niniane

I got into Beijing late in the night and taxied into the hostel with my parents. It was a standard hostel – clean enough, quiet enough, and central enough. Yay! (Probably the amenities were less than with many hostels – no real restaurant that I could find. But it was near restaurants, so whatever.)

By our hostel was a book store with a bunch of students passed out inside. I found this vaguely hilarious for some reason.

The next morning we got up super early (yay jet lag...) and made it off to the Forbidden City.

Near Wangfujian were some *amazing* topiaries. This one, I think, represented Beijing.

Panda topiary that represents....Shanghai? Nifty mountains? Generic Chinese awesome stuff? Unsure.

The Silk Road topiary had camels and the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, located in Xi'An.

Because of the National Day holiday, it was absolutely packed, which got very annoying very quickly, so we decided that we'd visit the ticketed portions (Palace Museum) later, after when returned after the long trip. Then we took the subway to the Temple of Heaven, which was also crowded, but managably so.

The crowds around Tiananmen were pretty crazy...and they only got *worse* once inside the Forbidden City!

The outside of the Forbidden City. For inside pictures, we'd have to wait for another day!

The temple was built by the same emperor who had built the Forbidden City and has many of the same stylistic elements, just more religious, since, after all, this is where the emperor would sacrifice for good harvests, rain, etc. The main “thing”, if you will, is the temple itself, a lovely blue spire covered in gold leaf dragons and phoenixes and mounted upon a huge white marble plinth with stair cases leading up in all directions. (I particularly loved how in the middle were huge marble reliefs with even more dragons and phoenixes soaring about the clouds in graceful spirals.)

The Temple of Heaven. Note that while it's still busy, it's at least walkable!

There was also the huge mound, sacrificial kitchens, storage rooms, and an impressive music training area. However, probably my favorite part were the lavish gardens. They were covered in cypress (because the blue-green looked like jade), planted in not-quite-natural rows, some of which were nearly as old as the temple, as well as rose garden (in full bloom), other gardens (not in bloom), and Empress Cixi's flower pavilion (in a completely different style than the rest of the other-wise-matching temple). It was all very peaceful and lovely, a well as an escape from the crowds.

It was nearly two by the time we were done, so we went to a small restaurant where we asked about the wait and were told over 2 hours. (2 hours!) So we left with the idea of trying to find something along the way back to the hotel.

We encountered a small place with a cage with a dog (on a platform...sort of odd) and a cat, along with a second cage with a bird in it outside. It looked like a restaurant to me, so since I was hungry, we went inside.

We were promptly seated by the waitress (next to a very kind family who offered to help us order). I picked out a few dishes (an amazing Kung Pao chicken and lamb stir fry), as well as a pot of tea.

The first sign that things might be a bit more of an adventure than anticipated was when my father ordered a beer. (ONE!) The owner came out with about six and proceeded to try to open all of them. I stopped him at one, and we got back to eating the amazing meal.

Then, once we were finished, the owner came by again, this time with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. He poured a glass for himself, then one for my father. I insisted, again, that we didn't want, but then he insisted that my father toast him.

Then...there was another toast and another. The Johnny Walker blue came out (BLUE!!!!) and he....POURED IT INTO COKE! (I am crying here forever. That's good stuff. QQ) There were more toasts. The bottles went from full to half empty. The owner kept joking around and getting loopier and loopier. He dragged out perfume and sprayed both my Mom and myself with it, then insisted that I take the bottle. (Then he dragged out a bottle of Bai Jiu and insisted that my father take it, putting it into his pocket despite our protests.)

Boiled peanuts and watermelon were also dragged out, despite that I really couldn't eat any more. (I did anyway, to be polite. Not to mention...watermelon.)

He also dragged out cigarettes and insisted that my father smoke (after several protestations that my father can't smoke, he gave up and just started smoking himself in defiance of the very large “no smoking” sign on the wall.

He took me on a bit of a tour of the store, too. He happily pointed out the signed jersey from Yao Ming from when he had been at the restaurant, as well as a signed ping pong paddle as well as the bad mitten wiffle from other prominent athletes, all the while asking me to tell all my friends about the place. (I offered, but I'm not really sure that it will do much to add to his business, but hey!) It was all pretty crazy.

A pair of Austrians appeared, at which point the owner found MORE people to drink with.

I started asking him for the check, since I was hoping to escape, using as an excuse that we had a train to catch, but he kept not giving it to me. Eventually I cornered a waitress and got her to give us our check (which didn't include the insane amount of alcohol), paid it, said good bye and fled.

Quite the adventure off the beaten path, and it was only the first day!

From there, we made it off to the Olympic Stadium and saw the Bird's Nest (which is a pretty cool piece of architecture). We opted not to go inside as it was >$20 USD and didn't really seem that cool...

There was also this interesting building, although is it already falling apart? (Hopefully not!)