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.
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.
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