Beijing Pictures

I took over 1000 pictures while on the trip so obviously I won't be posting all of them. I'll just pick and choose a few to give the general sense of most of the things I saw on my trip.

These first set of pictures are of Tienanmen Square. The first image is of outside Mao's Mausoleum, I cannot recall it's official name at the moment.

Here is Whitney posing with a family who asked to take a picture with her. It was nice to not be the person asked to get pictures taken with for once, Whitney drew more attention than I did here.

These are from outside of the Forbidden City. It's namesake comes from the fact that is served as the Chinese imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties and no one could enter without permission from the emperor.

 Me and Whitney (for anyone reading who doesn't know her). If you can't tell the difference I'm the one making the strange face.

There was a hill to climb up behind the city to get a good view of the complex.

A few random shots from around the city.

This is Beijing's CCTV tower, seemed like it was under some construction or maintenance (not pictures) so visitors were not allowed inside.

 This is where we stayed the first few nights. It was nice enough, one room with 4 beds and a public shower/bathroom for the floor. It had everything we needed and we did not spend all that much time there anyhow. I ended up having to switch to two other hostels after this place, one right after the other due to logistics issues, as mentioned before in the previous post.

Here are some shots of the forbidden city. The place was huge and took hours to walk around. This place has the largest collection of ancient Chinese architecture.

This is all four of us, I forget the names of Whitney's friends at the moment or would name them for you. The shorter one is from Canada and the other from Boston, they are both studying in Spain with Whitney for the spring semester but wanted to come visit China.

These are from a place we visited called the Lama temple. This first image is of an item called a prayer wheel. Buddhist prayers written by monks are put inside and people spin the wheels when passing by to send them up to heaven.

There was a lot of incense burning inside and outside of the buildings. People are not permitted to take pictures inside of the building here so all of my pictures are of the outside.

There was a humongous statue in the building pictured below as explained by the plague on the above picture. A single toe of the statue was bigger than my head.

These next few are of a huge antiques market we visited. When I said that the silk market sold everything it doesn't even compare to this place. I did not buy anything here and vendors bargained much harder here than the silk market. I couldn't take anyone down to a decent price on anything.

Here are pictures from the great wall. There are different sections to visit, we got to see the section called Mutanyu. I would have like to climbed to path to get up to the wall, but our tour guide only gave us two hours to go up, explore, and meet at the van so we all took the ski lift (which they gouge everyone 80rmb for) instead.

Here are a few pictures of an original section of the wall. Many parts are rebuilt and repaired but here you are able to find original sections that are falling apart and have trees growing on them. I saw Chinese people cross the no admittance side so I followed the golden rule that guides my life in China, that if a Chinese person is doing something than it is probably okay for me to do so as well.

Aaaand back to repaired wall photos.

At the bottom there was a market place for people to buy different trinkets and souvenirs.I did not particularly want anything so just ignored them.

 Whitney with our tour guide.

This is one of Whitney's friends after getting scammed into paying 75rmb (over 12USD) for that food item she has in her hand. She waited until the food vendor already made the item before asking its price and instead of just walking away paid what the vendor asked for. Something like this should only cost 4-5rmb.

One of the Hutong areas I mentioned in one of the other posts, characterize by narrow alleyways and low roofed buildings. These are the older neighborhoods of Beijing. Though certain areas of Hutongs are made more touristy with bars and restaurants to attract and make more money from visitors.

Another Hutong area but more developed that the one pictured above with more shops and food-stalls. 

It opened up to a lake and park area, all of which are surrounded by Hutongs.

People pay to take these bicycle tours of the Hutongs, I preferred walking so I could peek around more (and because I'm cheap).

This guy trained his bird to hop and up take coins out of people's hands and insert them into the piggy bank. People all around the circle were trying to offer it coins.

I saw these jug drinks everywhere and never figured out what they were. I think some sort of milk drink. I meant to try one but never did.

Of course the food pictures. This first pictured dish was one of the better ones I had while In Beijing. It was chicken in some kind of sauce, surronded by cashews, almonds, and peanuts.

Here is hotpot where you take the food and put it into the boiling oil in front of you to cook. You first pick a soup base the flavor the oil then wait for it to heat and add stuff into it while fishing it out with chopsticks to eat. The Chinese people seemed amused to watch us eat but I think we did well. I can say I have mastered chopstick use, using them for every meal that isn't eaten by hand. Whitney had a bit of trouble but got better with time. Hunger and be a powerful motivator.

That is all the pictures for now. I actually tried to upload a few more pictures than shown here but Blogger is giving my some trouble.


Overall I did enjoy Beijing even though everything was extra crowded for labor day weekend. I think Beijing is a nice place to visit but I would rather live in Shanghai. Shanghai is more developed, modern, has a better metro system, and is a bit more internationally friendly. Also in Beijing you always feel like you are on display to all of the Chinese tourists who come to visit. Having Chinese people staring and asking to take a picture with you is only amusing the first few times and then it becomes more annoying. Most people in Shanghai, except in the really touristy areas, are used to foreigners and just ignore you unless you are doing something to really make yourself stand out. I can do things in Shanghai like sit and eat food outside of a metro station without people gawking at me. Though today I did have a middle aged Chinese man sit behind me while I was on my computer in one of Fudan's lawns this evening using my computer to browse the internet. I guess he was curious to see what I was doing, I told him I didn't speak very good Chinese and he left after a few minutes as I pretended to read NY times articles. I don't like people watching over my shoulder looking at what I am doing in any country.

One difference I noticed between Beijing and Shanghai is that there are a lot more disabled/mutilated people in the former than the latter. In Beijing I saw a man with no hands sitting on the ground asking for money and a man with not feet walking on stumps down the moving metro trains asking for money as well among other things. You do see poorer people asking for money in Shanghai but not people with physical handicaps as much.

Throughout any Chinese city and especially Shanghai you are able to see the huge income disparities between different groups of people. Sitting on the metro you can sit next to a middle class business man and a poor migrant worker at the same time while a fruit vendor is transporting their wares to sell on the street somewhere. You see grubby looking homes and apartment buildings bordering huge modern sky scrapers. Some poor and/or homeless Chinese will wait outside of bars in the French concession areas trying to sell something like flowers or just asking for money holding a cup or a child as more wealthy Chinese and foreigners are inside spending more money on a beer or two than these people make in a week. Shanghai has glitzy fashion malls that sell items priced higher than many upper class malls in the U.S. catering towards China's more wealthy patrons try to shop as a vendor outside the nearby subway stop tries to sell shoes or cheap scarves on the street to make a living. Conditions for Chinese people in general are getting better with China's rising economy but the huge income disparity is seen everywhere.

Well this will end today's update. I will see what I can muster up for the next one.
-Michael