My Beijing vacation with my Hubby, Deisy, Jay and Deisy’s mom begins on 13th Sept, where I woke up at 6am in the morning. I couldn’t sleep the night before and am not sure why. I went for karaoke the night before with Nicole, Winston and EC and went home around 12.30am. I went to bed around 1.30am and am unsure at what time I finally fell asleep. But I was up in the morning with panda eyes.
We took the Maglev to Pudong airport. The pre- 9am session of Maglev was only traveling at 350km/hr, about 100km/hr less that the normal top speed. But we still reached airport in 8 minutes.
When we reached Beijing, we checked into our hotel. We booked a 4 star hotel and this hotel lived up to its 4 star standard. Not bad at all. We had a quick lunch at the nearest McDonalds and headed to Forbidden City. Because we have 5 persons in total, we have to take 2 different taxis, me and Hubby in 1 taxi, and Deisy's family in another.
The mess started when our taxi driver took us to East Gate and then we took a buggy to the main entrance, which is the South Gate (午门). Deisy’s first taxi driver did not know how to go to Forbidden city (WTF!!??) and they have to hail another taxi. But the second taxi driver took them to North Entrance despite the instructions given to go to East / South Entrance. We lost each other and since I have already purchased 5 tickets, Deisy had to find a way to get to the South Entrance. They finally made it after me and my Hubby waited for about an hour. It was stressful. The entire perimeter of the Forbidden City is blardy huge, ok!
Picture taken outside 午门 while waiting for Deisy to arrive.
We finally made it into the Forbidden City and hired a guide to walk us through the Palace, but since my mandarin is that bad, I couldn’t understand the story that he narrated. This is the second time I visit the palace so I guess I’m not bothered.
The entire Palace is blardy huge and because it closes at 4.30pm, we had less than 2 hours in here, which is not enough to tour the entire Palace.
The architecture here is really pretty. The first time I visit this Palace, there was a huge maintenance going on to prepare for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. It is really a good time to visit Beijing now because everything is so perfect and clean.
This is one of the places where the Emperor sits to meet with the officials (I think). There are too many such rooms so I could not remember the purpose of each of these rooms.
Pictures of the carvings on the windows and door panes.
Many of the statues here are made of Gold, just like the lion statue in the picture. We can also see that many ornaments had the Gold being scrapped off during the war, because it was too heavy to steal the entire statue, thus, the thieves just scrapped the gold off.
Inside another hall where the Emperor sits for whatever reason...
This is the place where the Eunuch lives. We really pity the Eunuchs... they really lived a miserable lifestyle where they got castrated and then being placed in this small rooms beside the palace. Life sucks for the them, I believe.
At the back of the Palace, there was a garden, where most of the trees are still there as it was a few hundreds years ago. Here are pictures of some trees which are more than 500 years old. Amazing…
We went in from the main South Gate and exited from the North Gate. Though we felt sad that there wasn't enough time to tour the entire Forbidden City, but we have to leave because it was near to closing time.
Our second tour was to visit one of the Hutongs, i.e. the traditional Beijing courtyard / residential area / alley. This is a fun rickshaw tour and we could see how some of the Beijingers live or used to live. We hired 3 rickshaw to bring us around the Hutongs.
We took a peek into one of the homes at the back alley and this is how it looked like.
Some pictures taken at the Hutongs.
All of our rickshaw drivers are jokers and it was really fun traveling with them. They told us stories of how the traditional Beijingers used to lived and how to differentiate the rich from the poor by looking at the size of the doors and the lion statue beside the doors.
Towards the end of the Hutong tour, we visited the Ice House, or as I call it, the Ice Dungeon because this place is underground and it really looked like a dungeon to me.
Forget about the big tv below as that is the modern technology that the people placed inside the ice dungeon. This place was used to store the ice from the lake during winter. Come summer, the ice will be transported to the palace (the Forbidden City or Summer Palace) where the emperor and empress could cool down with the ice. It was cooling inside there and we were told that the ice would not melt. Thus, they could last from winter till summer when placed inside this dungeon.
Some mask decorations outside the ice dungeon.
Another part of the Hutong alleys on our way out.
These are the lion statues placed outsie the doors of each home in the Hutongs that represents the status of the family staying within.
After the Hutong tour, we went to Wangfujing streeet in search for food. We wanted to try real Peking Duck. We went to the famous Quan Jude restaurant where they claim to serve the emperor but it was the worst food that we have had and it was darn expensive. However, the Peking Duck here tasted better than the one from the same restaurant outlet in Shanghai.
Tired and exchausted on day 1, we went back to our hotel and had a very good rest.
Beijing Day 2
Day 2 started at 8am, where we took a tour to the Ming Tombs and Great Wall. We started off with the Ming Tomb tour and after an hour’s journey by car, we arrived at the Chang Ling Tomb (长陵).
This is one of the Ming Dynasty Imperial Tombs, built by Emperor Zhu Di, Yong Le. It is also his tomb. I am not really good with China’s history dated a few thousands years back, thus, I do not really know all the Dynasties and Emperors of China. All I know is that Ming Dynasty was before Qing Dynasty and Qing Dynasty was the last Dynasty in China, with Pu Yi as the Last Emperor, the show that we all knew.
Here are some of the pictures taken at the mausoleum.
The map of the Ming Dynasty Tombs, it is really huge and we are only visiting one small section of it.
The statue of Emperor Yong Le, the emperor who selected this site for his Ming Dynasty tombs.
The view from top of the tomb tower.
After visiting emperor Yong Le's tomb, on our way out, we stopped by the Sacred Way.
Sacred Way is the way leading to the tombs, which also means ‘the road leading to heaven’. It was believed that the Emperor was sent from heaven and when he dies, he will use this road to return to heaven. The path on this road is lined with statues and stone carvings of animals and human figures of Generals and Official Guards.
This is known as the Dragon and Phoenix Gate, the end of the Sacred Way and the beginning of the Changling tomb. Because we are heading back from the tombs, we are walking on the Sacred Way in a backward manner.
Statue of one of the Officials, the General and the horse.
Group photo taken with Deisy's family at the end of the visit.
Don't really know what this is... something of a longevity symbol with carvings of emperor's names on the back of the turtle. I am not too sure. This statue was situtated at the entrance of the Scared Way.
Our next destination is the Mutianyu Great Wall. We chose Mutianyu over Badaling section because we want to avoid seeing heads instead of the Great Wall. Badaling section is full of visitors and more commercialized.
We took the cable car up to a section of the Great Wall and saw the very long section of the wall. We are quite intimidated by the fact that it was such a steep and long walk, and we initially did not plan to go to end of the wall.
But as we stop by each section of the wall, we did not give up and went ahead to the next section. It was a sunny day and given that it was a steep climb, we were all exhausted.
The Great Wall was no joke if you were to walk all the way till the end of the sections. Some parts are really steep and narrow.
Here, I was totally exhausted... really climbing the wall with all four limbs at some steep part of the wall.
Some pics taken inside the stops / sections of the wall.
Finally..... I made it to the top!!! The top means the end of the wall. Actually, the Great Wall is never ending as they were all connected. The end here means the end of the renovated, open to public section of the wall. We could no longer go further as the next section was sealed off and closed to the public.
This is the section where the visitors are prohibited from entering. We can see that it is the 'wild' section of the wall. Trees and plants are grown all over it and it was the uncleared path.
This is not the end of our journey yet. We still need to get back to where we started from... to go all the way back again!!! Gosh... this is so exhausting.
This is the entire path that we went through, right up till the top part where is it not clearly visible in this pic.
After the exhausting walk back to where we started, we took the toboggan / sledge down the pathway instead of the cable car again. It was a fun ride but because Deisy's mum was right in front, she was too slow and we did not get to speed all the way down. Lesson learnt: Go in front of the elderly!! Haha!
This, is the end of our Day 2 trip, which is also the end of our Beijing itinerary.
On day 3, we headed back to Shanghai. All of us are aware of the Beijing Olympics mascot but not everyone knows of the Paralympics Mascot. Here is a pic taken with the Paralympic Mascot. So cute!
Our Beijing trip was a short one. Too short in fact. I can really spend a week in Beijing visiting all the historical places. Since Beijing is so near to Shanghai and Hubby will always be back for meetings, I shall return someday and have another great time in this great city.
Regardless of this being a short trip, it was a really fun and enjoyable trip for all of us.
