May 14: Beijing is fun!

We were happy to find that our hotel, Xiyuan Hotel has a nice little restaurant on the ground floor in the lobby which has a great buffet breakfast, and we availed ourselves of it every day there. The concierge has also proven useful, since they usually have at least one English-speaker around (though proficiency is not necessary on their part). After breakfast, we took a cab to the Forbidden City. It turns out that Beijing is HUGE, so although on our rinky-dink map we don't look too far out, we are in fact about a 45-minute/¥30 trip to the central Beijing area. The subway map we have of Beijing says that there's a line by our hotel, which is next to the Beijing Zoo--but it's actually being created as we speak. The map has something like ten lines, seven of which are under construction and none of which is anywhere near us. So we end up taking a cab everywhere. ¥30 may seem like a lot, but the exchange rate is something like six renminbi (¥) to one dollar ($).

The cabby drove us to the northern side of the Forbidden City, which is HUGE. We walked all around it, actually starting out in the circuitous side gardens by accident (thanks for the heads-up, Michelle!), with its cute little tea and souvenir shops. We didn't know we were starting from "the wrong side," but it worked out better, and we were early too, which was even better. We worked through the various Halls, and--north to south--they range from big to Large to HUge to MONstrous to WOW! The main Hall, I hear, is supposed to have received all 100,000 of the Emperor's subjects and courtesans and concubines and all of their subjects and courtesans and concubines (thanks again, Michelle). We ended up going south, then slipping off to the side Treasury Gallery on the east side and working north again, then going back south on the west side of the City. The City has interesting architecture--and interesting construction, literally. Apparently (William tells me) the Forbidden City, proclaimed by UNESCO to be one of the World Heritage Sites, requires much renovation and a bunch of crews work their way around it once every ten years--except that, by the time they're done fixing the whole thing up, it's time to start all over again. (My friend Tony used to paint a building downtown that was like that--so huge that it took them all year to paint the whole thing, and when it was done, they just started all over again.) Naturally, there were tourists everywhere, all the time flooding in, entire groups sporting all red hats, now again yellow, still another in orange or blue. By and large they were Chinese, but we did cross paths with a number of Westerners--Brits, Frenchpeople, Spaniards--in fact, we met a cute Spanish guy in one of the souvenir shops and were happy to speak a more easily and readily producible language!

Then it was on south to Tian'anmen Square, which was HUGE (see a pattern here?) and utterly unimpressive. There were touts touting their wares and people everywhere. All we wanted was water, so we bought some. We are always carrying water around, either in our pack or in our bladders, and it gets heavy. There was an interesting monument in the Square and grandiose reproductions in stone of people (soldiers, Heroes?) doing something important and relevant farther on. Ironically, the most interesting thing to me wasn't meant to be interesting; it was the floodlight structures that dot the Square. These were the biggest eye-sores around: tall as streetlights, they had eight floodlights lining the bottom of the light fixture, eight more bulbous lights around the top, and probably eight more lights inside the main fixture. We haven't seen Tian'anmen at night, but I'm sure it's probably bright as day if these lights are any indication.

Afterwards, we looked for a restaurant the Lonely Planet guide recommended, which doesn't exist. We ended up eating at a seedy place tucked off in a side alley where the local military boys ate lunch too, in a private room. We asked about the restaurant we were looking for, Quanjude Kaoya Restaurant (which we did go to later that night and which did have awesome Peking duck; here's a cute youtube of it), but were persuaded to eat there after a while. Side note: it is annoying as all get out that the mandarin word for 'hotel' and 'restaurant' are often the same--I say often because there are several different words, and many of them have both meanings. Go to a restaurant and ask about a fandian and they point next door. Go to that hotel and ask about a fandian and they point at the restaurant you just came from. The food here in this nameless establishment was okay, although Will's chicken and mushroom had more bones than anything.

Back to the hotel for a nap. We found we had kind of lost a day, meaning that the dinner date we thought we were having the next day was on that day. We took a long 45-minute cab to a very upscale and 'exspendy' (remember it's ¥6 to the dollar) restaurant which was a branch of the one we were looking for earlier in the day: Quanjude Kaoya Restaurant. We met up with Jonathan, a very nice American guy who's friends with Walt. Kinda cute in a geeky way. The food was great here, and we didn't even notice the 70-minute wait for the Peking duck. It was all worth it: cab-ride, time, and money-wise.

We went to bed early that night and were well rested by the time 5 am came around.