Beijing Part 1: Overnight Trains, Pushy Tourists and Eating Insects

Sunday May 16

I arrived in Beijing about 2 hours after we expected to, around 11am. First things first, I headed to the ATM to get some cash, and then directly to the train ticket booking hall to make sure I had a sleeper on the way to Shanghai on Wednesday. I queued up and practiced my mandarin verses for “sleeper ticket to shanghai on Wednesday”.  When I got to the counter, I was efficient, only to find that they only had soft sleepers left, which are almost double the price of the hard sleeper. I was just over 100Y short. Shit. Of course, with 30 people on each line, I knew I had to act fast to get more money and then get back in line.  Just as I was the third person in line, the woman running my ticket line took her lunch break.  Just my luck. Then there was the typical “driving lane problem” of which line you think will move faster. My line would reopen about thirty minutes later, but I didn’t know when the other ones would go to lunch. I decided to stick with my line, and wait it out.  To my chagrin, when the line reopened and I got to the front a few minutes later, all the sleeper tickets within one day of when I wanted to go were sold out FML. This time, at least, I would make sure that everything was charged up and ready to go.

By the mid-afternoon I arrived at my hostel, pretty well-located just a bit south of Tiananmen Square in a newly made district designed to look like what Beijing was like hundreds of years ago. While the buildings definitely look the part, the infinite tourists and shops selling t-shirts and other crap adds a bit of a fake feeling to it. After dropping everything off in my room and grabbing some lunch from the hostel, I headed out with my map and guide book to the Temple of Heaven Park. 

This Taoist temple is one of the most famous in China, and certainly in Beijing, and was the main prayer and sacrifice area for more than six dynasties that inhabited Beijing as a capital city. The audio guide was GPS-based, and activated different content based on where you were located, which is a cool idea, but poorly done – it needs some work. It would start talking about stuff when you were at the entrance to an area about an item inside the temple, which you wouldn’t be able to get to for another minute.  This was a bit disorienting as I tried looking around for things that weren’t quite there.

(Entering the Temple of Heaven Park - it is really calm and beautiful... lot's of families and older people hanging out)

(The Danbi bridge - 360m long, 30m wide - middle portion was reserved only for the Emperor)

(The famous Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. Early Ming Dynasty ~1300AD)

(The three levels represent the Heavens, the Earth and the mortal world)

(My (least) favorite group of Chinese tourists today. Note the matching hats, vests and some even had tote bags as well.  Would be a shame to lose one of these guys)

(Heavenly Center Stone - 9 concentric circles of increasing 9, 18, 27 etc stones outwards)

(Saw this a few times - old men practicing caligraphy - in both hands sometimes - on the stone floor)

Some things of note: numbers, and numerology are insanely important in Chinese history and buildings. There was one altar, which had used nine and its multiples in almost every aspect of the building – from how many stairs, to the number of rings, to the number of tiles between each step, to the actual physical measurements of the structure.  It is really crazy how intricate some things are.  Also, the Chinese tourist groups are insane, and brutal. They hover over each little area and take unbelievable amounts of pictures, pushing and shoving, even someone of my size, around the area to get to the front.  I’ve taken the high road on this one, literally, and stand about three people back and just look over all of their heads, as I am usually the tallest person in sight, a common occurrence these days.

As I was walking out of the park, I literally bumped into two friends of mine from HK, Maggi and Vanessa, who have been in Beijing for a few days and we walked around some more before grabbing an early noodle dinner on the way to the Wan Fu Jing night market.  This place is famous for its Beijing snacks like dumplings and BBQ meats, but more so for its completely tourist-based industry of grilled and fried crazy insects and animal parts.  Apparently, Chinese people don’t actually eat any of this, but is just a tourist attraction.  While this seems plausible, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ate this stuff as well.  A few things I tried include grasshopper, cricket, snake insides, and scorpion.  Most of the stuff actually tasted quite good, except for the snake which had a weird texture.  We finished off the night with some crystallized-sugar coated fruit on a stick which was absolutely delicious.

Dinner

(Seahorses - all I could think of was the Little Mermaid for some reason)

(Baby scorpions, they were actually alive at time of cooking - nothing like good fresh snacks!)

(Crabs)

(I think it's duck, but I could be wrong)

(Big boy scorpions)

(Didn't have the balls to try it - ba-da-ching!)

(Centipedes - they were huge!)

(Starfish, I felt bad trying one)

(Fried jiaozi (dumplings) a legit delicious snack)

(Dog meat - my only dealbreaker for my trip)

(Click through to see it with better quality)

(Click through to see it with better quality)

Dessert

(Fried banana ball things)

(Carmelized fruit kebab)

(Amazingly delicious strawberries)