Beijing

Besides “The Wall”, I wasn’t overly impressed with the city of Beijing. I had been there once for work, but saw nothing but the hotel and the office. We gave ourselves two days to experience the city. The city is very spread out and because of the language and the complete ineptitude of taxi drivers, it’s extremely difficult to get around. I could see this being a city that would be easier to do as part of an organized tour with a group.

WIA: Let me preface this section by saying I really dropped the ball on our eating in Beijing. I usually do an excellent job of planning meals out and making reservations when necessary, but I got very little help from our hotel staff and just didn’t do a good job with coordination. I mentioned the duck at QuanJude Roast Duck Restaurant in the previous post. There are a few famous duck restaurants in Beijing, so I’m not sure what really distinguishes one from the other. I ate at Da Dong on a previous visit and it was good, but I don’t know that I could tell you if one restaurant was better than the other. My intention was for Kalp, Ezequiel, Jenn, and I to eat at a Chinese restaurant next to Tiananmen Men Square when we finished our tour of the Forbidden City. Unfortunately, the restaurant had been closed for a year and since it was past 2:30, most other places were not still serving lunch. We ended up at Capital M, which served international food, and had a great view over the square. The food was overpriced, but it wasn’t terrible. I had the Danish Smorrebrod, which was a plate full of the little Danish open faced sandwiches. It was past 3pm. I would have eaten anything.
That evening, we went to HouHai, the lakes district, which is a nighttime bar and restaurant area around a few small lakes. We planned to go to a place I’d looked up that didn’t take reservations, but had received excellent write-ups. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to find and by the time we arrived, they were no longer serving food. We had an interesting few minutes when one guy who we weren’t sure whether or not he worked there told us to go upstairs and tried to convince the staff to serve us. A couple of waitresses then escorted us out. We ended up eating at a place near there, called Zone, which seemed to be the only place still serving food. We had a well balanced meal of microwaved popcorn (which is sweeter than what is served in the US), french fries, shrimp fried rice, some skewers of mystery meat, and a couple other things. It was disappointing. On the last day, it was just Jenn and me. We had a really nice lunch at the Aman Resort at their continental restaurant. I had the duck salad and Jenn had the burger. We were the only ones there, so the service was excellent. It was nice to be in such a quiet and serene atmosphere since it’s very difficult to avoid being around people when in China.

For our last evening, we stayed in the ChaoYang area, which is near where we were staying and had dinner at Karaiya Spice House. This was a Hunan restaurant, so the food was extremely spicy. We ordered the grilled steak and steamed prawns, but got them both prepared mild. I ordered the spicy shredded duck, which I thankfully asked for to be prepared medium. It was so delicious, but also so painful to eat. I couldn’t stop eating it even though it was so unpleasant. I was downing my beer and water constantly and trying to balance the spice by eating some of the non-spicy dishes. Nothing helped.

WID: In the morning, we went to the Temple of Heaven, which is a giant park full of temples that all look alike. Tourists are able to navigate the area using gigantic oversized maps that you can buy at the entrance.
We hit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City next. There was a lot of walking, a lot of steps, and a lot of buildings that looked the exact same. I hope pictures can capture how many damn people were in Tiananmen Square. As someone who really values personal space and doesn’t feel all that comfortable around large groups of people, China really was a challenge. With some of my idiosyncrasies, it's amazing I can get through the day some times.
We took a break in the afternoon before heading to HouHai in the evening. On our last day, we visited the Summer Palace. It is an enormous park that offers a peaceful environment for walking around. It’s impossible to see everything there, which is fine, because it’s really not necessary. Again, like the Forbidden City, everything looks the same. It was foggy out, so the views weren’t as impressive as they could have been.
In the afternoon, we walked through the 798 Arts District, which was kind of faux alternative, but still sort of cool. It’s a bunch of art galleries, cafes, and boutique shops.
We hit the Silk Market on the way back to the hotel, which is best described as a giant garage sale. It’s floor after floor of crap. Vendors literally grab at you to pull you into their stalls. If you are interested in something, you then have to play the game where they offer a price and then you negotiate until you end up paying a third of what they originally offered. In the end, you still feel like you’re getting ripped off. And more than likely, you are.

WIS: Even after visiting Beijing, I can’t tell you what location of town would be best to stay. The city is so spread out, so I don’t think anywhere is ideal. We ended up taking taxis everywhere. There is a decent metro system, but the stop “near” our hotel was like a 20 minute walk. We stayed at the Hotel G, which is a W wannabe. Since in China, there are name brand knockoffs of everything, it seemed fitting to stay at a name brand hotel knockoff. Our room was huge, modern, and relatively nice. The breakfast wasn’t that impressive, which is partly their fault, but we had also just spent a week at the Ritz in Shanghai, which had an incredible breakfast buffet each morning. My main problem with the hotel was with the lack of assistance they were able to provide in navigating the city. With a few exceptions, there was no dedicated concierge and no one on the staff spoke or understood English extremely well. They were effective at responding to our inquiries, but were not proactive in offering up advice, like that there are four entries to the Temple of Heaven, which would have been helpful to know since we were meeting Kalp and Ezequiel at the entrance. Beijing is not an easy city to get around so if I were going back, I would splurge for a hotel with a well trained staff and a helpful concierge. There was a stark contrast between the help we received at the G and the Ritz the previous week. Obviously, we can’t always stay at the Ritz, but I think when going to a city that is more difficult to get around, it is important to choose a hotel with a helpful staff. Not providing proper guidance led to a lot of frustration and discomfort during the trip.

WAM: We drove by the Olympics site and saw the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. They were cool looking. If we had more time, we would have gone back to see it closer up. Also, foot massages are big in China. I abstained, but sat in the room and drank beer while providing commentary as Jenn, Ezequiel, and Kalp received theirs.

WTF: I get that the taxi drivers in Beijing are not the most educated bunch and that they come from other regions and may speak different dialects. Here’s what I don’t understand. At some point, if they’ve worked there long enough, one would think they’d know the major sites, know common things that tourists ask for, and not be total assholes. We had someone from the hotel explain to a driver that we wanted to pick up our friends at a different hotel and then go to HouHai, the Lakes District. Not only did he not know where that area was, but didn’t understand the picking up our friends part. This is after someone from the hotel explained the whole thing in Chinese. He then wanted us to pay him more money because he was frustrated. We had several drivers who refused to drive us anywhere and run the meter. They wanted us to agree to inflated set prices as if we were complete idiots. There are plenty of other examples from our time there. It’s amazing to me that this is after the city hosted the Olympics and supposedly much effort was put into training the taxi drivers.

See more pictures here.