Beijing, the whirlwind tour

Make sure to visit the Great Wall, we did it on a very cold weekday and had the place to ourselves. Dine on Peking duck. Shop for silk, cashmere, china and embroideries. Be surprised at the number of high rises and luxury cars next to people carrying huge loads on bicycles.

Quick Tips:

Don't waste time looking for ATM. We found none. Exchange money at the hotel is OK since the same rate is used everywhere.

Best Way To Get Around:

Taxis is definitely the way to go. They are plentiful and inexpensive. My chinese colleague commute to work on taxis. Avoid driving. I almost had heart attacks several times just sitting in the back seat.

The hotel is located in the financial district, 30 minutes from Tiannamen Square, near the Third Ring Road. The hotel is comparable to any 5-star hotel worldwide and all of the staff speak fluent English. The fact that the hotel has a tropical garden complete with a pond, bridge and statue in the middle of overcrowded Beijing sets it apart from the other hotels. The hotel has 7 restaurants ranging from garden buffet to italian, japanese, chinese, etc.. There are several gift shops selling very high quality artwork, silk, cashmere and jade at prices to match. We paid $160 for a club room which entitled us to a bountiful breakfast buffet with western and chinese dishes, and evening drinks and snacks.

Since we were there the week before Christmas, all of the outdoor trees were decorated with lights. A Christmas tree the height of a 2 or 3-story building decorated the lobby. One night, to our surprise and delight, we were entertained by school-age students singing Silent Night and We wish you a Merry Christmas in English.

Our chinese colleagues took us out for lunch to a busy chinese restaurant in the "Silicon Valley" of Beijing. The restaurant had several private rooms. The 6 of us got one to ourselves. We were seated at a round table with a turntable in the middle which makes sharing the dishes very easy.

We asked for the typical americanized Wonton Soup and Egg Roll. They do not have them. However, they have Cashew Chicken, Beef & Broccoli and Fried Rice. Our chinese colleagues ordered the proverbial Peking Duck and several other dishes, banquet style, for us to share. The Peking duck is eaten wrapped in pancakes with scallions and hoisin sauce. We all decided that chinese food in Beijing is much tastier than chinese food in the States. We abandoned the Cashew Chicken, Beef & Broccoli and Fried Rice that we ordered for the more exotic dishes our chinese friends did. We have never seen so much food for 6 people. Our friends ended up taking several boxes of leftovers home.

The Beijing Friendship store is located near the center of town, about a mile from Tiennamen Square. The floor space covers over 9000 sq meters. On the ground floor, there is a small area dedicated to groceries and a Starbucks Coffee with connecting doors to the store.

The store carries merchandises ranging from jade, gold and silver ornaments to ink brushes, slabs, seals, antiques, porcelain, embroidery, rugs and tapestries, various arts and crafts items, traditional clothing and costumes, furs, woolens and silks, electrical appliances, audio and video equipment, cosmetics, cigarettes, wine, confections, tea, traditional Chinese medicines and books.

You can pay for your purchases with credit cards. The most irritating thing is you have to buy from one of the salesclerks who will write up a multi-part order which you will bring you to a designated cash register. In return for your payment, the cashier will give you 2 copies of the original order form and a multi-part receipt to bring back to the salesclerk who will release the merchandise. The fact that each cash register only handles the sales of a very small section of the store means that you have to pay for each of your purchases at a different cash register. I guess China has to keep their people busy!

The store is convenient if you do not have a lot of time to spare since it carries most of what you can think of under one roof but, since the store targets foreigners & tourists, prices are not low.

No trip to China is complete without visiting the Great Wall so we decided to take an afternoon out of our busy schedule to do it. Our colleague who had been on a tour that included the Ming Tombs advised us against it. We enlisted the help of the hotel concierge to arrange a taxi tour for us and were advised to go to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall because of its better facilities.

The Mutinayu Great Wall is located in Huairou, 70 km northeast of Beijing. The trip took over an hour through a combination of depressed and somewhat developed suburbs of Beijing. We were surprised to see billboards advertising single homes with two-car garages very similar to the ones found in the US next to advertising for public baths with hot water showers scribbled on cardboards. The cab dropped us at a parking lot on the bottom of the mountains. We hiked up a very steep walk lined with stalls selling anything from clothes to quilts to souvenirs. It was a very cold and windy December afternoon and we were the only tourists there. Every time we slowed down to catch our breath, the vendors rushed out to drag us to their stalls "I remember you from last time", "What is your name", "I have something very beautiful for your wife", etc.. We bought separate tickets to enter the park and ride the cable cars.

Opened to tourists since 1988, Mutianyu is noted for its precipitousness and steepness. Undulating slopes and overlapping peaks wind up tops of mountains before dipping downhill. Looking into the distance from this section of the Great Wall, one just gets the impression of an enormous dragon soaring over the sky.

Mutianyu has the largest construction scale and best quality among all sections of the Great Wall. To meet the requirement of strategic defence, Mutinanyu, which is 1,400 miles long, stretches in 3 directions with watch towers in commanding positions. Built mainly with granite, the wall is 25 ft high and the top is 15 ft wide.

It is amazing to think that this imposing structure was built since the mid 6th century, a huge project by a workforce of nearly a million men over difficult terrain and without any machinery. It is sad to hear about the tragic stories of all the hardship and cruel treatment that had brought death to many of the laborers.

The cable car took us through dense vegetation down the mountain. My friend made the mistake of answering one of the vendors and before long, we found ourselves walking to our cab ladden with purchases of quilts, clothes, souvenirs, "Certificate" that we climbed the Great Wall bounded in very Chinese-looking red silk book, all at the vendors "best price". We were glad we did it in the name of Free Enterprise !

Beijing is full of taxis and they are so cheap and convenient, I would recommend them over all other kinds of transportation. Our chinese colleague rides taxis to work. We did not use them from the aiport but the few times we use them in town, we were impressed at the honesty of the drivers. Taxis come in 3 kinds:

1- The tiny red ones that charge RMB 1.10 per km. These are most popular with the Chinese.

2- The small red ones that charge RMB 1.60 per km. These are more comfortable for 2 westerners in the back seat.

3- The bigger white ones that charge RMB 2.00 per km. You will only find them in front of hotels. We were told the Chinese will not take these since they are too expensive.

We took a taxi from the Friendship store to our hotel. The 30' ride cost $4. We tried to tip the driver. He refused. We were very impressed at receiving a cash register-type receipt complete with starting & arriving time, length of trip in km, charge per km and total charge.

Make sure you always have your destination address written in Chinese characters since the drivers usually do not speak English and cannot read the western alphabet.