Beijing and North East China

So then it was on to the big smoke of Beijing where we spent over a week in the Lama Temple youth hostel.

The first day we were pretty tired we just had a walk around Tiananmen square and outside the Forbidden city where we saw an army of people cleaning chewing gum off the footpaths in preparation for the Olympic games in August. No stone left unturned.

The following day it was off to see the Olympic Stadium itself. There was a whole hoarde of people taking photos of it but from behind the fence as they are still carrying out work on it, mostly landscaping etc.

The "Birds Nest"

Ciaran and Dave from Cork arrived in Beijing shortly after us so we spent the next few days hanging around with then. We first met Ciaran and Dave in Nepal and then in Guilin, China.

One of the first things we did was the lads was go visit the Great Wall. We had been told to avoid the busier sections of the wall, particulary the sections that had McDonalds outlets at. Luckily we were given a tip off about a really quiet section of the wall and the tip-off turned to be true. See photos below. For me this was one of the highlights of China.

One of the must-do's in Beijing is of course the Forbidden city. We employed the services of a tour guide called Vanilla. Young Chinese often chose to use an english name as they understand that their real names are too difficult for westerners to pronounce or remember. Hence, Vanilla.

We spent many a night with Ciaran and Dave playing cards, chatting, relaxing, slagging. It was great to be able to spend time with some people who you could hurl abuse at and know they would not get offended.

The Chinese love convening on the street for many things. They love there street food, love flying their kites on the side of the street and love playing chess on the side of the street. When I saw the below scene for the first time I thought there must a fight going on or something. No, just another game of chess. As far as I could see there was normally a few wagers being passed. Maybe this is what draws the crowd! This scene is so typical in China.

We normally choose to eat at place that had english menus otherwise who knows what could end up on your place. Sometimes a restaraunt would have a sign up to signify the fact that they had an english menu. Some got a little confused, see the picture below.

Who are they trying to kid?

One of the highlights of the stay in Beijing was a trip to the temple of heaven where we stumbled across the echo wall. It was a wall built in a perfect circle. We would stand at opposite ends of the circle and whisper something. The receiver about 25 metres away could here the whisper perfectly. Here's Jeanette "talking to the wall"!

So it was time to leave Beijing and we decided to head north east. We were having difficulty getting the Mongolian visa so decided that we would go to South Korea instead. So the plan was to slowly make our way to Dalian in North East China over a number of days and then get the ferry from Dalian to the South Korean port of Incheon.

Our stop on our journey north eastward was at Shanhaiguan - the place where the great wall meets the sea. Again we had an entertaining train journey. You could see that the locals were very curious to talk to us but of course they had no way of communicating. We were seated with young and old but none had any english. Eventually were got talking to a young student who was able to translate for the entire train carriage. It was funny when a guy came over to the kids who were sitting opposite us to give out to them for not practising their english with us.

On our first day we went to the sea to see where the wall ends/starts?! See photos

Shanhaiguan is also home to what the Chinese call "the first pass under heaven". Basically it is the first gate or pass in the great wall and was of strategic importance for various Chinese dynasties. The Chinese come in their droves to see it.

We ate some great noodle soup at Li Jiangs parents place where her father cooks the soup in the biggest pot I've ever seen.

Another amusing thing we saw in Shanhaiguan was what seemed like the entire town dancing/doing aerobics in the town square with music blasting from the loud speakers.

We dropped off at the nice seaside resort of Xincheng on our way to our next destination of Shenyang.

On our train trip to Shenyang we had some more fun with the locals. First they were offering us some hard boiled eggs and some spirit of sorts for supper. Then they were amazed at how hairy my hands (Brian's) were and were putting them next to mine to compare. It hadn't really occurred to me before that but the Chinese don't really have too much body hair. When I pulled up the leg of my trousers they nearly fainted!! Good fun.

We got talking to a Chinese english teacher on the train also. She invited us to stay with herself and her husband at their apartment in Shenyang and also to come visit her students. Unfortunately we couldn't stay around long enough to make it to the school as the students were on holiday but we did take her up on her kind offer of accomodation. We just spent a day in Shenyang looking around the palace before we took the train to Dalian.

We spent 3 days in Dalian just relaxing, bowling, organising our ferry to Korea etc. We did have ago on the "Worlds first land-sled" however. This was great craic racing down the side of the mountain overlooking Dalian city. Dalian is noted for being China's most liveable city! In fairness we were able to see the sky there for 2 of the 3 days which was a bit of a feat in China. Dalian is noted also for its soccer team who apparently are Chinese champions on many an occasion.

So then it was off to Korea on the boat!