TRAVEL|CHINA

Beijing — My First Day

My trip to China in 2015

After a long stopover in Hong Kong, we finally arrived at our hotel in Beijing, the Superhouse International, otherwise known as Qiangqiang Hotel — I think the name had been changed so tourists could pronounce it.

Beijing

It was after 3 am when we opened the door to our room and were delighted to find it had not only had two huge beds but a bath as well. Erilyn set her phone alarm for 7 am and promptly fell asleep. I showered and followed her example. I struggle to go to bed dirty, especially after travelling all day.

We were both jerked awake by her alarm, so jumped up and started to prepare for the day. It was still dark but we didn’t want to be late. After showering, Erilyn looked at her watch to discover it wasn’t even 6 yet. Her phone hadn’t adjusted to the new time zone, so we had in fact less than 2 hours sleep so we flopped onto our beds for a bit more shuteye.

I had arranged to meet my son Rowan at 8 am for breakfast but had no way to contact him or him to contact me. We ate a buffet breakfast of room-temperature food — the hot food wasn’t hot and the cold food wasn’t cold, but we ate it anyway. It was a Western-style breakfast, but no one had told the chef that fruit and milk had to be served cold and bacon and eggs, hot!

I waited in the lobby for Rowan and asked the reception staff to help me access the wifi without success. When our guide Judy arrived, she offered to email him, but it bounced straight back. I must have had his email address incorrect. We don’t normally email just chat on Messenger.

Tiananmen Square and Mao’s Mausoleum

It was 9.30 before we finally set off. I don’t know if it was because I was dog-tired but I was unimpressed. On and on to the Forbidden City. It was equally unimpressive. We weren’t allowed into any of the buildings. We kept walking — seeing more and more buildings looking pretty much the same as the first.

The most exciting thing was Chinese people clamouring to take photos of Erilyn.

Lunch in the hutongs

Our driver picked us up at the exit to the Forbidden City and drove us to the hutongs — the old alleyways of Beijing. We walked along one, being hooted by cars, trucks and motorbikes — they are not pedestrian-only streets — we had to jump out of their way. We were to have lunch with a real hutong family which sounded exciting, but when we arrived, we were greeted by a huge group of tourists who were just finishing lunch in the courtyard, so we were ushered to the “dining room” where we sat on small round stools and ate a selection of “delicacies”.

The pork balls were barely warm so we asked for them to be reheated. The dim sims were hot and accompanied by zucchini salad, grated potato noodles, and some yummy fried pastry-like stuff of which I ate almost all. I also drank a 600ml Nanjing beer. I didn’t think I’d be able to drink such a large bottle, but drank every drop. I really liked it. I’m not your typical Aussie beer drinker.

Then a rickshaw ride. We tipped the driver 20 Renminbi (we had no idea how much that was in Aussie dollars!) but he earned it. Neither of us is a lightweight. We walked back to our drop off point without getting lost and met Judy and very soon after, our driver.

Beihai Park

This was truly beautiful and was more like I’d imagined China to be. We walked along a long corridor beside an artificial lake surrounded by willow-trees. I love willows. I probably developed this love from my grandmother’s Blue Willow china dinner set.

The acrobatics show

Last thing on the agenda for today was an acrobatics show. I may have enjoyed it more had I not kept falling asleep. In my opinion, it didn’t compare to Cirque du Soleil. Everyone else was raving about it, so it must have been my extreme tiredness affecting my mood. Also, the entire audience was tourists and you know how I feel about that.

I couldn’t wait to stretch out on my comfy bed, which I did immediately on our return to our hotel. Erilyn made us coffees and we just lay there and chatted. I roused myself and ran a bath which rejuvenated me and I decided I had to get wifi so I could contact Rowan.

After finally getting through to the username and login page, I went down to reception and they entered both. The password was the same as the username — the Chinese name of the hotel. It would have been nice to have been informed of this when we checked in or at least this morning when I had asked!

I managed to get my VPN working and contacted home to let them know I had survived my first day in China. Happy at last, I fell asleep. It was after 10 pm. What a day!