Hypermobility

Blimey, it has almost been a month since I flew to Beijing from Sydney, and I have been terribly tardy in writing about it, haven’t I? Anyhow.

For some odd reason, China had never been particularly high on my list of places to visit. I mean, it was on my list in the same way that EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD EVER is on my list, but I never had that great, panting longing to go there, in the way that I did with, say, Africa, or Eastern Europe (or Latin America, which I have still not visited, woe). Perhaps it was the sheer hugeness of the place that made it difficult to grasp, mentally – I never felt that way about Russia, but while Russia is unimaginably vast, much of that vastness is empty, whereas China is packed frighteningly full of fascinating things that would take a lifetime to see. Which makes me slightly panicky.

I fully expected that visiting China would spark off a fascination, though, and indeed it did. I now have all sorts of trips planned in my head – out west to Xinjiang and Tibet; down the east coast from Shanghai to Hong Kong; through the south to the Burmese border. Who knows when I will find time for these jaunts, but no matter.

As it was, this time I only had a week, and I ended up spending the whole time in Beijing. This wasn’t my intention, but while I’d known that 1 – 3 October was National Day (and I arrived on the 3rd), I wasn’t aware that actually this holiday lasts for an entire week and indeed many businesses were still closed by the 8th – which meant that lots of Chinese people were travelling (Beijing was absolutely heaving), and therefore train and plane tickets were very hard to come by. Meanwhile, I had found myself a very comfortable berth in the Downtown Backpackers, and there was more than enough in Beijing to keep me entertained.

(Incidentally, a couple of sites I found very helpful were SinoHotel.com and ChinaTripAdvisor.com - the former, as the name would suggest, was good for accommodation, and the latter seems to have excellent deals on flights – when I was toying with the idea of flying to Xi’an for a couple of days, ChinaTripAdvisor.com was able to find my plenty of flights around half the price of those that were coming up on Expedia, and they were also very helpful. Recommended.)

I spent much of my time doing the typical touristy things like visiting Tiananmen Square (frighteningly vast and teeming with people) and the Forbidden City; the Lama Temple (gorgeous) and the nearby Confucius Temple; the pearl market (where I spent far too much money) and the Temple of Heaven next door, which was possibly my favourite temple, largely for the park around it which was full of people practicing tai chi, exercising, playing musical instruments (including one chap who ran the gamut of national anthems on his traditional one-stringed violin), playing cards and other games, ballroom dancing and doing karaoke. I also did a day trip to the Great Wall, of course, eschewing the reported crowds at Badaling, and choosing instead to hike from Jinshanling to Simatai, which was spectacular, but nearly broke me – thankfully there was a massage parlour just a few doors down from the hostel, frankly.

But to my surprise – I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that – Beijing is actually a great city for just…hanging around. The street on whch I was staying, Nan Luo Gu Xiang, was in the heart of Dongcheng, one of Beijing’s hutongs – traditional, low-rise neighbourhoods, which are fantastic just for wandering about. Nan Luo Gu Xiang has been rather agressively gentrified of late, owing, I think, to it being a bit of a backpacker-and-foreigner haven (I certainly saw more European faces there than in the rest of Beijing, which is not necessarily a recommendation in itself), which meant it was a rather charming mixture of traditional cheap fast food outlets (and, slightly more upmarket, a fabulous – nameless – restaurant towards the south end of the lane, with wonderful food and Yanjing beer for 60p), very swanky shops, rowdy backpacker bars, and, my personal favourite thing about Beijing, tea house after tea house. My personal favourite was Sandglass Cafe (erm, I have no idea what’s going on in the comments on that review – ignore, I think), and the Zha Zha Cafe was also good (scroll down). I had a brief but intense fantasy of moving to Beijing and writing novels in these coffee shops, but frankly that would hardly be practical.

Beijing’s pleasantly easy to get around – the metro is quick, clean, very cheap, and has pleasant zoetrope-type advertisements in the tunnel, which I found very exciting; unfortunately it’s not always convenient for everywhere (it was about a 30 minute walk from where I was staying – normally fine, except when I was crippled from the Jinshanling to Simatai hike) – apparently the buses are good too, but I didn’t brave them, as taxis are as cheap as chips (or cheaper) and very friendly, especially if you’ve written down where you’re wanting to go rather than try to limp through in embarrassingly awful Mandarin. Only weird issue: ATMs are plentiful, but I found it incredibly difficult to find somewhere that would give me a Visa advance in US dollars. Which would of course not have been an issue if I had actually planned ahead for such things. Ah well, you live and learn, except, no, actually, you don’t, not if you’re me.

Oh! And I saw some acrobats! Which, yes, terribly touristy, but also ace. Shamefully I can’t remember the name of the particular troupe, but it was organised by Downtown Backpackers. Highly recommended.