The political heart of communist China and formerly its imperial capital then known as Peking, all very exciting for our first visit to Beijing and to proper China as well, Hong Kong doesn’t really count as even after 10 years it’s still more British than Chinese. Our flight from Hong Kong wasn’t as enjoyable as the one up from Perth, as the crew seemed a little inexperienced, except for the pilots luckily!

With some good luck we ran into Kane’s sister Emma in immigration hall, she had taken the flight from Perth via Sydney to Beijing to join us on her around the world ticket. We found her waiting at the end of one of the many huge queues that went up to the immigration counters, but luck was with us when Kane spotted a new counter opening up and we ended up 3rd from the front in the mad scramble to get there, the power of the stroller! The guard was all smiles when he saw Isabella, we have found she is great for getting a good reception at immigration and customs so we always put Isabella’s passport first. We gave the immigration official a big smiley face rating, yes, you get to rate your immigration official, rather dodgy for staff morale.

We had 5 nights in Beijing and actually saw more than we had anticipated as our girl was travelling so well we managed to get in a few extra sights. Not having visited before the recent economic boom and move to Western consumerism, its hard compare what Beijing was like in the past, maybe Mr Howard can fill us in from his trip in the early nineties, we imagine their were a lot less cars. To us Beijing seems to resemble the Asian/American blend that you see elsewhere in Asia. Western style consumer stores and centres, mixed in with traditional markets and chaotic traffic.

We stayed at the Novotel Peace (one taxi driver after finding out we were Australian wanted to know why we were staying at a French hotel, mainly because there are no “Aussie” hotels). Its in an ideal location; about 20 minutes walk to Tiananmen Square and the breakfast buffet is scrumptious , lots of French pastries (yummy!) Lisa was in heaven. We decided to walk there on the Saturday morning, with Lisa carrying Isabella in our Macpac backpack baby carrier, (worth every cent) all I can say is Isabella drew such crowds, it was dangerous for Lisa to stop. As soon as she did, she was surrounded by locals wanting to say hello, touch and photograph Isabella. I dare say she was a bigger attraction than some of the imperial monuments we came to see. As we were soon to learn this was repeated throughout China and beyond…
So what about the sights? I won’t go into to much detail of each of them but these are some of our experiences, in no particular order.
Tiananmen Square, the biggest square in the world, can reportedly hold a million people, but to be honest it didn’t seem that huge unless they count the road space around it, which are huge. As for holding a million people, they would have to be small people!! We even had another Aussie come and ask us if this was the square, he had been going round in circles looking for this big square. The square itself is flanked by one entrance to the Forbidden City called the “Gate of Heavenly Peace The Great Hall of the People, National Museum” and Mao’s Mausoleum which was closed for renovations.

From the square you can enter the Forbidden City, the royal residence that only the royal household, servants and invited officials could enter. For example, if a fire broke out the fire brigade would be put to death if they entered to fight it. Needless to say it was burnt to the ground a few times deliberately and by accident. Nowadays your bags must go through a security check, we were glad they didn’t insist on the backpack with Isabella in and Lisa was able to walk through.
The Forbidden City contains 9999.5 rooms, .5 of a room less than the Heavenly Palace (Mythical) and its 10,000 rooms as you can’t have the same on Earth as in heaven. You’ll see in the gallery there is no grass, only stone paving and this is repeated throughout the city, even where there is a little grass you can’t sit on it. Unfortunately a lot of the buildings in the city were closed for renovation for the Olympics next year, the ones that weren’t you couldn’t enter. The buildings go by some of the following names: “Gate of Supreme Harmony” “Hall of Supreme Harmony” Hall of Imperial Supremacy” “Well of Concubine” and so on. The Imperial Gardens were very interesting and also the location where the concubines used to amuse themselves in ages past. To say the least it’s a massive place, covering 1,000,000 m2 and took us more than a few hours to cover with half of it closed. To be honest while its very interesting, the numerous buildings and room become increasingly repetitive. Beside its not really “forbidden” anymore, it just costs YN60 (A$10) to get in.

Close to the exit is the White Pagoda, which once you climb to the top, gives you some nice views over Beijing and the Forbidden City. It contains a lovely lake where you can hire a paddle boat to get around, with giant lilies that grow on it, for such a big green area on the map, you’d think there would be some green areas to sit on but they do have lots of benches.

So why do most people go to China, to see the Great Wall of coarse. There are numerous sections you can visit, the most popular one is Balding about 50km outside of Beijing or there is another section where you can ride a cable car up to the wall. We went to JuYong about 70km and a little less crowded, On arriving we had a choice of East or West wall, anyway we did it the hard way we choose the steeper more impressive looking one to walk up which was the West side. With Isabella in the backpack with Kane (as it was fathers day I got to carry my girl for the day) and Lisa carrying the camera, we set off, it was actually Lisa’s camera as Kane had forgotten to charge his batteries overnight to his horror.

Once again Isabella drew lots of excitement as we were traveling up and down the wall. While we carried her in the baby carrier, the locals actually carried children up and down in their arms, some with the added experience of wearing high heels at the same time (crazy!!). The section of the wall we choose to climb was rather steep, almost rising continuously to the peak of the hill. Lets say Kane was more than happy to head back down after climbing up, with steps that vary in size from a normal height to ones that are almost level with your knees. It was fun to do and see, but you only need to do it once, as it’s just a wall, though a very impressive wall. Though Kane did mention to Isabella quietly, she will owe him for the ride up the wall as he could barely walk for two days afterwards (poor daddy!).

On our return from the Great wall we visited the Summer Palace. A collection of royal buildings spread across a huge area of land with huge gardens and a lake to meander around. This was the royal retreat, funny enough in summer, to escape the heat of Peking; one of the most interesting buildings is the Great Hall, 700m long that looped around, painted with scenes from Chinese mythology. It has canal-based shops where the royals would visit via boats to shop. On the way out Isabella was mobbed by the paparazzi. Lisa was sitting on the backseat with Isabella while Kane and Emma put our stuff in the boot of the car, next thing we know there’s a massive group of school girls all dressed in red uniforms going mad over the baby, taking photos and screaming!! We kid you not, at the time it was crazy anyone would think they haven’t seen a baby before…looking back on it now its really hard to keep a straight face and we just can’t stop ourselves from laughing.
What else do you do in China but shop, Lisa and Emma went off to the Silk Markets but found it a modern tourist trap, some other people we spoke too had theirs clothes taken away while changing and weren’t returned till they bought something that’s a hard sell. Lisa didn’t experience that but she discovered she wears a medium Chinese size ☺ So she got some new tops to wear, before heading off to the Peking Opera in the evening with Emma. Kane had to go buy a new tripod as his existing one broke after 3 years of faithful service. He got a great deal on a Chinese copy of a Manfrotto tripod for those interested; the shop was cash only place with no receipts. Each evening, not far from the hotel, the food markets opened up, while it was exotic by the standards of home with foods such as snake, and other crawlers etc for sale , luckily for us none of the more extreme Chinese foods were on display.

While we didn’t do or experienced everything in Beijing in was a very enjoyable stay, a little warm and one last bit of news is that the Chinese public toilets are absolutely spotless.