2018, Central Asia

Today we are finally heading to visit the Forbidden City, as on Friday we failed obtaining the tickets to get inside. We wake up not too early and take our time to get the breakfast in our favorite hutong near the hotel: we eat noodles, at 9 AM, as most locals apparently. After a good walk we take the metro to go to Tian’anmen square to meet our dear pal Mao. The queue is huge but we’re ready for it. After passing the control we cross the first door of the City, the Door of Heavenly Peace. Past that, we arrive at the point where all tourists (mostly Chinese, no need to say again) wait on the queue to have their audio guides or guided visit. We decide to try a guided visit, but the visits are for groups of 5 people, and we see no European English speaking tourists around. A guide comes to see us and explains that most non-Chinese tourists take audio guides, but we insist on having a real person, which provides a more interesting experience in general. We finally pay the full price (thanks to a dusty POS machine that seems not having been used for years) and the visit starts right away. The guide is very nice and tells us a lot of interesting stories, but her strong accent makes it difficult to understand everything she says. Anyways, we try to retain at least the idea behind every story, which describes the history of the palace throughout the ages, and the Ming and Qing dynasties. We then continue the visit by ourselves to take pictures of the humongous place. Main drawback is the number of tourists: each day 80.000 tickets are sold (which makes 2.5 million people per month in peak seasons!). As a result, the most interesting parts hardly accessible. Around 4:30 PM the vaste majority of the visitors quit the place, leaving the palace in a surreal silence and emptiness: in those few minutes the Forbidden City reveals its original beauty, made of thoughtfulness and isolation.

We end the day at Tian’anmen square and miss for very few minutes the Flag Lowering Ceremony held every day by the Army. It’s already 6:30 PM and we start getting tired of walking: distances are quite huge, especially since we’re wandering on foot since the morning. However, as we are not very far from the Dashilar neighborhood, one of the most famous commercial areas in Beijing, we decide to take a dinner there while discovering its look, recently overhauled with brand new XIX century inspired architecture.

But, first, we need to find a new trolley, as yesterday’s shopping is already threatening our luggage capacity limit. We stop by a shop whose seller wants to sell us the most expensive bag among the two we are interested in. One costs 99 yuan, the other one 219 yuan. We’re going for the cheaper, as we know we won’t need it after the trip. The guy prefers selling us the more expensive one, and insists on its qualities. That’s where the negotiations start, but after yesterday’s silk market we’re now used to it. 10 minutes later we leave the shop with our 219 yuan bag, but for 150 yuan only, with the feeling that we could have kept on lowering the price should we had wanted to keep on negotiating.

A fake ancient alley hosts a wide choice of local restaurants; we pick the first one before it begins raining heavily. Here enters one of Prisca’s new favorite meal: Beijing flavor Dumplings, which is dumplings stuffed with rice and mushrooms. Too bad it was supposed to be eaten by Simone!

It’s our last night in Beijing and before getting back to the hotel we couldn’t of course, resist hitting our favorite hutong for a last time. Of course, it’s the moment for the last Milk Tea with Pearls, Prisca’s new favorite drink.

Here end our weekend in Beijing. Tomorrow’s the time for another destination: Xinjiang.

Summing up:

• Beijing’s crazy hot and humid in summer, but its treasures really make for the sacrifice of visiting
• European tourists are surprisingly nowhere to be found
• Prices are more than reasonable, even cheap we’d say. Negotiations are often necessary though
• The city has a real vibe: hutong, shops and bars are full of young people and interesting ideas
• Transports work perfectly and hardly overcrowded unless you take them in peak hours
• Beijing is probably less of a culture melting pot than Shanghai, but has a lot more to offer overall. Even more probably these days, since in 2019 Beijing will host the Expo and, in 2022, the Olympic Winter Games.