Sightseeing in Beijing: Walls, Temples, & Streets

All the interesting stuff happened once we met up with our friend Karen and her son Joe. We joined them on their touring extravaganza in and around Beijing, which was both fantastic and exhausting! In the span of 3 days we saw 7 major sites. That’s a lot for us!

Gate to the grounds of the Tombs

The grounds

Photo-op with the weeping willows

Mao-ing around (Photo to the left is Mao in that same spot)

We started the touring off with the Ming Tombs: the tombs of 13 of the 16 emperors of the Ming Dynasty. We found the grounds and statues, as well as the factual information that our tour guide Grace was giving us, to be the best parts of the Tombs. Most everything had been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution, so everything we were seeing was a replica or rebuilt. Going down into the tomb was also interesting, just to see how deep it was originally dug. There were 2 separate entrance fees (30 & 40Y I'm pretty sure) to get into the grounds, then into the tomb itself.

From the tombs we headed up into the mountains and had lunch at a small fishing village. It was one of the most delicious meals we ate thus far in China. After stuffing ourselves full, we had about 20 minutes until we reached the entrance to go up to the Mutianyu (Moo-tea-on-you) section of the Great Wall. 

The Wall from the chairlift

There were 3 options to go up and 2 options to come down: cable car (70Y?), chairlift (40Y?), or hike (probably not free though) and then luge (30Y) or walk down (free). The hike would have taken about 2 hours, while the chairlift was cheaper than the cable car, less crowded, and much faster than the hike, so we took that. From there, we broke to the right on the Wall because there was far fewer people that direction. We spent almost 2 hours hiking to the farthest point we could and taking pictures, then heading back to where we got the luge down. If it hadn’t been for the slow people in front of us, the ride would have been a blast, but it was still a good time nonetheless. At this point in our journey, the walking at the tombs and the steps and walking on the Wall was the most exertion we’d had in months, so we were beat by the end of the day!

Me, Steve, Karen, Joe, & Grace (our tour guide)

We decided to skip the tour of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City the next morning for many reasons, but mostly because we just really weren’t that interested in seeing it, and we needed a break from being charged for EVERYthing we do and see. So after lunch, we met back up with Karen and Joe and headed to the Summer Palace (30Y). This was a palace built in honor of one of the emperor’s mother’s for her birthday, then later became the summer home of the Dragon Lady, the puppeteer to one of the very young emperors. It was big and impressive, but only truly interesting because we had Grace giving us information about the different people who lived there and why. We spent a little over an hour there, but if not for Grace, it would have gotten a quick walk through and been brushed off. We took a dragon boat (15Y) down the man-made river to where the driver was waiting for us, and then we were off to drive by the Olympic Park (the Bird’s Nest and the Swimming Cube).

The next day was the last day in Beijing for the group, so we made it count! We got up early and headed to Jingshan Park (10Y) on a man-made hilltop from the clay that came out of the moat around the Forbidden City. Since it’s on a hilltop, you can look into the City and see all the buildings and passageways. It wasn’t a very clear day, unfortunately, so we couldn’t see very far into Beijing itself from the hill.

The Temple of Heaven 

From the park we caught a taxi to the Temple of Heaven. We bought a 4-part ticket (40Y) to get into the park and then all the sites within the gates of the park. We all agreed that it was pretty and neat, but would have been much more fulfilling and interesting if we’d had Grace with us. Given that we had no background on any of the structures we were looking at, we moved through the park pretty quickly. Then we were off to Loulichang (how with an ‘L’-lee-chang) street, that we had read was a really interesting place to walk around and we were hoping to find lunch there. Unfortunately, there were no places to eat and just a lot of repetition of brush/calligraphy shops interspersed with some “antique” stores. We didn’t even go into any of the shops, just kept wandering for food.

After scoring another really delicious meal, we decided to head to a street we had visited the first night back in Beijing called Old Pipe Street (well, that’s the English translation anyway). The street itself is shaped like a pipe, and it used to be the area of town that sold pipes and smoking tobacco, which now only a few shops of such remain. This area is on a lake and also has many little hutongs surrounding it. The walk through the actual Pipe Street is nice, but everything around it is enjoyable as well. The restaurants cater to Westerners with a lot more Western food and higher prices to match, so might be best to eat somewhere else and just enjoy it for a stroll. It’s also teeming with rickshaws and bicycles built for one, two, and even three people, so watch your step, or you might get run over during peak hours (around lunch and dinner times +/- an hour on each side). This is one of the areas they like to do rickshaw tours of the hutongs. You can easily walk it and get as much out of it.

This marked the end of our sightseeing extravaganza tour of Beijing. This also meant another goodbye, our most difficult goodbye for China (though it would have originally been a Korean goodbye). We said our farewells to Karen, then Joe came for dinner with us and it was then time to say goodbye to him as well. And then there were two. And we were beat! So we turned in to get rested and ready what was to come the next day: our longest train thus far—20 hours!