Hotel 81 Rosegarden & The Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street, Beijing 2009 - Day 6

Day 6 is purely for leisure and relaxes without any plan. We really need a day to wind out from our exhausted day 1-5. We woke up at 10am today and check out from Dong Si Fu Yuan. We had our breakfast nearby before taking train just up a station to Beixinqiao. It took us sometime before we could locate Hotel 81. It's off road from the Ghost Street. We were so excited when we entered into Hotel 81. It's one of a kind. A traditional Chinese courtyard style hotel! It's pretty expensive at CNY580 though. There is a plasma TV hanging on the wall, the toilet crafting are so beautiful, the atmosphere is peace and relax, top with the wonderful cold weather. It's just a perfect and wonderful place for us to fully relax ourselves. I was imagining myself if there is any chances to see a Kungfu man come flying in at night and fight at the courtyard. Lol I guess too much of watching those movie I. Anyway, check it out the pic! Of course we wouldn't want to waste one whole single day just to relax in the hotel. So at night we went to The Skewed Tobacco Pouch Street. It is one of the most famous hutongs in Beijing. There are many different kinds of bars, tea houses, coffee house and souvenir shops mushroomed on the street. The street is ablaze with lights, giving a homely atmosphere as we stroll around. The only thing which we can't stand is the cold and windy weather. Then we had our dinner nearby that street. I have being told that Beijing is also famous for 'Water Cook Fish'. We jokingly said it as 'Who Cook Fish' as the word 'sui' is rather similar for water and who. The fish is soaking in chili oil with lots of peppercorns and beansprout. It tastes good at first but it turnout very 'geli' after a few times of eating. It's not very spicy but somehow it will turn your tongue numb. We also ordered fried cabbage too. We then went strolling at Beijing famous eating street, Ghost Street aka Guijie. There are red lanterns, traditional courtyards and hundreds of restaurants along the street. We walk back to our Hotel 81 and took some night scene picture. Then, we started to pack our thing into luggage. We are going off to Tianjin and saying goodbye to memorable Beijing tomorrow morning.

Temple of Heaven & Liulichang Culture Street, Beijing 2009 - Day 5

The Temple of Heaven was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 and was described as a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations. We arrived there around 10.30am and were amazed to see a lot of Beijing senior citizen doing several of activities in Temple of Heaven. There is people singing, dancing, gambling, writing, playing traditional game, opera and many more. It was all being done in a group and every activity will have their own little fans. Some are in large group while some are small. It's really unbelievable to see all this senior citizen joining and grouping together to do various activities. I am sure it's a real heaven for the retiree. This activities stretch from North gate and along Long Corridor. We spend more than 5 hours here visiting POI such as Double Ring Pavilion, Imperial Vault of Heaven, Divine Music Administration, Hall of Prayers for Good Harvest and others. One thing to be noted in Beijing are almost all the attraction we visited are super huge and need no less than 5 hours worth of visiting. You really need to have a 'good pair of leg' to walk around Beijing main attraction such as I mention in my previous blog in Beijing. Nuff said and let the picture rolling. Then we visited Liulichang Culture Street aka Liulichang Hutong. Hutong means narrow streets or alleys. Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. Liulichang treasure house of precious calligraphy, paintings and duplicates of Chinese ancient books. Being endowed with so many Chinese ancient treasures, Beijing Liulichang Culture Street really deserves a visit to experience the Hutong culture in Beijing. According to a Chinese saying, no visit to Beijing is complete if you miss seeing the Great Wall or dining on Beijing Roast Duck as a famous and delicious food with very long history. Of course we wouldn't give any changes of missing the best so we had our dinner at Quan Ju De He Ping Men Roast Duck Restaurant. Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant is one of the best restaurants serving Beijing Roast Duck. It has a history of nearly 150 years, and today there are many chain restaurants of it around the city. The dish is prized for the thin, crispy skin, with authentic versions of the dish serving mostly the skin and little meat, sliced in front of the diners by the cook. The meat is often eaten with pancakes, spring onions, and hoisin sauce or sweet noodle sauce. The taste is simply heaven like. We ordered half roast duck, chinese herbal mushroom soup (which ended up as one of the best soup I ever had for my entire life), duck meat fried rice and tofu with egg. We really enjoyed ourselves throughout the dinner. The bill is a lil expensive though at CNY375 but trust me, it worth every single cent for this heavenly 'peking' duck and the superlicious soup and you wouldn’t want to miss it! Enough of talking and let your saliva start drooling. Haha After the scrumptious dinner, we went back to our Dong Si Fu Yuan hotel at around 9.15pm and started to pack our luggage. Tonight will be the last night we are staying here. Tomorrow, we are going to rest and stay at one of the most beautiful and unique courtyard hotel… at least for me.

Summer Palace & Beijing National Stadium, Beijing 2009 - Day 4

It took us about an hour from subway Dongsi to Xiyuan station. It's quite a long journey from our hotel and we need to walk and transit subway line a few times too. Upon arriving at Xiyuan station, we still need to walk about 10 minutes before reaching Summer Palace. Having the largest royal park and being well preserved, it was designated, in 1960 by the State Council, as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China. Containing examples of the ancient arts, it also has graceful landscapes and magnificent constructions. The Summer Palace is the archetypal Chinese garden, and is ranked amongst the most noted and classical gardens of the world. In 1998, it was listed as one of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Summer Palace is really a huge garden and we only managed to cover about 60% or less. After spending more than 6 hours here, there is still so many red LED dot on our electronic map. Seriously, this place is damn huge! We love Suzhou Street really much. The scenery here is kind of peaceful and beautiful with shops along the riverside. By looking at the charm of Suzhou Street in Summer Palace, it gave me a sudden urge to visit Suzhou in future asap. We had our lunch here while simply enjoying Suzhou Street scenery. I have really nothing much to talk about Summer Palace so let’s roll up some picture here and hope you enjoyed it. Here is some picture we took during sunset at Summer Palace. I don't think so that one could finish walking with all the POI covered. Yes, maybe you could do that but it will be like amazing race (quickie) kinda thing. A famous travelling website said that Summer Palace recommended time of visit is about one and a half hour. He must be real kidding! Our next destination is Beijing National Stadium and we took subway to Tiananmen West station. According to my research of direction in Google map, it shows that the national stadium located somewhere near to Tiananmen West station. Daphne was smart enough to ask the station staff before exiting the station. The staffs look at us and reconfirmed the place we wanted to go and she said it's impossible to walk from this station. Then I only I know that Google map gave me the wrong direction! Check the printscreen below! The national stadium is the one I circle up and not the B destination. We quickly make our way there by going back to the train and did some interchange after getting the direction from the staff. Our leg is already suffering and begging for mercy and yet we still managed to crawl there. Bird Nest Stadium structure are truly amazing and Daph straight away knew that this stadium is very hard to construct. She works in a construction firm so she knew particularly well on building structure and material. The design, which originated from the study of Chinese ceramics, implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof; giving the stadium the appearance of a "Bird's nest". The retractable roof was later removed from the design after inspiring the stadium's most recognizable aspect. Due to the stadium's outward appearance, it was nicknamed "The Bird's Nest" Beijing Nationals Aquatics Centre in the other hand is simply marvellous too. The outer wall is based on a structure devised from the natural formation of bubbles in soap foam. Many people believe Water Cube to be the fastest Olympic pool in the world. The proof? The Aquatics Centre saw 25 world records broken during Beijing 2008 Olympics. It is 1 meter deeper than most Olympic pools. Up to a certain limit, beyond which swimmers will lose their sense of vision, deeper pools allow the waves to dissipate down to the bottom, leading to less water disturbance to the swimmers. We spend about one hour and a half here despite our leg not listening to us anymore. We really tortured our poor leg in these 4 days. We went back to our hotel and call it a day.

Badaling Great Wall & Ming Tomb (Dingling), Beijing 2009 - Day 3

We woke up earlier today at 7.30am as we wanted to conquer the Great Wall of China. When we came out from the hotel street, we are happy to see that there is a busy local wet market in the morning. This is a good time to snap a few photo of the locality of Beijing daily life. We spend about 20 minutes here despite we are in hurry to go Badaling Great Wall as it's about 70km from our hotel. We took subway to Jisuitan station and walk to Deshengmen and from there we met a conman that wanted to cut our throat. We knew about tricks of 919 buses to Badaling beforehand and we are extra cautious on this. There will be a lot of 919 buses and all will be going to the direction of Badaling Great Wall. It’s just that the routes are different from each other and some might end up going a big round before reaching destination. The problem is we need to find the exact express direct way to Badaling. Despite knowing the facts that there are many conman trying to squeeze our money out of pocket, we nearly fall into their trap. This 'bus guy' we met was asking for CNY400 for transportation and keeps asking us to take cab. He said that it's hard to wait for 50 people for the bus as it will wait for passengers to fully board the bus before departure. Then he told us only his bus are going to Badaling and if we buy one way ticket, we wouldn’t be able to come back to Deshengmen. We keep on asking him how he calculates the total CNY400 amount as we knew the original bus only cost CNY12 and he keep on pushing my question away. Finally he told us that amount included ticket for cable car and ‘others’ as he knew we are reluctant and our suspicious grew stronger on him. I told him off saying that the cable car only cost RMB60 and he argued back saying that there is no such cheap price. We walk off and let him grumbling behind. Within a few steps ahead; we finally found the real direct 919 bus to Badaling. It cost only CNY12 per person compare to CNY400! The location of this direct 919 bus is a little hidden behind Deshengmen tower. We reached Badaling in an hour and bought entrance ticket which cost CNY 60 per person and sliding car ticket for CNY 60 too. I must admit that Badaling Great Wall was truly a wonder of the medieval world. We took a slide car to the 4th station which we need to climb another 3 station before reaching the top of Badaling Great Wall. For the adventurous, you can climb from station 1 and it's said to take about 6 hours as the steps are steep and there is only one way up and down. Sometime you need to wait for an hour’s for people to descend only you can start ascending as it's very narrow. For people who couldn't climb but wanted to enjoy the top could opt for cable car instead and it will bring you to the 6th station. We wanted half half experience so we took the sliding car. We climb for an hour before reaching the top. Alas we conquered Badaling Great Wall and the feeling is so great! The scenery on top really took our breath away and we really enjoyed the nice cool windy weather. We are lucky to have visited Badaling Great wall and other part of Beijing on October. If we were to go during July which is their summer, I am sure the mood will be completely different. People who are exhausted, hot and tired are easier to get angry. We are tired but the cold weather really helps a lot in controlling our mood. We took a lot of picture here and as usual, let the picture do the talking. We then hired a private car to bring us to Ming Tomb - Dingling. We wanted to go Changling and Dingling but the driver misunderstood us for other place. We ended up in The Ming Dynasty Wax Museum. We quickly spend a few minutes here and buzz off to Dingling as the time is running out. We then arrive at Dingling Tomb at 4.30pm and paid our private car and he goes off. We quickly bought the ticket as the Dingling will close at 6.00pm. Dingling is under ground and about 27 meters deep. It is the mausoleum of Emperor Zhu Yijun, the thirteenth emperor who occupied the throne the longest during the Ming Dynasty, and his two empresses. The main features are the Stone Bridge, Soul Tower, Baocheng and the Underground Place, which was unearthed between 1956 and 1958. The entire palace is made of stone. The Soul Tower is symbolic of the whole of Dingling and it forms the entrance to the underground chambers. When I came back to Malaysia and done some reading, I get to know that the excavation of Dingling tomb was rather disastrous as they didn't have the technology or the resource to preserve the excavated artefacts. Large amount of silk and other textiles were simply piled into a storage room that leaked water and wind. As a result, most of the surviving artefacts today have severely deteriorated, and replicas are instead displayed in the museum. The lesson learned from the Ding Ling excavation has led to a new policy of the China government not to excavate any historical site except for rescue purposes. In particular, no proposal to open an imperial tomb has been approved since Dingling, even when the entrance has been accidentally revealed. We nearly left stranded over 90km from our hotel as we have forgotten the time and thought the last bus depart at 5pm. We are lucky as the last bus for 5pm was actually from Badaling but not at Ming Tomb. When we came out from Ming Tomb, there is only two private cars left on the parking lot. We are so scared at that time and luckily a bus came just in time. We boarded the bus and it took us an hour to the last station. From there, we have to take another bus to Deshengmen which took us another hour. We reached home nearly 9pm and we had maggie noodles and some grilled meat which we bought on our way to hotel as our dinner. We are so exhausted by the time we finished our dinner and bath. Our leg seems not listening to us anymore and they beg for a rest. We use Yoko Yoko as counter pain for our leg. We called it a day and have a good sleep.

Forbidden City, Tiananmen & Wanfujing, Beijing 2009 - Day 2

We woke up at 8am today and had our breakfast in the hotel around 8.30am. Dong Si Fu Yuan breakfast sucks to the max. Nuff said. Our destination for today is Forbidden City, Tiananmen and Wanfujing Street Snack. I planned visiting Tiananmen at night as many forumers said that Tiananmen has a nice night scenery. We then took Beijing subway and reached Tiananmen around 10.30am. What I didn’t know is Tiananmen is actually a huge square that is connected to Forbidden City. I thought they are separated afar by each others. On our way into the Forbidden City, we came across persimmon trees. This is my first time looking at persimmon tree and it bears a lots of persimmon fruits on each of every tree! Ticket for Forbidden City cost CNY60 per person and we managed to get it after 10 minutes queuing. We also rented the automatic tour guide aka electronic map which run on sensor. The red LED shows point of interest (POI) and when you have arrived to that particular POI, the LED light will goes off indicating 'visited' places and automatically begin talking about the history. Deposit CNY100 for each unit and CNY40 for English while CNY10 for Chinese language. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. For almost five centuries, it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government. The construction of Forbidden City took a total of 14 years involving millions of workers and hundred thousand of artisans. It was the order of Hongwu Emperor in Ming dynasty to start this massive construction during 1406. I am amused and fascinated at the structure of the building in Forbidden City. Just imagine that you are walking in an emperor's palace which is the most powerful man in China during the era of 1400-1500 something. During that time if you are a normal person, dun even think to steps into this powerful palace. If you offended the emperor, be prepare to be beheaded and not only you but your whole family! I was so interested in this Forbidden City history that when I came back to Malaysia, I read the whole summary of this piece of history as I wanted to know why there is no more emperor’s generation anymore in China. I found out that the last emperor was Pu Yi with the history "From emperor to normal citizen" which is quite interesting, Nanking massacre, protest at Tiananmen in 1989 and others. I wonder why I have more interest in knowing a part of China history rather than our own Malaysia history. Well, I wouldn't want to bore you any further with words describing Forbidden City and Tiananmen but I will just let the pictures do the talking instead. We spend a total of 8 hours from 10.30am to 6.30pm in Forbidden City and Tiananmen and we had a wonderful sightseeing here. I enjoyed the sunset in Forbidden City too and we ate biscuit and hot dog as our lunch. The time sure past very fast here. The only cons is our leg is killing us with all the walking we done here. We then took the subway to Wangfujing station for street snack attack for our dinner. I must admit that Donghuamen food is better than Wangfujing. We ate tan tan noodles by the street while watching opera show on the second floor of the building. Then we continue walking down the street eating those snacks we ate at Donghuamen. Then we took subway to Dongsi station and walk back to our hotel. Both of us soak our feet into hot water as our leg is so painful. We called it a day around 11pm. Oh, by the way the temperature in Beijing during day time is somewhere between 15C-18C while at night about 10C-13C. A lot people said that during October is the best time to visit china as it's not so cold and hot. For us Malaysian, it can consider pretty cold. Haha