A week in Beijing.

I was very lucky as I had a week in Beijing.  I was able to spend time getting to know the place a bit. Having called in on new colleagues with the company I now work for,  I was able to then reconnect with my colleague and line manager from Kg, who now lives in Beijing. We walked around, we got on buses and we had meals together all with Beijing in the background of our conversations.  Beautiful trees, good food,  snippets of life. Yan'nan food, nights buses.

 Then when he was not around I became a tourist again, I popped into the nearby National Art Gallery, which was very good as the style of art, is so different in China.  I also did a day trip to the Great Wall, which was lovely.  I could not walk very far up and down it, but it was nice to walk some of it.  We were lucky to go fairly early (people from a small range of hotels in the area) when it was relatively quiet but by the end it was packed and this is the quiet season.  It was so hot I just sat in the la of the wall and watched people enjoy themselves. Once back down again we all went for a brilliant meal,  tucking into dish after dish after dish.   I went to the Hockney exhibition, which was both expensive and rather concerning as the new gallery it was housed in was so inaccessible,  what with its small stair lined ups and downs almost as if one was in a bunker before emerging into the spaces housing the paintings, then I was disappointed as there were very few of his more recent works which I realise are  the ones I like.  My favourite activities were in the parks.  I tested my colleagues assertion that I would find Tai Chi in all parks by heading north at random and dropping into one park there.  There was so much going on that by the time I came out the other end, I had seen card games, dances,  done Tai Chi, visited an ancient site and seen a food market.  It had been so intense that I had no energy for the monastery housed nearby and instead headed for a hutong where there were lots of lovely individual type shops,  that were slightly reminiscent of Camden lock. On the last day I finally really really really turned tourist, as I was subjected to searches,  before spilling onto Tienanmen Square and into the Forbidden City.   Just watching the many Chinese tourists enjoying the spaces was lovely.  TS is immense and has a forbidding feel, whereas in the Forbidden City,  it is like one box in another box in another box.  I do not know if there are places within that you can see, but I only found spaces you could peer into,  so I plan to revisit the Last Emperor to get a better feel of how this space operated when people lived in it, but the use of pottery and space is very interesting.  Then suddenly one is out and back in modern Beijing.  So I hoped on the tube and for my last hour in town dipped into the summer palace park, which again was massively popular with locals.  And then that was it and with regret said farewell to China's capital.  

Happy in my hutong

The first day in town I spent pottering.   I had a late breakfast and Mr. Lee's, I went over to the very nice offices of EF and spent time with the teachers there, then had a wonderful dish of pork and rice with probiotic drink in the mall before returning to my hotel room and a rest.  I never managed to take a picture of a sign in my room telling me no prostitution, or gambling, and my room was rather cold but apart from that is was compact,  had a very useful kettle and some tea,  and had a simple view of the hutong roofs.

Beautiful Beijing.

The entry to Beijing was after a long slow progress across deserts with intriguing roads and stopping points marked out.  Out of the window I thought the city might emerge glorious but instead a dust rust sun hovered in the haze over a modern building on the outskirts The Norman Foster semi circular airport buildings looks beautiful in parts and provides space for the queues of people waiting to have their hands to be finger printed, their passports to be corrected and the expectant newcomer to spill out and onto a modern train whisking one to the baggage and then onto the trains into Beijing.  The adverts passed declared Beijing to be a green city but few people seemed to be using the train - and the IC sign for the underground pass card was only apparent to newcomers like me searching for it - so my assumption that there would be huge queues was totally incorrect.  Looking out of the window on the golden ginkgo enhanced route into the capital - no one took notice of me, one of the few foreigners - whilst I was fascinated by the tattooed young couple opposite me and the women with their fashionably dyed hair.  No uniform look and even those in uniform did not stand out or dominate the scene.
From the airport train,

Metro advertising.

I squeezed into the metro, again no one took any notice, not even to think this older foreigner might need help with her bag, except that just when this thought was going through my head, a hand whisked the cumbersome object up some troublesome steps,  with a merry "you are welcome"  in response to my thanks.   Then as I peered at the map trying to work out which of the many exits to use to reach my hotel a woman about my age, looked at the map, looked at the hotel address, which was handily written in Chinese and English, consulted her phone and told me in English how to get where I was going  Moments later,  a short walk along an unattractive main road, and right turn past signs to the Hockney exhibition and there in the lea of a high rise block and next to a grey low rise hutong, nestled my wonderful gaudy Chinoiserie hostel, with a cheerful welcome.

Despite having had little sleep I was determined to go out.  The young woman at the desk doubted I could walk to Tianaman Square, so I followed her suggestion and walked along to the park behind the Forbidden City.  Jianshan Park.  Peckish I grabbed the last meal available in the park kiosk - beef and noddles and having no idea what food would cost paid way over the odds for it, which rankled for much of the time once I realised how cheap most things were in the town.    Huffing and puffing I joined the legions of Chinese people also making their way to the top of the park to look down on the city that was Forbidden to the them for so long.   One man expressed surprise

Airport arrivals.

I was travelling alone but was reassured when I explained a friend lived in Beijing.  Beyond that and a few smiles shared amongst travellers following the same route, no one spoke to me, however, I felt very at home watching people pick up the leaves and take pictures

Beijing

Pollution protection

The Forbidden City