For those of you who didn’t know, I spent my Easter Break in Beijing! I felt it would be the only chance I would get to go for a long time, so I took advantage of the opportunity to visit China’s capital city.
For the Easter holiday, my school gave us a six-day vacation between Thursday, April 1 and Tuesday, April 6. Because flights were cheaper if we left on March 31 than April 1, I skipped one day of school (don’t judge; I haven’t skipped any classes yet so far). We, Nanja (Holland), Margarida (Portugal), and I, met at 7:00 am outside and took a taxi to the Macau-Zhuhai Border Gate. We fought the early morning immigration rush, and emerged on the other side next to the mall.
From the mall we took another taxi to the Zhuhai Airport. Flights to Beijing directly out of Macau International Airport are a lot more expensive, so we opted to take the cheaper flight out of Zhuhai. It was actually a nice, hour-long drive (even if I did get a little nauseous in the backseat). I’d never seen any part of Zhuhai besides the mall, but it is actually very spacious and green, and I even think the air was a bit easier to breathe. The freeway we took was a bridge that had a great view of the South China Sea coastline, and we also saw some beautiful green mountains.
When we got to the airport, our total taxi fare was 110 Yuan, which is about USD $15. Since we split it three-way, I only had to pay about $5 for an hour-long taxi ride. We were so excited about that! Hopefully it foreshadowed good things about the prices in Beijing…
The airport wasn’t very crowded, and because we checked in so early we had a few hours to kill. We had brunch at Café de Coral (an Asian restaurant chain that I actually like), and then did some browsing at the shops.
While we were sitting on some couches in the lounge area, we got a call from our friend Iris (Finland). Her first flight to Vietnam had already been cancelled, so she’d booked another flight with a different airline. That morning, the day she was supposed to leave, the airline called her to tell her that flight had also been canceled. Desperate, she called us and asked if she could join us on our Beijing trip, and we happily agreed to meet up with her in Beijing.
After we went through security, we boarded our plane and took off after a half-hour delay (which is apparently very common outside the US). The flight itself went very smoothly. It’s only a three-hour flight from Zhuhai to Beijing, but they still fed us a whole meal with chicken and rice, a dinner roll, vegetables, and snacks. That’s one thing I have to criticize American airlines about, that they keep raising flight ticket prices while lowering the quality of customer service.
At the airport we collected our bags in a timely manner and went outside to catch the taxi. It was difficult to communicate with the taxi driver, and one of the airport personnel came over to help us. He didn’t speak much English either, but eventually we communicated that we wanted to drop Nanja at her hotel first (she was meeting her mother), and then drop Margarida and I off at our hostel.
As we drove into the city, we saw the suburbs of Beijing. There were large, skyscraper apartment buildings, but they seemed to be spread out a bit more than Macau (which is the densest city in the world). Also, my first impression was that this was not the time for the nicest weather. The sky was quite gray, and all the trees were bare. It almost seemed like winter still, and the windy, cold temperatures didn’t help my first impression either. Despite the not-so-good first impression of the environment, I was still very excited to be in Beijing.
The taxi driver found Nanja’s hotel okay, but he had no idea how to find our hostel. He called the hostel’s telephone number and spoke to the front desk about directions, and after that he found his way easily. Again, the total fare was only around 110 Yuan for an hour-long taxi ride, so my share was only $5 USD.
Our hostel was located in one of Beijing’s many hutongs, which is a group of old-style houses that are clustered very closely together. A hutong is usually a narrow street or alley made up of dwellings with courtyard entrances, but you can only see the outside walls of these hutongs. The word “hutong” is a type of neighborhood, and they’re commonly found in Beijing. They’re a very old style of neighborhood, and many hutongs are even protected by the Beijing government.
For more info on hutongs, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong
We were actually quite impressed with our accommodations at Saga Youth Hostel. When we checked in, they took us to our room that we booked online (two single beds). It seemed nice enough, considering it was a student hostel, but we thought it was strange that there was a line of beer bottles outside the door, and also that there was a party banner put up inside.
Apparently, the room had not been vacated yet, and the front desk clerk came and asked if we could move to another room with one queen-sized bed for the night, and then we could move back to our single beds the next day. We agreed, and then we lugged our suitcases back down and up a series of staircases to get to our new room.
We had dinner at the hostel, which was actually pretty tasty with a good atmosphere, and then Margarida and I went out exploring. We were trying to find the silk market, but found ourselves on a beautiful, upscale street in Beijing. There were high-end car shops (I saw a Ferrari!), and there were also some very nice hotels along a street with Christmas lights in the trees. It was a very nice walk, even if we didn’t find our destination.
If you heard rumors about Westerners being stopped in Beijing by Asian tourists to take pictures, I can confirm those rumors as T-R-U-E. Actually, it happened multiple times a day during our vacation in Beijing, and our first walk on the town was no different.
We saw a tea house with a giant teapot fountain, so we wanted to take our picture in front of it. Margarida and I waited patiently while a pair of Asian women took their pictures in front of it, minding our own business. When they spotted Margarida, they got all excited and asked if they could take her picture (not in English, in their own language, but they got the point across). At first I was confused why they wanted a picture with Margarida, and then I realized that she was quite tall, especially compared to these two Asian women. Asians tend to be shorter than Westerners, not always, but generally.
After a few pictures with Margarida and one of the women, they also wanted a picture with me. This happened to me a lot during my adventures in Beijing, especially if I wore my hair down (it was quite curly in Beijing). I think they aren’t used to blond, curly-haired people like me. If I had my sunglasses on, I always took them off to show off my blue eyes. I know that sounds conceited and egotistical, but I’ve noticed people in Macau and Zhuhai are often fascinated by blue-eyed people, so I thought it might make them happy.
After our “photo shoot,” we went back to our hostel. Iris had called after arriving, so we went to meet her. She said the front desk had no available rooms, and they wouldn’t let her stay with us for the night.
When we got back, I talked with them about letting Iris stay with us, even if it was just for one night. They didn’t understand, since the bed was only for two. I tried to convince them that we could all fit, but their English wasn’t very good and our communication wasn’t going very well. Finally, they said they had a three-bed room, and after seeing it we asked if we could just stay there for all five nights. It was available, and for the third time that night we lugged our bags into a new room, going up and down stairs to get there.
We all took a shower, but the temperature didn’t get above 32 degrees Celsius. Despite the cold shower, my bed was actually quite comfortable, and I fell asleep quickly after our exhausting day.
Coming up next, “Beijing: Day Two!”
Kati
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