Tuesday, 28 July 2009

Enjoy the Cold While it Lasts

One of the problems with Beijing for visiting travellers is that it has too many things to see, especially for a casual Chinese history enthusiast like myself. There were still a few items on our must see list, and fear of guilt over not visiting them while we were in Beijing (when would we be here again?) initially overcame sightseeing fatigue. My own personal excitement over our next ‘sight’ also helped - the Forbidden City.



If you want a real taste of the power and might that China’s rulers wielded in the past, look no further than here. The entire complex conveys a grandeur and opulence unmatched by anything else I saw in China. Having recently been given a good scrub before the Olympics arrived, we were able to marvel at the halls and palaces in a pristine state, how they would have been kept when only the emperor, his eunuchs and concubines inhabited the area inside the complex walls.

Later that evening we stumbled upon a large night food market whilst looking to satisfy the hunger built up from exploring the forbidden city - one that had plenty of the more unusual Chinese delicacies. Fried centipede anyone? How about fried scorpion? Silkworms on a stick? Who would eat such things?




John ate them all.



Rising the next morning it was a case of another day, another unmissible sight to see - the Temple of Heaven. We were all getting tired of sightseeing at this stage, but it was nice to explore the park surrounding it’s main monuments, a refreshing break from the uniform drudgery of big city China. To be fair the Temple of Heaven complex itself is impressive, and perhaps we should have taken a break from sightseeing before this point, but we had already been in Beijing for almost a week and there was so much more of China to see!

In the two months since we left a chilly winter Ireland, my body seemed to have forgotten how to cope with cold weather (it was below ten degrees most days in Beijing). Perhaps all the rushing around to see things contributed too, but whatever it was, I had caught a cold. I spent the final day in Beijing feeling sorry for myself in the hostel. As our train departed from Beijing's station that night, I was able to comfort myself with the fact that this would be the coldest weather I’d see for at least a year and a half (or so I thought).

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