Beijing - Forbidden City

It’s been a week now since we returned from our long vacation to Beijing, Xi’an, and Chengdu. Every day since returning has been so busy, that it has been challenging to find time to write. So now, at midnight, I am finally putting words to paper, as it were.

Because we visited three different cities, and did so much during those days, I have decided to separate these blog posts by day/city. My hope is to get them all out throughout this next week.

To start, we left for Beijing on Friday, September 29^th. After finishing our teaching day, we hurried to Guangzhou, the nearest big city, to catch our flight. Guangzhou is about two hours away by car, and three hours away by bus, so we asked our Chinese coordinator to hire a taxi for us. The car picked us up with ample time to spare, or so we thought. After picking us up, our driver slowly meandered through our city of Zhongshan. Because of the language barrier, we were unable to ask our driver what was taking so long. We hoped that perhaps the driver knew a route to the airport that was faster on surface streets, but that was not the case. About an hour after driving through the city, the driver pulled over in front of a building, picked up his friend, and then proceeded to drive to the airport.

Jordan and I checked in at the airport five minutes before the airline stopped allowing check-in. We then sprinted through the airport to go through security, and then sprinted again to reach our gate. Upon reaching our gate, we discovered that they had changed our gate, and the flight was in its final call for boarding. Jordan and I then do another mad dash through the airport to reach the gate. We board the shuttle to the plane, and took off about five minutes later. It was complete madness! Blessedly, we made it. A few hours later, we landed in Beijing, and made it to our hostel without much of an issue.

The next morning, we started the day by visiting Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Our hostel was only a 10-15 minute walk from Tiananmen Square, so we were within walking distance to nearly everything we wanted to see in Beijing. Upon reaching the square, we were fascinated to see a variety of Soviet-Era style buildings.

The square had some amazing statues and gardens as well. Tiananmen Square is home to several significant sites, one of them being the Forbidden City. We walked through the gates of the Forbidden City and were immediately awestruck by the scene. The architecture there is so ornate. Every building, staircase, and pillar is a masterpiece. This was the first time since being in China when we were so amazed by both the beauty and the tremendous history of the location.

Look closely. There is a man riding a chicken on this statue

I know it may seem wrong to say this, but after our initial amazement with the Forbidden City, we found ourselves growing bored. I hate saying that, but it is true. Although every building is significant and beautiful, each building in the city looks identical. After walking through the whole area, we felt as though we had looked at the same building over and over. It was a strange feeling, going from complete wonder, to mild indifference. Despite this strange dichotomy, we thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Forbidden City, and getting to witness such a fascinating part of history.

After visiting Tiananmen Square and the surrounding area, we decided to visit the Pearl Market. Before I get into this part of the story, allow me to preface this with some information. Evidently, I didn’t research the Pearl Market nearly enough. Prior to coming to China, I had been spending time on ILP’s blog, looking for information about China. I wrote some notes to myself regarding different things I wanted to see in each city. All of the blog posts I had read regarding Beijing featured this Pearl Market. So I was pretty excited to visit. Everything I had read, said that this market is where everyone buys their souvenirs, and most importantly, buys their pearls. Naturally, I was excited. I thought this would be the place where I buy all of my unique handcrafted souvenirs, and where I could buy some pearls. Upon arriving, Jordan and I were deeply disappointed. The whole place was dedicated to knock-offs! Every floor had nothing but knock-off Gucci purses, knock-off Prada, etc. Since I’m not a particularly name brand driven person, I didn’t care to purchase those things, especially since it is bad quality. We continued further up the stairs, interested to see if we could find any pearls, since it was the Pearl Market. Finally, we found a floor dedicated to pearls, so I got pretty excited. I stoped at one of the shops, and started looking at the selection. Having just seen the fake items downstairs, I was skeptical that I would find any authentic pearls. Regardless, I looked. The shop owner tells me over and over, “Real pearl. Not fake.” Upon looking at some of the pearls, I see that some pearlescent paint is covering the glass beads, so I leave. Jordan and I go further up the stairs, where we find the real pearls. These pearls all cost between $5,000-$10,000. Years ago, former First Lady, Laura Bush came to that shop to purchase pearls. Needless to say, we were disappointed with the Pearl Market, and didn’t like anything there. It was a bit of a waste of time for us.

When we finished at the market, we walked to Temple of Heaven, which is a large local park, full of pagodas, and other ornate buildings. The park was beautiful, and so were the buildings, but the people made the park special. While walking about, we found a group of old men flying kites. Mind you, these are not your standard $5 kites; these are deluxe, high-tech kites that fly a thousand feet in the air. After some time of watching the men, they asked us to come join them. The group was so kind, and taught Jordan and I how to fly their fancy kites. It was such a neat experience! Further into the park, we found another group of old men. This group was playing hacky sack, and asked Jordan to join that event too.

At this point, I need to rewind a little bit, to before we went to the Pearl Market. This story is best told in one chunk. After leaving Forbidden City, we started walking to the market. We had our little map that the hostel gave us, and we were fairly confident that we could find the market without issue. As Jordan and I walked along, a little rickshaw driver approached us. This cart consisted of a ratty bicycle, which carried a couple of seats on the back, in something that resembled a child’s wagon. The driver said he would take us to the Pearl Market, but only if we paid him 300 Yuan, which is $45. Bear in mind that the night before, our taxi from the airport to our hostel cost 100 Yuan, and that was an hour-long drive. Naturally, we turned him down. Still the man persisted. We walked away from him on the sidewalk, but he followed us on his bicycle. As he did so, he would sing to us, “Welcome to Beijing! Welcome to Beijing!” He then would pull up next to us and ask, “How much, my friend?” After this continued for a few minutes, we settled on a price of 60 Yuan ($9), which frankly was probably still too high. The man gleefully accepted. Although we hadn’t originally wanted to take a cart, we decided to embrace the adventure of the moment. We had such fun whizzing down the streets of Beijing on our ratty little bicycle cart. As we sat in the bicycle/moped lanes at the stoplights, everyone would gawk at the majestic Americans sitting on the back of a cart. Despite paying 60 Yuan, we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It also turned out that the Pearl Market was much farther away than the map showed. We definitely would have gotten lost trying to find it.

Our driver’s name was Jio, and he was quite the character. Jio’s English was rather basic and simple, but was enough that he was able to crack jokes with us. Before parting ways with Jio, we all took selfies together.

Later that evening, after we had left the Pearl Market, walked to Temple of Heaven, and explored there, Jordan and I started the process of searching out a taxi to take us home. As we were looking, a rickshaw driver approached us. Jordan and I then started the strenuous process of negotiating a price with the man. As we were doing this, a wild rickshaw barreled over the curb, and into the crowd of people near us. As the crowd parted for the crazy man, we saw Jio waving frantically, trying to get our attention. He then leaped out of the cart, and sprinted to us, yelling, “My Friends! My Friends!” Knowing that the other driver had no hope of getting us to drive with him, he left in a heap of sadness. Jio on the other hand, was thrilled to see us again. We couldn’t believe that this driver had found us again. Laughing hysterically, we all boarded the rickshaw, and left. Jio told us that he had gone many places since he dropped us off, and he was so surprised and excited when he saw us again; this time in a completely different place.

We asked Jio to take us back to our hostel. On the way there, he recommended that we drive through Hutong, a “beautiful neighborhood.” Since it was dark, it was pretty difficult to see the beauty of the neighborhood, but regardless, it was a unique area. Jio then stopped in front of a random restaurant inside the neighborhood. He said it was the “best duck restaurant in Beijing.” Him and the owners of the restaurant (who I’m fairly certain are Jio’s friends) tried to get us to go inside and eat together. Feeling a little weird about the situation, we declined. Luckily, Jio was understanding and took us back to the hostel. He apologized vehemently for asking us to go inside when we didn’t want to go in. At the end of our ride, we tipped Jio, and parted ways. Sadly, we never saw Jio again, but we thoroughly enjoyed our random adventure with our Chinese rickshaw driver.

Our first day in Beijing was amazing, and full of beautiful memories. Our next post will be all about our second day in Beijing, when we visited the Great Wall of China.