Team Wuxi is go!: Beijing photo expose' part 2 (Marcus)

These posts will give you a reason to safely avoid sitting down with us and going through our thousands of photos when we return home. You can say, "Oh it's ok I saw em on the blog!" Don't say we don't care!

This is also a reward for all those who have read every post to date - it's much much easier just to look at the pretty pictures. If you haven't read everything to date, STOP NOW!!! We know who you are!!

One of the best parts about the Temple of Heaven was the lovely lush gardens surrounding it. There were lots of elderly Chinese people here doing what elderly Chinese people do best: Singing, dancing, playing musical instruments etc. Notice how nice and green the grass is - no-one is allowed to walk on it. If they were? It'd be a completely different story. I really enjoyed strolling around these grounds. Other than the stifling heat it was enjoyable. There were a handful of extremely old, gnarled trees on the property which were also very interesting.

We have called the Temple of Heaven the Temple of Tourists and here's one of the reasons why. This is the main part of the temple grounds, where the Emperor would go to pray for a good harvest - this is the actual alter. In the centre is a raised dais where the Emperor himself would stand. The Emperor being the Emperor, the centre was reserved for him. As it radiates out, ministers and officials stood according to rank. The whole area is supposedly designed with accoustics in mind, so that whoever stood in the centre could be clearly heard from the surrounding areas. Here we have a long line of Chinese tourists queueing to stand where the Emperor stood. Of course when they got there they'd do a stupid Kung Fu pose or similar while getting their photograph taken. One thing Chinese tourists are not afraid to do is the absolutely anything even remotely novelty.

This was taken at a large and very popular flea market. The whole place was infested with an inconcievable number of goods for sale. While most of the stuff was exactly the same it was hard to comprehend just how much of it there was. Brushes like this are commonplace and you can find them absolutely everywhere. They are very photogenic and interesting but like everything, they really are a dime a dozen.

We are not completely sure what is in these, likely a type of milk tea which is popular all the way across China. In Yunnan province, these were Yak Yoghurt, which someone on our tour said was really good. We usually always try this kind of thing but didn't as they reuse the jars and well...they're not really a hygenic kind of people. I don't really care to drink out of something another Chinese person has(even if from a straw!) when the chance of it having been actually washed is slim.

This paddock was next door to the main Olympic venues(Bird's Nest/Water Cube etc). Those small hills - which actually looked like small hills initially, were actually camoflaged military vehicles. We could clearly make out several radar trucks etc. I have since read there is actually at least 2 anti-air missile batteries somewhere in there.

The central area of the Forbidden City. It was an impressive place but the sheer number of tourists and the extreme heat that day definitely took a lot away from the experience.

Here's something I have found all over China and really shits me. They have absolutely no clues when it comes to displaying historical artifacts. In a lot of the side rooms in the Forbidden City they had displays of artifacts/weapons/etc, normal deal, but in true Chinese style they were absolutely caked in dust. You couldn't go near them of course, they were cordoned off, but it looked like no-one had bothered to clean them in at least a few years. Sure they might have some great tourist attractions in the country, but they sure as hell don't know how to look after them. These instruments, and practically every other display were absolutely caked in dust. I have been in several temples and palace's here now where there's things like framed scrolls and paintings where they're ripped or warped in the frame, broken/chipped frames. You name it. It's like they put them up and forget about them. It really makes you wonder just where the price of entry money goes. We were reading an article about some Chinese artifacts being in I think it was England, and China wants them back. Pfft, they're better off in England, at least there they'll be looked after.

It's possibly just part of the Chinese culture. We see so many apartment buildings where they make elaborate gardens around them, then the gardens have just fallen into disrepair due to complete lack of maintenance. It's like they're all too happy to build things so it looks dazzling on opening day, and then that's it, what garden?

This is one of the many bronze cauldrons litterred around the Forbidden City that was used to hold water in case of fire. I photographed it as I liked the dragon's holding the handle - very similar to the door-knockers you see all over the city. I didn't realize until someone said later that these cauldrons were once covered in gold. The scraping pattern on them was actually done during the war when foreign(I believe British) soldiers scraped as much of it off as they could when they sacked the City.

The best view in town of the Forbidden City is actually not in the City itself, but next door in Jinshan park. The park costs only a measly 2rmb to get in and is a man-made hill created from the dirt excavated from the moat of the Forbidden City itself. From here you get an amazing 360 degree view of Beijing - and it's here where you realize just how big and sprawling the city actually is.

In the opposite direction of the Forbidden City, you can see the buildings extending out in a completely straight line, all the way to the Bell and Drum towers in the distance. This was right near where we stayed. The Bell Tower is visible in the top middle of this shot, and it's here where on the first day of the Olympics the American tourist was stabbed to death by some crazy Chinese guy who then leapt to his death. Lovely knowing that's the area we were every day! I found it highly interesting how the city was so squared off like this. Once upon a time the Beijing city walls would have been extending out beyond there. They were taken down when the city decided to build a subway station beneath where they stood. A shame really.

Here's a closer shot of the Bell tower where the murder took place the other day. It's a shame to think it happened as it's such a great area, surrounded by Hutongs. At no time did we ever feel anything but completely safe and happy here. This shot was taken from the roof of an Indian restaurant across the road. The curry was pretty average unfortunately :( One thing about everywhere in this area - absolutely every bar/cafe/restaurant has a rooftop sitting area or beer garden. It's just such a good place to stay if you visit Beijing in the warmer months.

And this was taken right on the wall of the Bell Tower of Murder! Ok I shouldn't call it that. Here sitting on teeny tiny seats at a teeny tiny table we had probably our most enjoyable meal in Beijing. The staple of beer and meat skewers. It was here we started talking with one of the locals and got quite plastered! Well I did anyway :) Courtney claims she was fine, pfft!

Jumping back to Jinshan park(next door to Forbidden City), here we see how the view alone is not worth it for the average Chinese visitor. Without this kind of thing it's just overly appealing. We were down the hill behind this setup when one of the Emperor's golden crown hat's randomly came bouncing down the rocks towards us, that was pretty amusing.

And again - the fish tunnel full of sea life just isn't enough, there has to be mermaids or something! I was actually surprised there were no submarines in there either.

By this point I was so bored with what turned out to be a very average aquarium that I started to just outright photograph the Chinese tourists themselves. As usual a tour group was in the tunnel and the blaring of the tour group leader's megaphone destroyed any peacefulness the tunnel might have provided.

This was probably my favourite rooftop area in Beijing. A little bar restaurant in amongst the Hutongs. It had the most cruisy awesome rooftop garden with views overlooking the tiled roofs of the Hutongs(Hutongs if you have forgotten are the very old courtyard style houses of older Beijing). While sitting here you could watch the sun go down with the surreal view of the Bell Tower in the background. Highly enjoyable. The woman who ran the place was super nice and was always playing really cuisy western music that just felt perfect. I miss this place!

Similar to the drum and bell towers of where we stayed is this tower located on the edge of Tian'Amen Square. I forget it's name but as the sun was going down all the bats came out to play. We have lots of bats that fly around the school grounds at dusk. They make funny little noises and seem to specifically check you out as they flap about overhead.

One of the guards that lined the square shortly before the flag lowering ceremony. In Beijing they looked prim and proper with their pressed uniforms and shiny shoes. In Wuxi they look as per above - just subtract the white belts and shiny shoes and add sneakers. There's lots of different types of Policemen in China, we cant really tell which are Police, everyday security guards or soldiers. All soldiers seem to have just one type of uniform which is 100% green camo while the police/guards seem to be all over. In Xi'an we saw a line of police/guards outside a nightclub instead of bouncers.

Took this as the guards marched in to start the ceremony. While I thought this photo looked very cool, the ceremony itself stunk! As we have posted earlier, we expected at least their national anthem and maybe a bit of song and dance! But no! There was nothing! Actually saying all that, I think some of the Chinese tourists expectations are starting to rub off on us.

Beijing's main shopping centre - Wangfujing street. This was litterally a strip of glowies surrounded by mostly nothing. The food streets were around here. All in all it wasnt really very good although it did have what has to be the best foreign language bookstore I have yet found in China. I wish it was in Wuxi instead!

This was the road we stayed on - a little further down. To the left was a small family run restaurant which served local food and was absolutely superb value. It was run by a mother and what had to be her 13 or 14 year old son, who took all the orders, served them then cleaned up afterwards. Many of the Hutong areas looked like this, and you could freely walk down them and get a real glimpse of local Beijing Chinese life. Whilst they are great looking areas with some really old and authentic looking buildings, the living conditions unfortunately are terrible. Most people seem to live in tiny one room places dotted around the alleyways.

This was our view of the Great Wall from the carpark far below. We had 3 hours to explore it...that included actually walking TO it and as you can see, it wasnt just across the way - it was a fair walk to get to it, let alone climb up to what you can see here.

One of the good things about the wall at Simatai was it was highly varied. Almost every section between the towers was different and interesting. Of course this is not the original wall - it has been rebuilt and restored but thankfully very tastefully done. So much so that it didn't look like it had been restored and really didn't detract from what was a really great day.

The wall itself was impressive, but the countryside surrounding it was equally so. In every direction you could see for miles and miles across the mountains. We were very lucky as it was a particularly clear day. On most days you'll not see even a quarter this far due to Beijing's terrible smog. Some of the mountains were extremely jagged - including some that the wall itself was built on. Why someone would want to build it there - or even, why someone would want to ATTACK it there, god only knows. When the Mongol's attacked and successfully took Beijing, how did they get past it? Heh, they simply rode around it.