The Beijing Tea Party

Beijing’s metro is excellent. Spotlessly clean, almost foolproof navigation (even for English speakers) and very regular trains made navigating to other parts of the city a breeze. Our first destination on it was also the most famous - Tianamen Square.



There’s plenty to see around the square itself, which is why we went there, but this was the day we learned that Monday in China is the day museums and other attractions are closed. Wandering about the square wondering what to do, two Chinese students, who weren’t much younger than us, started up a conversation, with the pretext of practicing their English.

Offering to show us to a temple that was open (and free), and with nothing better to do, we decided to take them up on their kind offer. The temple was quite good, something we would never had found ourselves, and I genuinely learned a lot about Beijing from the lad I was talking to. Then we suggested getting a drink somewhere, and they suggested some tea. We agreed, and followed them to a nearby teahouse.

Showing us into a small room with no windows, they suggested that we go for a pot as it works out much cheaper. All of us felt a slight sense of unease at this stage. It was Gearoid who noticed, on the barely legible price board on the wall, that a pot of tea was 300 yuan - about 30 euro! On Gearoid’s words of “Lads, this is exactly what I read about”, we all promptly leapt out of our seats, grabbed our bags, and scrammed. They even had the cheek to yell “well won’t you buy us lunch at least” as we paced down the street. This incident was a shame as all it did was destroy our trust in Chinese approaching us on the street - I’m sure some of them genuinely just want to talk.

We had read about this particular scam in Lonely Planet - we would have to foot the bill for all the expensive tea. The tea-house was in cahoots with the scammers, who I assume would have got a cut.



Still reeling after almost being duped out of a lot of cash, we calmed down with some cheap noodle soup and wandered about for a while - stumbling entirely by accident across Qianmen Dajie. A historical market street about a kilometre long, the entire street had been knocked and was being entirely rebuilt - keeping the traditional architectural style of the original. It reminded me of Main St. USA in Disneyland - everything so clean and perfect that it doesn’t look real. This surreal sight of brand new old buildings epitomizes modern China for me, something I don’t think I could have witnessed anywhere else on the planet.