Our first stop was the largest Lama temple in Beijing, the Yonghe Temple, which had many visitors who came to worship, despite the early hour (we arrived at about 9:20 am, and the place opened at 9 am). Like other places of worship, people burned many incense, which smells nice, but when there's a LOT (you can see in the pictures that there is a lot of smoke), it gets into your lungs, and made Talia cough a lot, especially since she still had a cold.
Here we saw how the Tibetans practice their Buddhism, and we actually saw a many monks in prayer, which was probably the highlight of that visit. The Temple also boasts a very large Buddha status, which is gorgeous. You aren't supposed to take pictures inside, but our guide saw that the guy who is supposed to make sure no one takes pictures wasn't looking so she told Talia to take a picture quickly. So she did, you know to make sure she wasn't arrested or anything for not breaking the rules. :-)
Our next stop was a tour of a Hutong, a typical Beijing neighborhood. We were first taken to a porcelain factory where they tried to sell us Useless Crap. We mean, they showed us what we learned in ceramics class in third grade. We mean, they didn't make an effort to show us how things were made there. This time, they didn't even have actors, we mean workers, at the different stations, showing us how stuff was made. After our obligatory 2-minute walk around the store, we went back outside.
We were then placed on rickshaw bicycles, which was freezing, but they gave us a blanket to cover our knees, which didn't help, but it was a nice gesture. We felt really bad for the old guy who had to get us from one place to another, and tried to make ourselves lighter for him, but if we knew how to do that, we would probably do it all the time and be millionaires when we shared the secret with the world.
But we digress.
The hutong was kind of interesting, but the truth is that we didn't really see a lot. We learned that most of these houses are a few hundred years old and no one has bathrooms or showers in their homes. Instead, there are public showers in each area where people can go to take a shower and go to the bathroom, which costs money, of course.
One thing we DID learn is that in the older times, you could tell by looking at a house who lived in it, what they did, and what their status was. The best part of the tour was this guide's reaction when she asked us where we're from.
Before we continue, we need to explain this part. Since we are both mixes, that is, the two of us come from 3 different countries that are all disliked by people in various parts of the world, every time we reach a new country/area, we decide "what we are" - if we are French and American or Israeli, or all three. In this case, after weighing the pros and cons of "will they hate American Talia more than Israeli Talia" the decision was made that we would be completely Israeli, which of course lead to funny conversations:
Someone: Where are you from?
Us: Israel
Someone: Wow, you have really good English
So when the guide asked us where we're from, we said Israel. Her reaction? "Wow! You are really smart! Israelis are very very smart people!" Talia thought it was awesome. Rony less. He just dones't like stereotypes.
Anyway, after being driven around on the rickshaws for a while, we were taken into someone's home. At this point, we were told that the rickshaw drivers were going to be leaving us so we should give them a tip if we feel like it. There are two issues here:
1) They drove us for like 10 minutes up and down the same 3 streets
2) We have NO idea what is customary to tip.
We gave them a bit (we just kinda guessed), and went inside to eat, after commenting to each other on the absurdity of the situation.
The lady who lives in the house made us a homemade lunch, which was delicious. It had a lot of typical Chinese foods, the first of which are very similar to ours - meatballs and rice. We tried to compliment the woman several times, but apparently she was unable to see us as our skin apparently clashes with her white walls, which brings up two interesting points:
1) What happened to our hard-earned tans from Thailand, New Caledonia, and Oz?
2) If we weren't there, who was eating the food?
After taking a picture at the house, because our tour guide told us to, we walked back to the center of the Hutong to be picked up. On the way, we saw an ADORABLE dog who was wearing SHOES, who, of course, gravitated towards Rony.
At this point, we were once again told to give the guide from the Hutong a tip if we so deemed necessary, and again we asked what is customary and we were told whatever we think is appropriate, which of course we have no idea, especially since all she did was tell us about the bathrooms and the door to the houses.
Our next visit was a really fun one - we went to the Beijing Zoo to see the pandas! While we are both pretty much against zoos in general, we know that there are only several hundred pandas left in the WORLD, and the zoo is participating in breeding the pandas to hopefully get enough to reintroduce them into the wild.
The pandas are so cute! We wish we could get closer, but they apparently can be very mean if they have to be. Anyway, we saw large pandas and a few smaller pandas, all of which were adorable.
Our next and final stop was to a Chinese medicine doctor. To our surprise, we were once again taken to Olympic Park, which is where this clinic is located. In this case, however, it makes more sense: This location was used during the Olympics for the athletes.
While in general the topic is interesting to Talia (Rony would have preferred to pull out his toe nails), the people there really took it too far. We were offered free foot massages, which we both declined, but after the explanation about pressure points in the feet and hands that are supposed to help with various ailments such as insomnia, Talia gave in and had the foot massage. Which was EXCELLENT.
The masseuse came in with an older scary lady who kept looking at us the entire time like we were going to steal a chair or pee on the floor, and then a very dignified-looking man walked in with a translator. He is apparently the medical dude who can diagnose you and your health problems by looking at your hands.
He looked at Talia's hand and diagnosed that she has poor blood circulation (duh, her hands were cold) and menstrual pain (duh, she's female) and recommended a $120 a bottle treatment that will help her. When she politely said no, he left. For all we know, he was the janitor who was dressed up as a doctor and had to go clean the toilets. :-)
The people who were left in the room tried to convince us to purchase other stuff and we kept saying thank you, but no, we can't carry it with us, and we really felt like we were being attacked. When everyone but the masseuse was gone, and the door was closed, the masseuse looked at us and said, "Tip? Tip?" Which is apparently the only word in English she knows. Super annoying. Luckily, this was the last stop for the tour so we knew it would soon be over. But we have to say that all of these stops were just insane.
When we got back into the car, our guide said we're going back to the hotel, but we're all, the website said we get to take pics outside the olympic stadiums, the famous Birds Nest and Water Cube, and she was all, no, we can't go there, but luckily the driver knew a way to see go in without going in, and we took pics from outside, which is all we wanted. We wouldn't have done it on our own, but we WERE there and it WAS written on the tour explanation, and we ARE Israelis and want to get what we paid for. :-)
Our fourth day was much calmer and it was probably our favorite day in Beijing. A friend of Talia's said that we MUST go to the art district. She said she was only there 2 hours and completely regretted not having more time, and when we looked it up on Trip Advisor, other people said the same. So we decided to go, even though Talia was a bit worried since we had to take a bus and we don't speak Chinese.
Talia knew what subway line to take to what station, and what bus needed to be taken to the art district. Fortunately for us, Rony can read Chinese and was able to decipher what station we were at and which one we needed to get off the bus at - no small feat in a country where 99.99% of the population cannot understand a word you understand, other than, perhaps, the word "tip."
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| Talia and a random chinese girl posing |
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| Superfoetus |
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| OMG! Transformers do exist! |
The 798 Art District is basically the Beijing version of SoHo, full of art galleries. Even though Talia is not an art person by any means, both of us had a marvelous time. We saw some incredible expositions (all free), and one in particular had us both mesmerized. We wanted to buy a picture of his (that's how much we LOVED his exposition), but there weren't any for sale. Fortunately for us, they had a really cool catalogue that has all of his paintings in it, so we have a next-best-thing and we may be able to find something online later on.
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| One of the picture we'd love to buy as poster |
We left when we had no choice, and also it was minus a bazillion degrees outside, so we took the bus back to the subway station and went back to the hotel. We turned in fairly early because (we feel a recurring theme coming on), we had to get up at 4:20 am to catch the subway to the airport to catch our flight to Shanghai. Our next update will be about Shanghai. Talk to you then!
Pics from Beijing (same as yesterday):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=604480&id=906005363&l=288aeb1539
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