Wow! Beijing, what an assault on the senses. This is definitely a city of contrasts – on the one hand ultra modern, enormous tower blocks, impossibly wide streets, clean, bustling and on the other, narrow alleys, hutongs with primitive facilities, street food, rickshaws, bicycles and the hustle of street markets and over-enthusiastic shopkeepers. And people, so many people. We are staying in a Hutong district in eastern Beijing, squeezed between the imposing grandeur of the Marriott and the hustle bustle of the bus depot and the railway station. One senses that most of this area of the city has been pulled down to make way for a staggering number of new buildings and multi-lane roads and fly-overs. Today the sky is clear, no smog in evidence. We head for Tian’anmen Square and then explore the a shopping area to the south. In the evening we make for snack street in central Beijing and some street food.
Tian’anmen Square is even larger than we imagined and it is full of people. This is the start of ‘Golden Week’ – a seven-day holiday to celebrate the founding of the People’s Republic and everywhere there are groups of Chinese tourists following flag-carrying tour guides. There are baggage scanners in the entrance to metro stations and on all the access points into Tian’anmen Square – an hangover from the Olympics, perhaps? (There is still lots of Olympic signage, flower displays and everywhere vendors selling Olympic memorabilia.) Tian’anmen Square is vast, and crowded despite it’s size. It’s just incredible to be here and we have to keep pinching ourselves to believe it.
We join the queue for Mao’s Mausoleum not realising it is about to close. Immediately we’re approached by a smartly dressed man who explains that we need to check-in our bags and whisks us half-way across the Square to the baggage check. He then marches us back to the swiftly moving queue. It costs us a £5 tip, but we see Mao’s embalmed body before the mausoleum closes for the day at noon. The whole process taking 10 minutes from start to finish including the bag check-in and despite the queues – there’s no dawdling allowed as the attendants hustle people passed the great man in double file.
As we walk around the square we are continually hassled by rickshaw drivers wanting to take us on a tour of the square for the ridiculously low price of 20p.
We make for the streets south of Tian’anment Square and stumble across some traditional shopping streets packed with yet more people and small shops selling silk, tea, all manner of gadgets, trinkets, jewellery, clothes, shoes etc, etc. Here the shops are low rise and have traditional chinese facias and many have gloriously decorated interiors. Some of the shopkeepers are incredibly persistent shouting ‘Lookie, lookie’ and ‘Come into my shop’. Some literally grab hold of us and drag us in and then won’t let us out again. So keen are they that we make a purchase. Without much effort I get a linen scarf, originally priced at 210 yuan for 50 yuan (£4.50). We browse various shops including one rather upmarket tea shop where we are treated to a tea-making ceremony all in the name of getting us to buy some jasmine tea.
We draw stares wherever we go – particularly Andy either because of his beard or Hattie, who is always somewhere about his person serving as a bag when not posing for photos.
In the evening we take the metro to Wangfujing Dajie in the heart of central Beijing. This is the primary shopping street. Even at night it is heaving with people. Here are all the smart department stores and boutiques, giant shopping malls, the night market and ‘snack street’. If anyone watched Paul Merton’s series on China you will be familiar with ‘snack street’. Here numerous food stalls offer an amazing array of food from noodles, meat and fish on skewers to fried silk worms and crickets. Andy had a skewer of crickets – and survived! What fun!