China Travels

So my first experience of China is the extreme humidity ... much relief when, having been met by my guide at Beijing airport, we travelled into the city in a carwith aircon!

By this time it was about 3am UK time and only 10am in Beijing and we decided it would be best to have the afternoon tour first and then go to my hotel.

So straight out of the car into the heat and humidity to climb 69 very steep stone steps up the Drum Tower just in time to see the drum ceremony. I was glad to see that my guide Juan was as out of breath as I was and that everyone else was "glowing" too! From the Drum Tower we could see the Bell Tower and the roofs of the hutongs too. The impression is that it's a very poor area and the people are too, although in reality to buy in this area is very expensive. Goodness knows why as there's no sanitation inside the houses, everyone has to walk 10 minutes to public toilets and showers. Being ridden around the hutongs by rickshaw was an experience, every cliche you would imagine seen in every street; washing hanging out to dry (a chinese laundry!!??), people playing mahjong, wrinkled ladies sitting on stools chewing sticks and labourers carrying out every task by hand and loading rubble and wood onto bicycles or trailers being led by bicyles.

I was taken to meet a family living in the hutongs and their house was a palace in comparison; they had a bathroom!

Then on to my hotel with a view of the Forbidden City from my room - amazing!

Shower, sandwich in the hotel cafe (which I fell asleep eating!) before going to bed for a few hours to try and beat the jet lag.

Up and out again at about 8pm for dinner and explored one of the roads near the hotel for a restaurant. Found one that served what the host called 'one pot dish' which I think is what my Rough Guide called a 'mongolian hotpot' - basically a boiling dish of stock which you cook your meat, veggies and noodles in. An experience .... Picture me obviously not speaking any chinese, no idea what to do or how to cook/eat it and the staff speaking about 3 words of english! Anyway got there in the end and felt quite proud when two other Brits came in and made more of a pigs ear of it than I had about half an hour earlier!

Back to the hotel for a cocktail whilst I read up on tomorrow's activities and the Rough Guide's synopsis of Chinese history.