings. We went in search of the Xiushui Silk Market, small narrow lanes with a good array of outdoor gear, fake designer clothes as well as DVDs and CDs sold on the sly! We did not stay long as the pulling and constant bearage of hawkers was more than we cared for! Quite the market! Gortex jackets seemed to be the best deal of all but we did not need any!

The evening of the 14th, we met our group for the first time and all went out to dinner. What an interesting group we had too! When you book a tour, which we have only done one other time as we prefer to travel independantly, a lot of the success of your time depends on the group that you are with and we could not have asked for better travel companions! Together we represented Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Sweden, Poland, US, France, Denmark and Ireland and for almost half the group, English was a second language! You can imagine how well we all did with Mandarin! During the course of the next 9 days, we laughed, looked after each other and compared notes for historic knowledge and good market places! We certainly were lucky to be a part of such a great group! We were travelling with Intrepid, a company that works with small groups and, while our facilitator (NOT tour guide as she quickly points out!) took care of booking all the trains and site tickets etc. She was a fountain of knowledge for all our questions, there is alot of independant time allowed in the schedule. No matching hats or megaphones! It is a very good way to get a taste of a country such as China that can be difficult to get around on a first trip.

Our trip was in fact called "A Taste of China", for that is all we had time for in just 9 short days, but we did manage to cover alot of territory!

Our first dinner together was Peking Duck! About 8 of them! and pi jou (beer) lots of it too! Did you know that a duck is cut into 16 pieces for serving? And the food kept coming and kept coming! The bill.....about $12.00 for the two of us! We waddled home late that night! (no pun intended!)

Our first full day with the group, we went to Tiananmen Square, an area of 122 acres, big enough to hold 1/2 a million people. In its history, the square has witnessed the Chinese people's struggle against foreign oppression and reactionary rule at home, most recently and notably, during pro-democracy rallies in 1989. At the northern end of the Square, Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) is the national symbol built in 1417. In the imperial days, it was a rostrum to address the assembled masses. On October 1st, 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China here. The protrait of Mao is a feature of any Chinese photograph taken in front of the gate. It is also a favourite meeting place as the square is so huge and so busy that it is easiest to arrange to meet beneath Mao's picture. As a group, we attracted the attention of a couple of men who seemed intent on hearing the explanations our guide was giving us. We certainly felt aware that there are subjects, such as politics, that are still not freely discussed in this country!

We spent the next couple of hours on a tour of the Forbidden City, so called because it was off limits to commoners for 500 years! Built by one million labourers between 1406 and 1420, it was home to 23 successive Ming and Qing Emperors. A bit of information from our tour guide that stuck with me was the fact that the emporer felt that god had 1000 rooms so he ordered 999 rooms to be built so that he was not greater than god!

The next day was our trip to the Great Wall of China....one of the must see's on my list! I have posted a picture taken there and will write more tomorrow about the trip!