-quick note-
Yes, I realise three months doesn't really qualify as a 'Gap Year'. Before I start, I will state that there were two reasons to why I did not stay the full 9 months out in China. 1. Events that took place in Beijing led me and a few others to feel extremely unsafe and rather uncertain of what might happen if we stayed in China for a long time. (Don't want to spoil the surprise. I will explain in due course!)
2. Our visa renewals were rejected anyway.
The obvious place to start is the beginning. August 27th 2012. Three days in the heart of China's capital city. Beijing. It's safe to say that these three days were nothing like we had anticipated.
I'm gonna spare you the details and skip the mundane 12 hour plane journey and delve straight into the action. We landed at 6:30am and despite most of us not getting much sleep on the plane, we cracked on with our whistle-stop tour of Beijing.
We went to our hotel, which I believe was a seven days inn? If any of the China lot read this feel free to correct me... and tucked into a buffet style breakfast. However, considering we were half way around the world, the meat was didn't particularly taste as expected... It felt safer to stick to the noodles! They had tinned peaches though which made Emma happy!
We then walked down to Tiananmen Square with our lovely tour guide, can't really remember his name, obviously didn't make a massive impression! He then informed us that what we were walking on see picture below was in fact temporary toilets. Nice. Real nice. I still don't know if he was joking or not, I really hope he was!
After that juicy bit of information, we literally crossed the road and reached Tiananmen Square. Now, after learning about the 'tank man' and all the bad stuff that was happening there, I expected to see like a memorial or something cool to look at, instead there was just a massive plasma screen up in the middle amongst what looked like a normal street. There was literally nothing there to suggest that it plays an important part in China's history gotta love a bit of communist oppression...
It then decided to rain. Hard. The good thing was that I was the only one that bought an umbrella with me. So prepared. Hamish decided to trust a 10 yuan equivalent of about £1 flimsy umbrella from some random old woman selling them on the street. I think it broke in approximately 3 minutes? Worth it.
We then made our way up to the entrance of the Forbidden City. It was hard to ignore the massive portrait of Mao Tse-tung placed right at the entrance, almost daring you to enter and looking over you in a way that reminded me of 'Big Brother' in George Orwell's novel, Nineteen eighty-four.
The buildings themselves were architecturally astonishing, it was literally like stepping into a film. I had never been to any Asian country before, so my first impression was that the sheer beauty of the buildings were outstanding. The novelty wore off after I had been there a couple of days and looked around copious amounts of temples that I genuinely couldn't remember what they were for a couple of hours after going, let alone over a year!
As a massive fan of the film Karate Kid (the newer one in particular) definitely didn't watch that for the first time because Justin Bieber's song Never Say Never was played at the end. I really do wonder what used to go round my teenage self's head. I couldn't resist doing what Jaden Smith did and touch the gold spheres on the door for good luck anyone that knows me well knows I am full of bad luck so I like to grasp any opportunity that comes my way. At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to do this as they were all covered up, sad times. But a bit later on, I found one that I could reach. What an interesting story that was.
This is the part where I have to apologise for my waffle. I did plan to bash out Beijing in one blog post, however it is getting long already so I think I may just have to separate this out into two or three different posts. Not that anyone is even reading my blogs so this don't matter. I am literally just plopping my thought stream onto paper. It's a grand way to procrastinate, degrees are so much effort. Anyway, moving on.
The Forbidden City was absolutely beautiful, as you can tell by the photos down below, but I definitely wouldn't rush back. If you are going to Beijing for the first time I would definitely recommend going there, however, now I don't know if this was because I was seriously tired thanks to jet lag I just thought it was a bit repetitive! I don't know how much it cost to get in here because it was all included in our tour price, which we paid up front with our plane tickets etc. Every time we went through another building and out in to another courtyard, it literally felt like we hadn't gone anywhere different. Occasionally, there might be a river and a bridge but generally, it was very consistent until the last one.
During our visit here, our lovely little tour guide informed us about the place. I cannot for the life of me remember what he said about it. I tend to zone out after about 30 minutes
5 minutes of someone talking to me. Probably why my blog posts are so all over the place!
So that pretty much sums up the Forbidden City really, by the time we had been there for about just under an hour we had all given up and were slumped down looking like moody english tourists. Promise we were just tired!
Our mood was then lifted with the promise of FOOD. We travelled to a small place which, apparently, has been kept purposefully to look like a traditional Chinese village. We got off our minibus and then clambered onto the rickshaws. For those of you who don't know what a rickshaw is, it's basically a 2 seater carriage type vehicle pulled along by a bike. I did have some photos of Georgia and I in one somewhere... but I have no idea whereabouts they've ended up!
We were then taken round streets where we also had a little mini tour, and learned a bit about Chinese culture. We then ended up at our destination, which was a small Chinese home with two tables. The food was immense. There were so many tasty dishes, some of them spicy others not. Unfortunately, quite a few of them had nuts in so James didn't have much to eat at all! They had quite a few pet turtles that were very sweet! Although they were kept in small open boxes which doesn't seem particularly legit, but then again they could just be for show!
Temple of Heaven was the next sight for the 12 of us to see on our first day in Beijing. As we were walking from the minibus to the entrance, we came across what we thought was a play park. So, being the mature 18 year olds we all were, we decided that it would be a nice break to have a play in the park! However, when we got closer it appeared to be more of an exercise area rather than a play area. As Emma and I were rather tired, we decided to sunbathe instead of playing to which we both nearly fell asleep.
We then made our way through the grounds to the temple itself. The use of the reds, greens and golds tangled in the extravagantly decorated architecture is breath taxingly stunning. We weren't allowed in the actual temple, but members of the public can look inside, although it was rather dark, so I had no idea what was in there!
As we had about an hour to kill before dinner, we stayed in the temple grounds for a while. This is where the tour guide taught us what he described as 'Chinese badminton' not overly sure on the reliability of the name. The game basically consists of a something that looks like a shuttlecock, feathers attached to what looked like a couple of washer. The aim of the game is to keep this in the air by kicking it. Safe to say that we were all rubbish at first but, after a while, we started to get the hang of it!
The restaurant we ate at for dinner wasn't unlike a Chinese restaurant in England. It was an all you can eat with a round wheel in the middle to allow everyone on the table to try things. I was so happy to see that duck pancakes were on the menu tonight, although I was gutted that there was no sweet and sour sauce! The other dishes all tasted similar to dishes you would find at an English Chinese all you can eat, however the food here was much tastier and slightly spicier!
We were then asked if we wanted to go and see a famous Kung Fu show, however we al turned it down as it was quite expensive and we would have probably fallen asleep during the show! Once we had had a bit of a rest, a few of us felt a bit perkier so Mr Smith took us around Beijing and showed us the food market.
It was not like I had expected. They literally had deep fried everything. A few examples I can think of off the top of my head are:
- Tarantula
- Scorpion
- Seahorse
- Snake
- Octopus
- Starfish
- Cockroaches
- Millipedes
- Dog meat stew
- Lamb testicles
- Dog testicles
And the list goes on... so gross! The smell was absolutely horrendous. I can't believe people genuinely bought food there to enjoy. We were told we strongly advised not to take photos of the food, as some of it was illegal as they were deep frying endangered species! Seems legit! However, I did manage to sneak a few snaps, just to prove that this place actually exists! They're quite blurry though, as I was doing it on the sly.
After this horrendous ordeal, we decided to get some comfort food from a McDonalds we had spotted earlier. It is complete bull that McDonalds is the same which ever country you are in, similar is a more appropriate adjective. They had burgers with black and white buns, wraps with purple and green bread amongst some other strange items. However, it did bring us some satisfaction knowing that we were closer to western society than we had been 10 minutes before.
We then made our way back to the hotel after what felt like the longest day of my life to get some well-deserved sleep after our first hectic day in China.
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