It's 6pm in Beijing, very hot and humid outside (thank god for the air conditioning in the hotel!!). We have just come in after a long session of walking and visiting various places, sweaty and tired stiff. Alex has decided to take a nap while I decided to update my blog :-)
We arrived in Beijing on Saturday morning (local time) after 8.5 hours flight. The flight itself was pretty much OK, no surprises and no things to report apart from swollen feet (mine!).
We were met at Arrivals by a tiny Chinese girl from the travel agency who was supposed to pick us up at the airport and arrange the transfer to the hotel and other admin issues regarding the rest of our visit in China (plane tickets for the domestic flights, etc.). As soon as we stepped out of the airport, it became absolutely obvious that the heat and humidity would make our stay less pleasant. It is very hot and very humid, it took me some time to adjust and to be able to breathe normally. That also leads to our getting very tired after spending just a few hours walking ouside.
The Chinese girl, our contact in the new world, did not exactly strike me as being too bright or professional, I must admit. Some kind of misunderstanding occurred that led them to believe that there was a third person that was supposed to share the room with us (most weird!!). Consequently, she had a long telephone discussion with our hotel, while we had to wait in the car after so many hours of flight!! That pissed me off completely but I did my best not to make a fuss over it because I am a bit superstitious and did not want a bleak kick off. Eventually the misunderstanding was cleared and we started our journey to the heart of the City. I was very tired but very curious - I hate to admit that I was very disappointed: huge blocks of flats, huge office buildings, most of them in the worst of tastes. The City was and continues to be covered by a sort of smog which prevents you from seeing things in a distance; there is no sun, the light is dim, the same greyish sort of colour everywhere. Heavily overcast.
The hotel itself was a nice surprise, though, as we are staying at the Marriott and, while maybe not everything is so bright and new as in other places (Warsaw, for example), the Marriott is still a Marriott.
After checking in, we slept for a few hours, had dinner in the hotel and went out for a walk in the Centre. We walked to Tian amen square and had a look around. Maybe it's time here to say a few things about the Chinese... If you want to have a quiet, intimate holiday, China is definitely not the place to go to. They are friendly and nice but so bloody intrusive!! They stare at you, they attempt to sell you various things (from postcards to Chinese flags, kites, etc.), they want to make conversation no matter what. We were frequently asked where we are from, if we like Beijing, how long do we intend to stay, etc. We had good fun last night, though, as we were approached by a young girl, who said she was a student at Beijing University and wanted to practice her English - she told my husband (in quite good English, I have to admit) bluntly that " your wife is so beautiful, much younger than you" and she then asked me " why are you with him"? We had such a laugh and she was so surprised when she was told that we have been married for 10 years....
The Chinese have an appalling taste for clothing... I will not get into too much detail here but they really don't seem to be very crafty in this respect - no sense of colour combination, no sense of ridicule. This is why you will see very vivid colours wrongly combined everywhere and strange combination of casual and business style. The quality of clothing is also very bad.
Surprisingly enough, neither of us seemed to suffer from jetlag so we slept like babies last night :-)
Today we started late (because we overslept) and set out to visit the Forbidden City. And when I think of my high expectations! That proved to be utter, sheer disappointment! The Forbidden City is basically a succession of gates; there are some temples with various exhibitions inside as well but it was all very crowded and, on top of everything, they are now renovating the whole thing so we could really not see much. Most of the buildings are now covered and closed and the crowds make the visit to the rest of the buildings (which are still open) next to impossible. Again, lots of people / students (?) everywhere trying to get you inside these art exhibitions. At some point, I felt like wearing a placard saying "No, we are not interested in any art exhibition, we don't want to buy anything, just f*** off!" (that might have been a bit extreme, on second thoughts, but maybe more efficient in keeping all these people off us).
After the trip to the Forbidden City, we decided that we had enough culture for one day and went to have a long walk in two of the City parks. I liked the parks very much, even though the heat was still on and being near vegetation did not help too much. But the parks are beautiful, well taken care of; they have various temples inside, which are also nice to look at even though they tend to be similar.
We'll be in Beijing for 4 days, I am looking forward to the trip to the Great Wall (which will happen on Wednesday). I wanted to see the Panda bears but we have just heard that they are kept inside the Zoo and we read in the guidebook that all animals in the Zoo (apart from Pandas) are kept in apalling conditions so we will probably give it a miss after all.
Well, I have written a lot today and I am in a hurry to post it as dinner is waiting!!
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