rants: Beijing Day 2/3: Temple of Heaven & Summer Palace

So unfortunately it’s really really difficult to blog from China – harder than I thought it would be. I did my research before, but most people said they were able to access the editing portion of blogger, just not blogspot. Turns out I can get on, but only once every 35 tries. Anyways, I’ll do my best and just backtrack when I get home. We spent the past two days at the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace – two places we’ll hit during the tour, just not very long (we’re hitting both along with the Great Wall within less than a day). First off, I take back everything I said about the heat and humidity in Hong Kong, nothing compares to the heat here! Apparently it feels like 45 degrees over here, and later in the week it’s supposed to feel like 49 degrees -.-

Beijing is quite different from Hong Kong in many ways, first off there doesn’t seem to be many “foreigners”/people who don’t speak mandarin. Most of the people who are part of tours seem to speak the language, and although signs are translated to English, communicating is a lot more difficult. Nevertheless, food is still awesome, cheap, and transportation is again, ridiculously cheap (less than a buck for a single ticket). The subway system is similar to Hong Kong but MUCH more crowded, lots of shoving (which didn’t exist in Hong Kong) and we have to go through security before getting into the station. Either way, it’s much cheaper than a taxi!

At the Temple of Heaven we rented audio guides so we could listen to the history while we were walking along. It was really interesting, but sweltering hot with hardly any shade in sight. It was neat to see where/what the emperors did and as the audio guide claimed we “walk along the same path as the Emperor”. Of course, it was absolutely crowded in the tourist spots, and things like public bathrooms are much different from what I had gotten used to in Hong Kong (it’s all about the squats in China). We went to a restaurant with rave reviews claiming to have the best Peking Duck in Beijing, and I have to say, I can’t really disagree...it was fantastic!

The Summer Palace was really nice, we stayed closed to the lake (man made) so we got the cool breeze off the water. It was a very large park and we spent quite a while walking around and taking pictures. Unfortunately (as I gathered from reading the descriptions in front of buildings), many of the original structures were completely destroyed by the anglo-french forces during the Opium Wars, so what we saw was the reconstruction or the remains, many of which were converted into tourist buildings such as restaurants. Now we’re just getting ready for the tour which I’m sure is going to be completely hectic, I guess we’ll find out soon!