Beijing

Fish pond in the Forbidden city.

We stayed a week in Beijing, capital of China.

We went to see the Forbidden city. The number of entries per day is limited. You can buy the tickets on the spot, but we wanted to be sure to have a ticket, so we booked them. The issue is that the web site is only in Chinese and only accept Chinese credit cards. We had to go trough an agency for a small fee. It did save use the queue at the entrance. The palace is impressive and you could spend a whole day walking inside the massive compound.

On another day we went to the National Museum of China. It's close to the Forbidden City on the Tian'anmen square. The gigantic communist style building host artifacts from all over the country and from all its periods, from the prehistoric age to today. It's one of the most impressive museum I have seen and it's completely free !

If you stay in Beijing, don't miss the Hutongs. They are traditional quarter of small brick houses. It's cool to see traditional life surviving in the middle of this huge metropolis. I went for a night of drinking in a Hutong close to the main railway station.

We also toke a day to go see the Great Wall of China. We went to the closest section situated in Badaling. It's the most well restored part, but also the more crowded. We took the shuttle bus that takes you from the city to the foot of the wall. We had two choices before boarding: either queue for hours to have a seat or queue a few minutes and stand up during the hour ride. We decided that it was better to stand up in the air conditioned bus than outside under the sun. On the wall it was actually less crowded than at the bus station and the farther you walk on the wall the less people there is. The view of this wall crawling on the mountains made me really think of a giant dragon.

Great Wall, Badaling section.


Forbidden city seen from the Jingshan park. The egg shaped building in the back is the National Centre for the Performing Arts.

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