In September 1998, Northwest Airlines announced some really incredible deals for several Asian cities. One of the cities was Beijing, China. Although I had never really thought much about going to China, the price was irresistible. For $699, you got a package deal which included airfare, hotel transfers, four nights at a four-star hotel, full American breakfast, a tour of the city (including the Forbidden City), and a trip to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. I added three nights to the basic package, and even with a single-room supplement, the total cost was just barely over $1,000.
With the trip set for December 2-10, I got busy trying to learn a bit about Beijing before I left. I went to the bookstore and bought two guidebooks: the Lonely Planet 'Beijing' and the Insight Guides 'Beijing,' both of which were fairly up-to-date (that's important!) and had good pictures as well as text. I also bought a map of Beijing which was labeled in both English and Chinese, and the Lonely Planet 'Mandarin Phrasebook,' a small pocket-size book that proved to be very useful.
I also started researching Beijing on the Internet. There are many helpful sights on the Web, and the Usenet group 'rec.travel.asia' is a treasure trove of information. I posted a lot of questions, and invariably, several folks answered with great advice. Some of the most useful information came from Cheryl Probst, who has actually lived and worked in China. Her Web page (http://www.webbworks.com/users/cheryl/) is very good, and she publishes a small but very helpful 'Do it Yourself Beijing' which has lots of practical information, much of which isn't covered in the other guidebooks. I got the most help from a very nice lady in Australia who loves China and has traveled with her husband to Beijing several times. I'm not going to mention her name, because I don't want her to be swamped with email, but if you post questions on the rec.travel.asia newsgroup, she may be one of the ones who responds to you. Over the two months that we corresponded, she was a veritable fountain of information. Even more valuable than information, however, she arranged for me to meet a young Chinese lady in Beijing who would accompany me as guide and interpreter. My Australian friend had met Carla (her real Chinese name is difficult for westerners to pronounce, so she uses the name 'Carla' for English-speaking friends) on a trip to Beijing in 1997, and has seen her since then on more recent trips. Carla works as an English interpreter in a traditional Chinese medicine clinic. Her English is good, but she very much wants to improve, so she likes to meet English-speaking people to practice her English. She can only get off work for three days each month, so she arranged to take her three days in December during my visit. I didn't know at the time just how valuable she would be, or how memorable the trip would be because of her.
Finally December 2, the departure day arrived. I flew a Northwest Airlines connecting flight from Atlanta to Detroit, then made a dash through the airport to catch the 747 nonstop from Detroit to Beijing. It's a fourteen-hour flight, but Northwest does a good job of making the hours pass reasonably quickly (however, after about the tenth hour, I think we went through some kind of space-time warp, where time slows down to a crawl). There were several movies, and they were always feeding us a meal or a snack. It was my first time to fly Northwest, and I was impressed with the service as well as the on-time performance. On the long flight over, I was fortunate enough to be sitting next to Delores and Mona, a mother and her daughter from Milwaukee. I immediately dubbed them 'Laverne and Shirley,' after the old TV show about two whacky girls in Milwaukee. At first I assumed that Delores was Mona's older sister, and I was amazed to find out later that they were mother and daughter. Mona is engaged to be married next Spring, and Delores was taking her to Beijing as a wedding present.
We arrived in Beijing at about 6:30 PM on December 3. A guide from China Merchants International Travel Company (CMITC) met us at the Beijing airport after we cleared immigration and customs, which was amazingly quick and simple. Our guide, a Chinese girl named 'Judy,' led us to the bus for the half-hour drive to the hotel. Most of us were staying at the Jinglun Hotel (also known by its original name, the Beijing-Toronto Hotel), but a few people were staying at the Grand View Garden Hotel. Judy had already checked us into the hotel, and she passed out the room keys and breakfast vouchers on the bus, so we could go directly to our rooms when we arrived. Our luggage was brought to our rooms a few minutes later. There are a lot of tourist companies operating in Beijing now, and I think that CMITC must be one of the better ones, because throughout the trip, they consistently handled matters and kept the confusion factor to a minimum. The basic package deal included two days of tours, but they arranged several other optional tours which typically cost $30-35 and were generally very good. It is possible to do these tours on your own for considerably less money, but all things considered, they were worth the extra money.
The Jinglun Hotel, which is owned by Nikko, a Japanese hotel chain, was absolutely first rate in every way. My $200 a day room was discounted to $39 a day due to the lack of tourists (caused in part by the poor Asian economy these days) and the winter season. The $39 rate included a scrumptious $15 full American breakfast buffet, so the room actually only cost $24 a day, an incredible bargain.
The following is an account of my stay in Beijing:
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4. We boarded the bus for the city tour, then headed for the Grand View Garden Hotel to pick up the other folks. We went first to the north end of Tiananmen Square. Unfortunately, the Chinese government had closed Tiananmen Square around the first of November for several months of renovations. There was a screen all the way around the square, and all you could see was big construction equipment and piles of the old concrete paving which is being replaced with granite pavers. The renovations are scheduled to be completed in time for the October 1, 1999, commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Communist victory in China. I guess I'll have to come back to Beijing again to see Tiananmen Square. After seeing what little we could of the square, we crossed the street (Dongchang'an Jie) through a pedestrian underpass and were in front of the famous Tiananmen Gate of the Forbidden City (you can't miss it - it's huge and has a big portrait of Mao on it). For the next two hours we toured the Forbidden City. This tour just hits the highlights. You could easily spend a few days here if you really want to see everything. I had seen pictures of this place when every inch was jam packed with tourists, but today there are only a few tourists (mostly Japanese), a real plus for us. There are a lot of steps and ramps, and many of them are still coated with ice from two recent snows. If you want a preview of the Forbidden City, you should rent a video of 'The Last Emperor,' a historical film about China's last emperor which was filmed on location in the Forbidden City. While we were there, we had a group photograph made. For $7, it's a great souvenir (the photographs were put into nice picture booklets and delivered to the hotel later in the day). We exited the Forbidden City through the Gate of Martial Prowess on the north end and waded through a sea of vendors. Unfortunately, on our first day in Beijing, these were the most aggressive vendors we encountered during the entire trip. I found myself desperately looking up the Chinese words for '@#$%& you, leave me the hell alone,' but my phrasebook failed me. We then boarded the bus and headed for the Friendship Hotel, where we had a terrific lunch. They brought out a huge variety of dishes, and we pigged out. There was so much food that we couldn't eat it all. They had Chinese beer, soft drinks, and mineral water to drink. You could use chopsticks if you were daring, or western silverware if you weren't. Some people tried the chopsticks and made a real mess, but it was fun trying. During the morning tour, Judy had been pushing an optional Summer Palace tour for $32, and almost everyone signed up, so after lunch, we drove to the entrance of the Summer Palace. This is one of the 'must see' sights of Beijing. It's a walking tour, but like most places in Beijing, it's flat as a pancake. The Summer Palace is beside Lake Kunming, which was frozen over with ice, as were all the lakes that we saw in Beijing. When we exited the Summer Palace, we again ran into the ubiquitous vendors, but they weren't too aggressive, and we had a good time browsing and buying some souvenirs. That night, back at the hotel, Carla, the young Chinese lady who was going to guide and interpret for me, telephoned. We arranged to meet the following night in the hotel.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5. This is the day I have been waiting for. We're going to the Great Wall of China! The bus leaves at 8:00 AM, and since Judy has already picked up the three people staying at the Grand View Garden Hotel, we drove directly to the Badaling Expressway and headed for the Great Wall. On the way, we stopped at a freshwater pearl factory and saw how the pearl oysters are processed and watched the workers sorting, grading, and drilling the pearls. The freshwater pearls are from the nearby Ming Reservoir. The pearl jewelry that the factory sells is beautiful, but as we learned later, you can buy the same stuff in the Beijing markets for much less (I bought a pair of pearl earrings for my wife for US$15 - I saw the same earrings later in Beijing for US$2.50!). When we left the factory, we then drove straight to the Great Wall at Badaling. I had read that the Great Wall at Badaling was unbelievably crowded during the warmer months, but today there are only a couple of hundred people at most. Apparently the goal for most people was to climb the wall to a tower high up the mountainside, several hundred feet above where we first stepped onto the wall. Some of our group made it. I got about halfway up, where the step risers were about two feet high, before my legs turned to rubber. I could lie and tell you that I gutted it out and fearlessly made for the summit, but frankly at this point the tower on top may as well have been Mount Everest. I had been having a serious problem recently with sciatica, so my legs were weak from lack of exercise, and I did well just to get halfway up. In any case, I have now walked on the Great Wall of China, and that's an incredible feeling. Returning to the parking lot, I bought a couple of 'I Climbed the Great Wall' T-shirts, one in English and one in Chinese. Unfortunately, the Chinese sizes are not even remotely the same as ours, and the XXL shirts that I bought would probably fit an average 8-year old kid. Well, for $2.50, I can't complain. While I was shopping, I met Ann, one of the ladies in the group I was with. While we were talking about what we were going to do in Beijing, I told Ann that I was going to meet a Chinese girl who would be my guide and interpreter. When I mentioned that the girl worked in a traditional Chinese medical clinic, she got real excited and told me that one of her reasons for coming to Beijing was to visit one of these clinics. I then invited her and her friend Roula to meet Carla when she came to the hotel that night. After we left the Great Wall, we went to a Friendship Store and had another great lunch. Afterwards, we shopped in the store, which, like the other Friendship Stores, had some really nice but pricey things. I bought a beautiful embroidery on silk for 400 yuan (about US$48). The design is embroidered on both sides, you have to see it to believe it. Some people bought some cloisonne, which was really expensive, but it was gorgeous stuff. We then left the Friendship Store and drove a few miles to the Ming Tombs. We went through the Ding Ling tomb, one of the tombs that has been excavated and is open to the public. |
