Day 23 – Beijing Parks

After the last two rather grey days, the sun was out again with slightly lower, more tolerable temperatures and a rare (for Beijing anyway) clear blue sky, not washed out, greyish blue but proper deep blue.

This was the perfect occasion to finally head to the Forbidden City, Jingshan and Beihai Parks.

It was a very nice days and the crowds were not too bad but I found that while walking through the Forbidden City, I did not have much to add to my previous pictures from 2006.
It is great to revisit certain locations as you can just wander and enjoy them without feeling like you need to document this but it’s also strange to hardly take any pictures of a quite cool place.

But rather than taking the same pictures, just with a different camera (was one of my first GRD I trips in 2006), I decided to just taken pictures of things I did not get last time or where I had anything new or different to add.

This continued on through Jingshan Park, where you have the best views of Beijing and I plan to go early in the morning for hopefully a nice sunrise, and then to the Winter Palace or Beihai Park with the nice white Dagoba, where I waited to capture the sunset baking the lake and Dagoba in warm orange light.

Tomorrow, I have a visit to the Great Wall planned and then I am mostly done in Beijing and will move on Saturday evening to Xian, after going to the Temple of Heaven.

No people in today’s picture selection after having too many people pictures yesterday.

Day 19 – Arriving in Beijing

When you get up in the morning and loom out the window you’ll be in for a surprise, not only the landscape has changed but the view just feels more busy, more full of people.
It’s hard to explain but where Mongolia felt like a vast but empty country, China feels like a vast country but full of people. There are cities, roads, industry but also some amazing landscape to be seen.
Everything just feels hustling and bustling, even the smallest towns but maybe this is what you feel after a few days in Monglia.

After arriving in Beijing and getting out of the train station, what struck me, aside from the extreme heat and humidity, was that it kind of felt familiar. Sure, last time I have been here was in 2006, before the Olympics, so a lot has changed since then but the overall feeling was not too different from the time I arrived back with friends from Shanghai.

This time it was easier though, I knew what to expect and how to find my way. Part of it is having been here but part is having travelled a lot so in a way everything feels familiar and finding my way is rarely an issue.
This at least made getting to my hotel very easy, also thanks to the over 10 new subway lines they built since last time I was here.

One thing I did not remember or did forget was that the Great Firewall blocks Facebook, which I can live without, but also Blogger, which I can’t. Guess it’s no different than the UK government blocking access to EZTV and Pirate Bay, equally annoying for me.

This means although internet access is available everywhere here, posting might be more hassle till I can set up a VPN or workaround. This will be done in the next day or so, for now it’s time to head out for a walk.

What always strikes me when walking through Beijing, Hong Kong or Hanoi is that although all are big cities with millions of people, they feel quite calm and relaxed. The rush and hectic felt in European cities is missing here. This becomes the more clear as soon as you happen upon people dancing, singing karaoke or hanging out together in one of the parks.
Everything feels more social and fun than in the ‘western world’ and I like this a lot.