This is the third and last post from our trip to China. We spent the next few days (we’re in Beijing for a total of 8 days) after our visit to the Wall exploring some of the sights of Beijing a little more closely, so this post is a bit of a collection of different things - in no particular order.

As always, the photos can be viewed as one big slideshow, or you can read the full post below.

The Summer Palace

We visited the Summer Palace on Thursday.

This is one of the first buildings you come across as you enter the palace. Its known as the Make-up Building, and was built in 1891 for actors to apply make-up before heading out onto the stage behind. The palace is quite a lot bigger than I was expecting; it’s made up of nearly a dozen fairly large buildings like this one. The palace covers nearly 3 square kilometers on the side of a hill and on the shore of a lake; the lake itself is entirely man-made.

The absurdly distorted view is because this photo is actually made up of 4 photos stitched together.

This is what it actually looks like.

Detail of the roof.

And this is the stage itself. The stage is surrounded by halls and a viewing chamber for Empress Dowager Cixi. The Empress rebuilt the Summer Palace in 1886, approx 150 years after construction was complete on the original site, which was known as the Garden of Clear Ripples. She spent 30 million tales of silver doing so (a tale is approx 35 grams; 30 million equates to almost exactly 1 tonne of silver - at todays price for silver, this would work out at roughly US$350 million), money which was said to be originally purported for rebuilding the Chinese navy.

At the top of the hill is a stone building known as the Sea of Wisdom Temple. The statue of Buddha inside is a cultural relic from the reign of the Emperor Qianlong (Qing dynasty, 1711 – 1799).

The next building down the hill is the Tower of Buddhist Incense. We started at the top and walked down; possibly a mistake given that we were still in a fair bit of pain from the massive hike across the Wall two days earlier. Still. The Tower of Buddhist Incense is in the center of the Temple of Buddhist Virtue (some of these names are just grand), and is the tallest building in the palace. Unfortunately you can’t climb it.

Fantastic weather again - makes for some stunning shots.

The hall surrounding the Temple is incredibly intricate; each beam in the ceiling is painted with a different fresco.

Looking up at the stairs leading to the Tower of Buddhist Incense. The edges of the roof are just visible.

The bottom half of the palace is scattered with these bronze statuettes; various animals, pots, and figures.

The sky was clear enough that the moon was clearly visible; even if it was quite small.

Kunming lake itself is man-made, and was dug out by over 10,000 laborers between 1750 and 1764.

The Temple of Heaven

Friday was our last day in Beijing, and we got up early to make the most of it. We started off at the Temple of Heaven.

The doors in the Temple of Heaven, as at the Forbidden City, have rows of large gold studs - arranged in sets of nine.

The parks and public spaces we visited were always full of people. We were usually out pretty early in the morning, and there were dozens of groups out dancing to music; practicing their tai chia; or playing what I call Shaolin Soccer, with bright, feathery kick-balls. As we were walking up to the Hall of Heaven, a woman from one of these groups threw one of these things to me, and I spend the next ten minutes or so kicking it back and forth with her and a couple of other Chinese men. One of them dug out a pair of ping pong bats and a feathered shuttle and we knocked it back and forth for a while as well.

The central structure at the Temple is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.

The Imperial Vault of Heaven.

These guys are everywhere. As far as I can tell, they’re mainly from the Peoples Armed Police, a para-military branch responsibly for internal security. There are also “normal” police - the Peoples Police - who carry out regular law enforcement duties. The PAP typically guard government buildings and public locations. There are a lot of them in particular in Tiananmen square and around the Forbidden City.

Detail of the south-west corner of one of the main walls.

The Hutongs of Houhai

Friday afternoon, after the Temple of Heaven, we took off to explore some of Beijings hutongs. The hutongs are a real part of Beijings history, dating back to the Zhou dynasty in the early 1000’s. They’re basically a huge (although getting smaller all the time) network of streets and alleys where a large percentage of the population of the city still live.

There is a large lake in the middle of Houhai; the day we were there was spectacular, and there were very few people around. The lake is edged with bars, cafes, and restaurants; I can image it’d be a great spot to spend a Friday or Saturday night.

We spend a good hour or so looking for this place; the guide book we happened to have was totally inaccurate. One of the rickshaw drivers showed us the way; it turned out to be only a few meters away from the lakeshore and we’d walked right past it. The pizza was cheap and excellent.

I took a few black and white shots as we were wandering around the narrow streets and alleys.

As we headed back to the main street (towards the Drum Tower; more on that below), we passed through a couple of stretches of hutongs that has been built up as a set of small shops.

And we found a cafe at the end. The coffee I had in China was excellent, to my lasting surprise, consistently better than any other country I’ve been to (particularly the UK, which has consistently god-awful coffee).

The Drum and Bell towers are north of Jingshan Park and the Forbidden City; on the north-east edge of Houhai. They were used as the time-keeping center for the entire city. We went up the Drum Tower; it contained 25 drums, only one of which was original.

The stairs to the top are pretty steep.

This is the only surviving drum; the other 24 are replicas.

The views south across the city are pretty good on a nice day.

The Food at Wangfujing

Our hotel (the Novotel Peace Beijing, which I highly recommend - there are a few Novotels in Beijing, this one was central, excellent, and very well priced) was smack in the middle of Wangfujing, a large strip of shopping malls around ten minutes walk east of the Forbidden City. The first night we arrived we ate at one of the hotel restaurants, but the other nights we wandered out to find some local fare. There was a network of hutongs behind the main street the hotel was on, and there were a small group of tiny restaurants grouped at one end.

Dinner on the first night (taken with my iPhone).

The hutong behind Wangfujing with the restaurants down the right side.

Eating out.

The main corner at the center of Wangfujing at night.

The small places in the back streets that we tried. Dinner the first night cost us around RMB600; approx NZ$150. This was more than three times what we paid for every dinner and lunch we ate at these places combined.

The street stalls.

The pile of large dumplings are deep-fried banana. They’re very good.

The fruit on a stick is fresh and glazed in caramelized sugar. It’s incredibly good and very messy.

The row of stalls was a good 400m+ long.

The Chinese consider very little to be inedible, as evidenced by the array of sea and wildlife that had been captured, killed, deep fried, and put on sale.

I’ve never tried scorpion, but I’ve heard it’s good. Other interesting delicacies include starfish, sea horses (whole, deep fried, on a stick), chicken hearts, and sea cucumber. Sea cucumber I have tried; I didn’t like it much.

This is good eating; it’s a chicken stir-fry served wrapped in a pancake with sprouts and a sweet soy sauce.

Various other things

This is the map of Jinshanling Great Wall. Helpfully, the map is rotated 90 degrees clockwise and north is actually to the right.

Death Proof - the car trip back from Simatai.

The sun rising on construction scenes in Wangfujing. Construction is a pretty common site in China.

The third ring road of Beijing.

Jingshan park is directly north of the Forbidden City and offers some pretty cool views of the city.

Detail of the roof of one of the pagodas overlooking the city.

Well, that’s it for this trip. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our various adventures; we’re planning on going back to China sometime to explore other parts of the country and possibly head into Tibet and across to Nepal. Looking forward to it already. I’m going to be in the UK over Christmas, and although I can’t imagine it’s going to be a very interesting trip, I’ll get out with the camera as much as I can. The results will be here….

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