China in Your Hand

Clearly, we didn't have time to see everything that the Chinese capital had to offer, but we did spend a couple of heavy sight seeing days in Beijing, walking about 30 miles in total!

We visited the utterly magnificent Forbidden City, right in the centre of Beijing, which was the main residence of the Chinese emperors in pre-revoltuion China. As the name suggests, normal people were banned from entering this area of the city. The Emperor lived here alone, aprt from his hareem of concubines and army of advisers and servants, evry one a male, and every one a eunuch. A bit like Thatcher in Number 10, I guess.

Continuing the dynasty theme we also spent a glorious half day at the stunning Temple of Heaven, a series of mini-temples built for the emperor's to pray for good harvests. The buildings were incredibly beautiful in their own right, but set in the beautiful grounds, were quite magical. The grounds are used as a park by local Chinese people who gather there, every morning to dance, sing and practice Tai Chi which inevitably adds to the peaceful atmosphere.

The final stop of the empirical site seeing was the Yonghe Gong (Tibetan Lama Temple) which whilst allowed to survive the religious purges, because of its historical status, is now a practising Buddhist temple again. Along side the throng of tourists, there are practising monks and local people burning incense sticks. Record breaker fans will be delighted to know that not only does the temple have the largest Buddha ever to be carved out of a single piece of wood, it also has a certificate issued by the Guinness Book of Records.

From dynasty to people's republic (but still record breaking) no visit to Beijing is complete without seeing Tiananmen Square, one of the largest squares of its kind in the world. Truly massive in scope, and eery for reasons that the throngs of Chinese touriosts are blissfully unaware of, it has to be seen to be beleieved. Continuing our world tour of ex-communist leaders whose bodies have been kept for all to see, Luke and I were delighted to visit the Mausoleum of the (now deep-frozen) Great Chairman Mao Zedong. This was a strange experience, as the cult of Mao is very much alive in China, and as we joined the throngs of people going into the Mausoleum, many people were laying down flowers and kneeling by his statue. We felt like frauds, albeit of the righteous variety.

Perhaps even stranger, but certainly less creepy, was the number of people who wanted to have their photos taken with us in the square. Many Chinese people were not able to travel until a few years ago and many people now make the trip to Beijing, to see Mao and their and have photo taken with his tomb and portrait. For many people it is a once in a life time trip and, so we've been told it is a big deal to show the folks back home that they've been to the big city and met westerners. You can therefore imagine their excitement when not only did they get to meet two westerners, but one of them was actually twice their height.

To complete our sightseeing in the Chinese capital, we took a metro ride up to the Olympic stadiums. Inevitably it looked pretty much like it did on telly, and the birds nest was just as impressive in real life, and I'm delighted that we got to see it in person (Luke was, however, bitterly disappointed not to see Adrian Chiles). After listening to "One World, One Dream" on a loop for half an hour, the novelty wore off a little and we decided to return to the city centre.

To complete our Beijing experience we went on an over night trip out to the Great Wall of China. The wall is actually three hours out of Beijing so we left at half eight in the morning. Luke, who had been feeling unwell all morning developed some sort of 24 hour fever, on the way to the wall. Whilst I completed the 10 kilometre hike across the Eighth Wonder with the rest of our group, Luke had to be taken back to the hostel to sleep, and woke up in time to get the bus back to Beijing.

The wall was actually better than I could have imagined and more magnificent than it seems in any picture. But, don't tell Luke - I told him it was all a bit overrated!

Then it was back to Beijing station and aboard our first (non First Class!) Chinese sleeper train for a 17 hour trip to Xi'an...

Luke and Louise

(Posted by Louise)

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