72 HOURS IN BEIJING, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

After our amazing time in the Philippines, we still had a few spare days before going back home to see our families for Christmas holidays, and of course we wanted to use them to go and see a new country. Searching the web for options, we found some pretty cheap flights from Manila to Beijing and we didn’t think twice: China here we come!

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Actually we should have thought a bit more, we booked our tickets without even considering any visa issues. As a matter of fact, you must request a visa to China in your own citizenship nation, the only other places you can get it are Hong Kong and Macao. We were not stopping over there, luckily we found our solution in the China Visa-Free Transit Program that guarantees short visits from 72 to 144 hours, depending on the city.

We were happy to be now 100% sure to reach our next destination, however we should have been warned that was just the first of a long list of strict immigration, tourist and safety measures that China is adopting.

Our landing time is past midnight, we find ourselves walking in long bare corridors of an already asleep airport. Signs in English are tiny and rare. Flying from Philippines to China, we are the only Europeans. We had read about which lane to look for to get our permit validated, but there are no officers there. After queuing in the standard one and getting to the counter, the officer sends us away without even saying one word.

Few minutes later we are reached by a helpful authorized man who gives us forms to fill in. We are worried about our arrival and departure flight times, there are more than 72 hours between them, but the 72-hour count starts from h 23.59 of the day of arrival, so we get our stamps that say: “permitted to stay until 9 November 2017 in Beijing“. These exemptions are strict and don’t allow to move from one city to another.

We retrieve our backpacks and head out. It is freezing, around 0°C, and the temperature leap of about 30°C from Philippines weather is not pleasant at all.

Outside a few taxi drivers call us, but we are immediately taken in charge by a lady in her uniform who asks our address in Beijing and sends us to the next lane. We don’t understand what happened but we are now seating in a random van, after paying a whopping 180 Chinese Yuan (28 usd) and being given a receipt. Taxi were probably cheaper for a 30min ride. Coming from a country were a 10km ride would cost 2 usd, we are a little bit shocked, but we just really want to get to our hotel now.

The first impression of Beijing at night time is a little bit sad, also due to the weather: it is cold, wet and foggy, it looks like any November day in northern Europe. Large 3-lane avenues are empty, some people ride around by scooter or bicycle.

The driver, who didn’t say a word and clearly didn’t speak English, takes a small alley and drops us in front of a door with a red sign that says “Happy Dragon Hostel”. We get inside and the boy at the reception says “wrong place“! Panic. We realize our place’s name is Happy Dragon Alley Hotel. Luckily it’s just 500m further. Finally at almost 3 am we reach our hotel. That was quite a challenge from the plane to our room!

We reach the Temple of Heaven Park and, after a quick visit to the Pearl Market just outside its long wall (Hongqiao Market), where you can literally find anything you need at cheap prices (be ready to negotiate strongly, as prices they tell may be 10 times higher than normal!), we pay the inexpensive entrance fee (10 yuan for walking around the park only, 30 yuan to enter the buildings) and get in.

The park is enormous, featuring wide long walking boulevards, thousands of cypresses. The main attraction is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a huge structure with a wonderful round umbrella-shaped purple roof; another highlight is the Imperial Vault of Heaven, at the other end of a long pathway connecting it to the Hall of Prayer; the Echo Wall surrounds the Imperial Vault of Heaven: if there are not too many people, your whisper could reach your friends’ ear on the opposite side of the wall.

The park now is packed with tourists, both foreigners and Chinese. It must have been a true oasis of peace back in the days. The place that we liked the most, that maintains a different charm, is the Long Corridor connecting the Hall of Prayer to the west gate: here locals, particularly elder people, get together to play traditional games, cards and music. Along the corridor, in the green areas, some other exercise or play jiànzi, a game of keepy-uppy played with a weighted shuttlecock.

QIANMEN AVENUE

Leaving the Temple of Heaven Park we take the subway and hop off at Qianmen station, just south of Tian’anmen Square. Here is Qianmen Avenue, a traditional commercial street in Beijing that has its name from the majestic gate at the entrance. Trams used to run in this area, and an old carriage is still in use for tourists. Among the silk and tea shops there are a couple of streets full of food stands: we eat some specialties, we can’t miss steamed dumplings.

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We are at walking distance from Tian’anmen, although physically getting inside the square, that is entirely enclosed by railings, will take us almost half an hour. We have to deal with safety checks again, top of the priorities, but unfortunately we can’t say the same for tourist information display. The few signs are confusing, and the guards refuse to speak and give directions, the only thing they do is crossing their arms as an “x“. Cutting across the roads is prohibited by fences as well, so one must go up and down through labyrinth-like subways.

The square is so close but yet so far! The situation becomes quite hilarious, seeing the same people once on this side of a fence, then on the other, then in a subway, everybody is lost… Eventually we find the way to the only access, queue a long line and get our bags carefully inspected (as happens in any subway station). The Chinese citizens line is even longer, as they have to show their ID and get it scanned.

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The feeling is that everybody and everything is controlled, which may be good for safety reasons, but does convey a sense of oppression too. Like in our hotel we couldn’t access Google, nor Facebook, Whatsapp or Wikipedia, and we were in trouble to organize our trip to the Great Wall, since we didn’t want to join a guided tour.

One of the staff helped us to download a VPN mobile app that allows you to bypass the server blocks. He told us that it is forbidden by law to use these VPN’s in China, and whoever is seen by an officer to do so may be fined!

Since then we’ve signed up to Nord VPN, which automatically redirects your device to a private IP address whenever you connect to a new Wi-Fi, and allows to switch your country IP too in order to avoid censorship and blocks. View our promotional offer to sign up to Nord VPN here.

TIAN’ANMEN SQUARE

So we finally are in the historic Tian’anmen Square. We can’t visit the Forbidden City today though, as it’s closed on Monday. The square is huge but maybe for its reputation we thought it to would be even bigger. Also, after living in Vietnam almost 2 years, we can see the similarity with all the main squares you can find in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Hanoi, which are enormous flat squares in front of a government or historical monument, with the unavoidable super high red flag dominating the setting, just like here in Beijing. Nevertheless, the Forbidden City gates on the north side of the square looks massive, imaging Mao Zedong having a speech here to an immense crowd, well it must have been impressive.

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It is always foggy and visibility is limited around the city. We’ve come to realize that this is in fact smog, not fog, the infamous pollution that affect Chinese big cities and impacts views other than health. In the morning, from the top of Pearl Market, we couldn’t see the Temple of Heaven Park entirely, and also we haven’t had a glimpse of Beijing skyline yet, as the visibility has never been more than a few hundreds of meters.

Still, the sun is out there, pale and covered by the smog, but it is not raining. We understood that humidity is given by trucks that every few hours spray water on the streets, trying to bring the pollution down. That’s why nights are so chilly and humid, and roads are wet despite it’s not raining.

Going for dinner at night, we find a nice traditional place where we taste some authentic Chinese food, way different from what you get in western Chinese restaurants. Above all, food is hardly ever fried: we have some goat cheese, rice, and minced meat with mint flavour. Outside it’s freezing again, we can’t resist much with no coats, so we just get back to our room and prepare ourselves for our next day trip to the Great Wall!

We reserved a full post for our trip to the Great Wall of China, read it here!

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On our last day in Beijing, our legs are still sore from yesterday’s hike. We go back to Tian’anmen Square, but when we get there we notice something very unusual: every Chinese flag in front of the Forbidden City Gate is tied up with a U.S.A. flag. Oh no, President Trump must be coming here soon! Still, there are huge crowds going past the first gates.

No one is able to explain to us, the guards won’t speak and there are no signs. We join a queue to a counter that reveals to be selling tickets to enter the hall and terrace of Tian’anmen Tower Gate, overlooking the square. As we ask about the Forbidden City, a laconic “closed” is the answer we get: now it’s clear, the Forbidden City is reserved for Trump’s private visit. What a bad luck! Two days out of three we got here and it wasn’t open.

We abandon our hopes to get inside, and leave for Wangfujing district, one of the most popular shopping streets in town. The weather is clearer today, we almost would need sunglasses to cover from the shy sun rays. We finally can see more of Beijing skyline, some skyscrapers rise here and there but not that many.

Our last activity before going to the airport is getting some Christmas presents and souvenirs for our beloved ones: we head to Silk Street Market (Xiùshuǐ Jiē) where we show off our best bargaining skills we learnt in Vietnam, getting “discounts” of more than 80%! As we were warned, here in Beijing it is sometimes true that a good price to pay is 10 times lower than the one you are told.

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We return to our Happy Dragon Alley Hotel to retrieve our backpacks and leave for the airport, using the subway. Luckily we leave early and our flight is again after midnight, because another time-wasting misadventure is behind the corner. Once at Dongzhimen station, a huge bus/subway hub, we don’t have cash enough to recharge our subway cards to cover the cost of the fare to the airport (25 yuan). However, if we got our cards deposits back, together with our cash, we’d have sufficient money.

Trying to deal with the lady at the counter is pointless, so we wonder a few minutes around the station and finally find an Atm… But it won’t work with Mastercard or Visa circuits! We try with other two, three, four Atm’s in and outside the station, same story (on our first day we got USD cash changed, and the Atm’s in the markets did work for us, but apparently in the market only, had we known!). It’s already 10 pm and all counters are closed. We manage to have an information disclosed from a guy who, counting with his fingers, tells us to look for the 8th letter of the alphabet, as far as we understood we must find gate H! So we start searching around the block carrying our backpacks on us and after half a dozen gates we find the bloody H. Thank goodness there’s the counter to return the subway cards (no where near the airport subway gate)! With our hard earned cash we go back around the block, and finally through the checks to have all our luggage inspected from bottom to top.

The same procedure, if not worse, will take place at the airport before checking in, when we will have our backpacks completely voided from the security to find a forgotten souvenir lighter that, now we learnt it, is not allowed on flights leaving China, not even in the cargo hold.

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A CONTRADICTORY WORLD

Well China, thank you and goodbye, arguably the place were we found the most difficulties considering we only stayed 72 hours. Hopefully staying longer one can overcome the first barriers and enjoy it in a more relaxed way. Sometimes we may demand that everybody in the world must speak English, but truth is we are grateful that not all the places are the same, that’s why we travel, to see different situations. And to be fair, going back to gestures from time to time is a lot of fun!

China has a lot of wonders and history, we saw The Great Wall, probably the most important one. As for Beijing, or at least the glimpse we had of it, it is interesting to see how this huge country’s capital city with the biggest population on earth is managing to resist western influences, or maybe is just not too keen on welcoming tourists, or maybe again it’s just a matter of different culture and habits.

For example the lack of English signs and English speaking employees could be improved, unless they don’t want to be too much conditioned by foreigners. But then why would there be 7Eleven’s, McDonald’s and Burger King fast food restaurants everywhere in Beijing too? Probably the answer to these questions is always the same: money.

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