Beijing, China

Visiting China was quite the experience. Although we have spend almost two years living in Asia, we definitely experienced some culture shock in China. The culture difference between Japan and China were quite obvious: friendly, polite, orderly (Japan) versus off-putting, sometimes rude, and chaotic (China). We experienced a very rude cab driver and tour guide, but the hotel staff were very friendly, and the couple who owned a restaurant down the alley from our hotel and provided two of our three dinners in Beijing was lovely.  I will go so far as to say that Beijing is on a short list of places I don't really have a desire to return, but we had some amazing, once in a lifetime experiences.

Our hotel location, breakfast, ambiance and safety was practically perfect in every way. Here are some photos:

Door to our room.

Our beds.

Extra bed/tea table.

Entering the sleeping quarters.

One side of the courtyard outside our room.

The other side of the courtyard outside our room.

Open-air walkways throughout the hotel.

The hotel provided an extensive spread of Western and Chinese dishes, including yogurt, pastries, fruit, cheeses, meats, cereal, and toast, as well as dumplings, pot stickers, and sauteed vegetables.

 With large breakfasts each morning, we were able to snack a few times during the day in place of lunch.There was a Wu Mart on our way to the subway, so we stocked up on milk, yogurt, cheese, pretzels, crackers, nuts, and cookies. In addition to saving time, these lunches allowed us to experience some unique varieties of Lays chips, including Lobster and Cheese, Fried Prawn, Little Tomato, and Hot and Sour Fish Soup. We did not get a chance to try the Seaweed Pringles or Numb & Spicy Hot Pot Flavor. The Little Tomato flavor claimed to be "Cool and Refreshing"...after one taste, my mouth was tingling from the minty menthol flavoring. It was sick. Toothpaste and potato chips have no business being combined. The other flavors were pretty good.

Our first stop on Day 1 was the Forbidden City. We saw Tiananmen Square from a far, and entered the Forbidden City by making our way through the Tiananmen Gate featuring Mao's mug. It was never ending. After nearly two hours of trudging through the complex and dodging overbearing, paparazzi like Chinese people (they were obsessed with Hazel) we gave up, missing the gardens.

Even though it was built in the 1400s it feels communist.  It sits on a cement lake; roughly 7 million square feet of cement.  It is so massive that the large gates and temples are dwarfed by the vast open areas of concrete.

Tiananmen Gate

That night, we ate dinner at Da Dong Restaurant. We ordered one roasted duck, which was meticulously carved in front of us. Matt noticed that they carve it so that nearly every piece contains meat and skin. Our waitress presented the different condiments and gave us a tutorial on how to best enjoy our duck, including the traditional combination of duck, onion, and plum sauce in a pancake; the duck, garlic sauce, melon, and cucumber on a sesame roll; or the duck skin rolled in sugar. We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and the entire experience.

Clockwise from the top: melon, garlic sauce, sugar, plum sauce, onion, ginger, mystery  condiment, and cucumber.

Head (left) and beak (right). 

One duck produced two of these plates and a few extra parts. 

This God-only-knows-how-fattening dinner was actually the perfect pre-Great Wall climb meal. The next morning, we were up bright and early to get to the Beijing Downtown Backpackers Hostel for our tour to the Great Wall. We rode on a tour bus for about two hours to reach the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall and climbed for about 2.25 hours to reach the Simatai section. We descended the wall via a nicely paved walkway to meet our tour bus waiting below. By hiking this section of the wall, we avoided much of the tourists crowds that clog the wall elsewhere. Not as many people climb this section because it is down right difficult. The first 1/3 of the climb is on sections of wall that have been restored, and the rest is raw. It was literally a climb, sometime over very narrow walkways and crumbling inclines. And Matt did the whole thing with Hazel on his back, which was seriously impressive. Thankfully the weather was perfect and there was a nice breeze. We both agree that climbing the Great Wall made our trip to Beijing worth it.  The Great Wall rivals any other man made structure we've seen in our travels; the mountains take it to another level.

About to begin.

The first stretch of wall.

Left: About to climb to the next watchtower/Right: Closeup of Matt and Hazel climbing to that watchtower.

We spent our last day in Beijing visiting the Temple of Heaven complex, the highlight of which is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.

Dragon embellishment on a building.

School children beside Echo Wall.

View from the Mound Alter. 

 We were only in Beijing for a few days, and only saw three main things, but it felt like just the right amount of time to spend there, given the challenges of traveling in a place like China with a baby. A very memorable trip, indeed.