Beijing!

October 22, 2008

I arrived in Beijing yesterday after an uneventful flight from Shanghai. I am staying at the Grand Hyatt Beijing, which is in a fabulous location just down the street from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. It is also in a huge shopping center area with everything from Starbucks to Tiffanys in the plaza (yes, I’ve hit both).

It was about 3:30pm before I was settled in to my room. I got changed and headed out down the street toward Tiananmen. I strolled around the plaza and wandered through the Gate of Heavenly Peace. I was too late to get tickets to the Forbidden City for the day, so I retraced my steps and headed south along the square to the Front Gate. There were hoards of people in Tiananmen, and even finding a spot to get a good picture proved to be difficult.

Speaking of pictures…it is very bizarre, but people keep trying to get their picture taken with me. And yes, it is as funny as it sounds. It started in Shanghai – I asked a guy to take a picture of me, which he kindly did. Then he motioned to his camera, and I nodded thinking that he wanted me to return the favor and take his picture. He actually wanted his friend to take a picture of he and I together. Okay, weird but whatever. Then his friend wanted his picture taken with me! At that point I declined and headed on down the Bund. The story repeated itself a few times with both men and women. Fine, I learned my lesson and looked for Western/non-Chinese resources to assist me with my photo journaling. Then yesterday it got really weird. I plopped myself down on a sidewalk curb to take a look at my guide book an figure out what all of the buildings around Tiananmen Square were. As I’m reading a lady came up and hunched down next to me, and I glanced up and saw her husband was about to take her picture. Thinking I was being nice I moved down a little to get out of the way. Oh no no no… the point of the picture was to get me and the wife together. He even motioned to try to get us to put our arms around each other! I tried ignoring them but it was impossible. Finally I looked up and smiled and the man actually clapped he was so excited that I was smiling for him. Thinking it was over I went back to my book (shaking my head and mumbling to myself how weird this was) but then he sat down next to me so his wife could take our picture. For the record, my first thought is always my safety and that of my belongings. There were other people sitting around my laughing, so I felt very safe, and I had my purse hugged tightly to me and knew it was okay… Really, they just wanted a picture. The funny thing to me is what these people tell their friends back home about who exactly is that blonde girl in the pictures - is there some made up story that doesn’t quite match reality?

Anyway…moving on from Tiananmen I walked around a bit more and then headed back to the hotel. I was getting hungry so I stopped for dinner on the way and then went back to my room to shower and change. At 8:30 I met a fellow traveler Peter in the hotel lobby for a drink. Peter is a Dutchman who recently moved to Washington DC for work and travels internationally quite frequently. He had been to Beijing before and suggested that we head to an area called Houhai. It turned out to be a spectacular choice - lake area circled by bars, restaurants, clubs and shops. Houhai is a perfect place to bar crawl. We tried a few different places and wandered into some shops as we passed them. It was about 2am when we finally called it a night – Peter had to get up for work in the morning and I had a trip to the Great Wall planned. It was an excellent evening and I highly recommend the area to anyone who visits Beijing…in fact I think it would make for a great group trip outing for those of my travel friends that are reading this!

At Houhai next to some of the many bars