More from Beijing

hello my friends!
hope all is well where ever you are, i can assure you that im fine. as i said before, i can't access this blog site, therefore i cant read what ive written, so i apologise in advance if i repeat myself.

so, beijing. a very intersting city. not as dirty as i expected. less smog. i didnt have any trouble breathing, the air tasted/smelt fine. although this probably has alot to do with the up coming olympics. which china is obsessed with. there are ads and count down boards, and baloons, and merchendise, EVERY WHERE. im already sick of the olympics. SICK OF THEM I SAY!
so, onto my next two days in bejing.

DAY 2:
we had a breifing at the "cultural and education section" of the british embassy. soooooo boring and pointless. is was stuff we had heared A MILLION times before, about respecting chinese culture and customs, not putting yourself in danger, and what services our embassy offers (not THOSE kinds of services you dirty minded people! although if it was about those kinds of services the morning maight have been more interesting.) the only good thing to come out of this session was the free pencil that you dont need to sharpen. dont need to sharpen! how brilliant! you just change over this little nib thing, and wow. anyway, moving on from my childish distractions.

after this boring waste of time (yes, i know its important that i listen to these things, BUT I ALREADY KNOW THEM! and if other gappers didn't they're deaf and deserve to be mugged), we went for luch, which was a much more pleasent experience. we did something rather smart, and got all the vegetarians on the one table (something we did for the rest of our meals in beijing), and got tom the tour guide to order soe extra vegetarian food for us. it was very nice, but sooo filling,a dnthey just keep bringing food, food, and more food! we were never able to finish a meal, we felt so wasteful. the meal was rather uneventful, except that one of the gappers on another table kept asking what each dish was, and it turns out that one of the dishes was toad (not suprising as they had live toads hopping around in a tank to one side of the restraunt). the most amusing thing about this was that it seemed to be the most popular dish, and when i told everyone what it was they (mostly ditzy girls) freaked out and were utterly repulsed. so i, wonderful i, used this oppurtunity to falunt my moral superiority by laughing at all the meat-eating fools who cant stomach their habits.

after lunch we went to tiananmen square which is huge, but not quite as huge as i expected. it was covered in people though. so many people. sooooo many people. they were everywhere. we didn't stay very long, and didn't get to see mao's body, *tear*, but we did get a nice group photo infront of the entrace to the forbidden city. onto the city of forbiddenness. quite amazing. its absolutly flippin' huge (that was for you diana). amazing architechture, as we all know. everything was so colourful and intricate and amazing. and you cant go inside any of the buildings though, and you cant see much of the inside, so it becamse a bit repetative though. still a wonderful experience though. we went to look at the gardens, which were a bit plain though because it's winter, but still lots to see. they have these weird trees that grow with lots of twists and turns. one of them it supported by these big metal frames and straps, and we decided it looks like a distressed mental patient. there was also this huge rock formation one of the emporers orded to be carried from somewhere; its very big and full of little nooks and crannies, and therefor the ideal climing rock. which has obviously been observed by others, because there was a sign saying "a single act of carelessness leads to an eternal loss of beauty". tre prophetic.
the forbidden city was interesting becuase it was our first experience of being a speactacle. people would point and wave and smile and take photos with us, it was great. one leady literally draged her son over to say hello to us and have his photo taken with us. chinese children are so cute, the wear the craziest clothes and hairstyles and are so adorable!one small child was staring at caitlin and i so we said "no hao" to her, and her mother told the child to say hello back, but she was too shy. instead of leaving it as most western mothers would, she refused to leave untill the child said ni hao to us in the sweetest little voice, we felt so loved.

it wasnt only small children who were amused by us. a middle aged man said hello to caitlin in english (she gets alot of attention becuase she has noticably blue eyes and blonde, curly hair), and she responded with ni hao, which he thought was absolutly hilarious, and so pointed, laughed and said something in chiese, it was an absolute riot!

that night we went to see and acrobatics show, which tom the tour guide told us we "certainly wouldnt fall asleep in!". it was absolutly amazing. men doing these amzing flips and balancing acts, women bending themselves in ways you would never think possible with out the breaking of bones. one act was a group of men jumping through quite small wooded hoops. which doesnt sound too hard, but you should see it. at one stage the top hoop was atleast 8-9ft tall, and these men were doing the craziest flips and jumps through, with a simple run up to launch themselves, it was insane!!!! one of the most hilarious part of the evening was when a large group of chinese people walked past us in the lobby, and two of the women at opposite end of the group were having a massive, extremely vocal argument about something, which resulted in one throwing her water bottle at the other, is was so bizzare, but so throughly amusing, i loved it!

after the show we went to a restraunt, which was pretty much the same as all the others, without any amusing toad stories. when we got back to the apartment we decided to go find and internet cafe. we ran into one of the others gappers, tom, who had thought ahead and got the hotel staff to write down the chinese chracters for internet cafe. we tried showing it to a few poeple, but they gave very compicated directions, and we never managed to find an internet cafe. in the end we stopped some man who was running past us and he seemed very excited and asked us to follow him. it may not have been the safest thing to do, but he was rather weedy, and we were in a group large enough to be considered a mob, so we felt safe. anyway, he led us down a dark alleyway, and we started to susupect he was going to take us to his house or something, but alas, good ol' il capitano (he gave us his buisness card and his english name was captain =P) led us to an internet cafe!!!! but the fun didnt stop there. there was a sign written in perfect english that said it cost 4 yuan an hour, but for some reason the women kept trying to charge us 10... so the whole group (about 10 of us) were pointing at the sign saying "si!" the chinese word for four, and she eventually got the message, but it was all very weeeeiird...

after that we went back to the hotel and i found a note in my room from my gap partner carian, who hadn't joined us on our adventure, saying she was two rooms down. so i joined her and had a wonderful evening staying up until 2.30am talking to a whole group of lovely gap people!

now, DAY 3:
go a wake up call at the late hour of 7am, breakfasted, and departed for a wonderful morning of rickshaw races around the hutong area of china. its very old and has traditional houses with the cetral courtyard. we visited one and the owner told us that the rooms were available for rent for students and backpackers (lauren, i do believe we should look into this...), and delighted in telling us that only a few weeks before that a newly married couple had spent their wedding night in one of the rooms. there were three caged brids in the courtyard and there was one big fat black one that looked like pure evil. it kept flufifng its feathers up and staring at it, it had the wierdest eyes, it was hilarious! it looked like it was on speed.
afterwards we went on a tour of the area in rickshaws; its a great way to see the city. we went past beautiful old buildings and bridges, and old men smoking pipes, it was so quaint! the rickshaw drivers were racing one another and at one stage our driver hung onto the back of another rickshaw and stopped peddling! lazy lazy man!

next we visited the summer palace, its huge, and by huge, i mean absolutly freaking massive!!!!! most of it is taken up by this giant lake, and as it is winter in beijing, it was frozen, it looked amazing! the buildings were really similar to those in the forbidden city, and the long corridor was beautiful. we were pressed for time so we didnt get to see all of it, but what we did see was fascinating. with so many people there its hard to imgaine what it would have been like when the dowager empress livid there. next stop was lunch, which, as usual, was uneventful, except i did have my first experience of a squat toilet, which isnt as bad as everyone says it is; it just like going to the toilet when camping except that someone has already dug the hole for you and you DEFINATLY DONT flush toilet paper =D

next was the great wall; an exhilirating experience! it was 600m to the highest point in the area, and i only made it half way! go me and my half-arsed effort. its really hard though, becuase the wall its self is quite steep, and each step is very steep, and very worn in places. it was a nice view, bit bare because its winter, and unclear because of the smog, but still quite nice. coming down the wall requires less effort, but is far more difficult, and requires alot more skill and balance. one of the gappers matt thought it would be amusing to HOP down the great wall - mata, one of the nz gappers had her phone really to film his failure, but alas, he made it =P i found the best way to do it is at a slow jog with a steady rythem.

that night we went back to the internet cafe, and nearly three quarters of the group joined us; the lady at the desk look horrified, eh eh eh eh eh!

nothing more happened - we went and had an early night as we were getting a 4 am wake up call =D to catch our 7:30am flight.

so this is where i leave you my friends, next time will be all about hengxian....

saty safe, dont do drugs, i know i wont =D


love from claire. =D
xo.