Beijing Afterthoughts 1.

Beijing After Thoughts 1. It's back to work after 8 days in Beijing. In spite of a few less than happy experiences, i really did have a good time in China. Beijing is so far the most crowded place i've visited ever and sadly the magnitude and awe of some of the historical sites are marred by just how many people there are. Mainland Chinese also have a very long way to go in terms of courtesy and consideration. While most of the people who reside in Beijing itself were nice enough and are even nicer than those in Shanghai, it was many out of town mainland visitors who took a little getting used to. Anyway, i hope to post more tonight when i get back from work. For now, take care. :-)

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Beijing Day 8 Part 3.

Beijing Day 8 Part 3. We're at the airport now. About to leave Beijing. Lot's of photos and lot's of experiences. See you all when I get back. :-)

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Beijing Day 8 Part 2.

Beijing Day 8 Part 2. The second place we visited today is the Big Bell Temple. The temple serves as a museum of many ancient bells and if you're there at the right time, they even have a life performance. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the performance. I quite like this place. It's quiet and has lots of trees and flowers. The weather was also nice and cool and added to the experience and made this visit feel like a quiet walk in a small park. The bells were really cool too. Some were really big and all of them looked really rather old of course. :-)

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Beijing Day 8 Part 1.

Beijing Day 8 Part 1. This is our last day in Beijing before we return to Singapore. Our flight is in the late afternoon so we will do some sight seeing today. We got up early this morning and made our way to the Lugou Bridge which has a long history dating back to the days of imperial glory. It's also got some significance in the Sino-Japanese War. I couldn't catch it all so will need to go read up. Next stop a museum. Later. :-)

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Beijing Day 7 Part 3.

Beijing Day 7 Part 3. After lunch, it was another two hours to Tianjin. By the time we reached the city it was about 3pm and the first place we visited was WenHua Street. It's a street that they built in the old qing style. The shops were filled with all kinds of cultural items and tourist souvenirs. After that we visited Snack Street and had dinner before we returned to Beijing. The hotel we're booked to stay the night in is really nice and the best we've had all trip. K. Am off to enjoy my stay in this hotel. :-)

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Beijing Day 7 Part 2.

Beijing Day 7 Part 2. Before we reached Tianjin today, we made a stop in Beijing for lunch. It was in a restaurant that specialized in Shanxi food. The dish you see in the photo above is called Dao Xiao Mian and it's a kind of noodle made by the chef shaving bits of dough into a boiling pot of water. We also had other Shanxi specialities like their salad which was really heavy on vinegar and a egg white sweet corn dish which was sweet and quiet good. I'll tell you about Tianjin later. :-)

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Beijing Day 7 Part 1.

Beijing Day 7 Part 1. We leave the city of Chengde today to visit Tianjin. I like what I saw of Chengde. There is a large river that runs through the city and at night, when all the buildings are lit, it reminds me a little of Shanghai by the banks of the Huangpu River. I took a few shots but they're in my other camera. It is quite cold in Chengde and the temperature varies vastly between the day and night. Yesterday afternoon it was about 19 or so degrees but by nightfall it was 0 degrees. It was still rather cold this morning too and we hustled onto the bus to get out of the cold. The photo above was taken from the bus as we made our way out of the city to Tianjin via Beijing. This is a 7 hour bus-ride so i'm of to get some shut-eye as we had to get up rather early this norm. Later. :-)

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Beijing Day 6.

Beijing Day 6. This morning we woke up really early to start our journey to Chengde. It's about 5 hours from Beijing by bus. The city is much smaller than Beijing and it's also at a higher altitude, hence colder. We visited 3 places in Chengde. The first place we visited was a temple which housed a huge 1000 hands1000 eyes Guanyin. We also visited the Small Potala and the Qing Emperors' Mountain Resort. I really like the resort. It's really huge and has a beautiful lake, a hot spring, large plains etc. It's lovely and I think part of the reason why we liked it so much was cuz the place has far fewer people than the places we visited in Beijing. We've got to be up early in the morning to make our way to tianjin. good night. :-)

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Beijing Day 5 Part 2.

Beijing Day 5 Part 2. Today was a relatively relaxing day. After our visit to the Temple of Heaven we made our way to the Yuexiu Market to have lunch. This was everyone's favourite lunch to date. We had mini-hotpot for lunch. All our meals before this was oily and salty except for this meal. We cooked our own food in little pots of boiling water and my friend and i ate mostly vegetables. Yummy! The rest of the afternoon was filled with shopping before our early dinner and return to our hotel. K. That's it. Good night. :-)

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Beijing Day 5 Part 1.

Beijing Day 5 Part 1. Today we woke up to a beautiful and warm day, the perfect day to visit the Temple of Heaven. When we first entered the park, we saw a lot of locals singing, dancing, playing musical instruments etc everywhere, including along the entire stretch of the Long Corridor. This is quiet a lovely place and I rather liked the history and culture that made this place. The buildings are really gorgeous. Unfortunately, there are just way too many people and that spoiled the experience somewhat. :-(

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Beijing Day 4 Part 2.

Beijing Day 4 Part 2. After lunch we visited the Yonghe Palace Lamasary. I think it's the largest in beijing or maybe even China. The temple is really big and houses many gods. Right at the end there is a large buddha that is carved out of a single tree. Kinda cool.

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Beijing Day 4 Part 2.

Beijing Day 4 Part 2. After our little ride through the Hutong, we made our way to the beihai park and we visited a small mansion which have a lovely rock garden and pond in the middle of the house. Then we took a walk along the bank of beihai and stopped to look at the jiulongbi, the nine dragon screen. The above is a picture of that. Ok later time to get off the bus. :-)

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Beijing Day 4 Part 1.

Beijing Day 4 Part 1. It's day 4 in beijing and the first place we visited in the morning is a medical hall called tong ren tang. This modern building was built on the site of the old imperial doctors building. Next we took a trishaw ride to visit the Hutong and to make dumplings. The ride itself was very pleasant but i don't think the Hutong we saw was particularly authentic, a bit like the feeling of visiting chinatown of Singapore of today. :-(

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Beijing Day 3 Part 3.

Beijing Day 3 Part 3. Hi guys, this is my last post of the day. After we visited the Ming Tombs we went to an orchard nearby to pick apples. Okay if you live in a country with lots of farm land and fruit orchards, you might not find this fun. But we found it fun cuz we live in Singapore and picking fruit off trees isn't something most of us can do easily theses days. When i was a kid, i lived in ulu sembawang and i used to climb trees and pluck fruits and leaves and just shove them in my mouth on the spot. So this trip to the orchard held a tinge of nostalgia for me. Ok, that's it for me, good night. :-)

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Beijing Day 3 Part 2.

Beijing Day 3 Part 2. After the walk at the Great Wall, we went to a factory that made jintailan pottery and decorative pieces. After that we had lunch there before proceeding to the Ming Tombs. The tombs are surrounded by a very tranquil and serene park and the air was very fresh. The tomb that we saw is way underground and there was more staircase climbing today for us. :-) The tomb itself was impressive in its size but they spruced it up a bit and it doesn't look or feel as old as they actually are. K. That's it for now. Later. :-)

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Beijing Day 3 Part 1.

Beijing Day 3 Part 1. We woke up at 630am this morning to go climb the Great Wall today. It's a little drive away from the city. When i got there i was quite blown away with the magnitude of the wall. It's really amazing and quite beauty. The climb up was really taxing but they've installed hand rails so it made the climb easier although it was still really steep and awfully tiring. We didn't make it to the top, just 3 quarters of the way up. The climb down was even worse as some of the steps were quite high and there were a lot of steps. I loved it though. I've always wanted to see the Great Wall and now i have. :-)

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Beijing Day Two Part 2.

Beijing Day Two Part 2. Am back and resting in the hotel room now. Tired but it was a good day. :-) In the afternoon we had lunch in a small restaurant in the Summer Palace. The photo above was taken in the palace after lunch. I really like the Summer Palace. It's very pretty and quite tranquil. In the evening we watched a rather good acrobatic performance and after dinner we went to Wangfujing Street, a major shopping area in Beijing. K. Time for bed. Tomorrow we climb the Great Wall. :-)

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Beijing Day Two Part 1.

Beijing Day Two Part 1. Today we went to Tiananmen and the Forbidden Palace in the morning. There were tons of people there which made sight seeing a little difficult at times. Parts of the palace are still under renovation which is a pity but still it doesn't take away from the grandeur of the palace. Later. :-)

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Beijing Day 1 Part 2

Due to the need to juggle the schedules somewhat, what was suppose to be our free and easy day on the last day became today. But as we were still tired from the flight, not prepared to be explorer today and that our hotel is located in not the best of locations meant that our first day here really isn't v event filled. My friend and i walked the area a bit and went to a mall and had kfc for lunch. I picked a chicken wrap that's probably a china only thing. They put hoisin sauce and cucumbers with the chicken and it was like a combo peking duck plus western chicken wrap thing. Rather tasty. :-) now am watching Face to Fate, a tvb series i put on the zen vision. So over and out for today. :-)

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Beijing Day One Part 1

Beijing Day One. Hi all. This is the first pic i shot in beijing today. That was taken at the airport. It's approximately 11 degrees so not too cold. It's not very sunny though. It's so cool to be in beijing. :-)

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