A day-trip to the Forbidden City
After finding vibrators in vending machines, frozen lakes, examples of Chinglish, and a standing-room only train back to Tianjin, I’d call the day-trip to Beijing a success.
Main courtyard of the Forbidden City
Joined by some Canadian friends, we left early for the train and managed to miss it by 15 minutes. With an hour-and-a-half to kill, we noticed a vibrator in a vending machine along with the usual snacks for weary travelers. The real question is why someone would choose to avoid the many vendors to buy a bag of chips from these machines anyway. The train finally arrived and brought us to Beijing by noon which was time for a serious coffee from the Canadian company Blenz, which just happens to be on the route from the train station to the Forbidden City (Is it just me or do the girls on the Blenz website look like they’ve been playing a bit too much with the makeup?). The “Canadian” ice wine for sale at the counter looked suspiciously pirated after examining the bad English on the labels, but pirates here will pirate anything and everything. I recall once upon a time reading a Vancouver Sun article explaining how pirated Canadian ice wine is diluting the market for Canadian wineries. Apparently by fooling people who don’t know what the real thing should taste like, they unsuspectingly buy the fake version and forever avoid all Canadian ice wines believing they’re as bad as the pirated one. Ryan recently shared a special bottle of ice wine produced at Fort Wine Company he had painstakingly brought with him to China; we’ll happily attest that it was about as FAR from sub-standard as one can get. In fact, it was freakin’ delicious! So delicious! Perhaps I should make a pilgrimage on my return. *salivates* Excuse me… back to my story…
Then came the money troubles.
Unlike normal money troubles where most people somehow manage to run out, lose your bank card, or plain mis-manage their funds, all the bank machines along Wangfujin (Beijing’s golden street for shopping) were simply out of money. It made me flashback to a thought-provoking article I recently read about problems with China’s banking system; however, after trying about 5 machines in different locations one machine starting spitting out bills and our day as tourists was finally on its way.
Please do not pick the flowers
The Forbidden City was much larger than I had realized. From the entrance in at the South to the exit at the North, it took us three hours to traverse the entire length meandering from building to building without much of stopping. It’s no surprise when you consider the complex covers 74 hectares and contains a mere 9,999 buildings — clearly it has earned the title of “city”. The place is probably a mad house during the peak summer tourist season, but we picked a calm winter Monday. Under a thick cloud of pollution we marveled at the ancient buildings that had been completed in 1420 and are now surrounded by a thriving capital city. The imperial garden in the North section was beautiful even without all the flowers one might to see judging by the seemingly misplaced signs about picking flowers, or walking on the grass.
The North gate spits visitors out on a bridge spanning the 6-meter deep moat surrounding the Forbidden City and leaving you as easy pickings for the vulture-like taxi drivers and tour-guides. Unless you plan to walk to the other park directly across the street, or wander the streets aimlessly, you’ll be glad to see the friendly drivers and have them take you to your next destination. As seasoned adventurers, we foolishly chose to stroll North-West towards Beihai park, the White Pagoda and push up towards the markets of Lotus Lane. It wasn’t until we spotted the White Pagoda at a distance that we realized we’d made a wrong turn. I flagged down a taxi in the middle of traffic and somewhere en route to the Drum Tower we realized it was getting bitterly cold and we were hungry.
Near the Beijing Drum Tower we found a fantastic restaurant where I felt like I experienced a major personal accomplishment: I confidently ordered the meal from a non-English menu and had a pretty decent idea what to expect. Realizing it was too late in the day for tourist things, we walked and shopped the local area and then took another taxi back to Wanfujin to continue our shopping. Ryan decided that he just had to buy himself the same translator I had found for myself and, like me, he’s used it daily since. By this time it was late and everything was closing, so we allowed the bookstore security guard to chase us out of the building and we made our way to catch a return train to Tianjin.
We’ve learned that nothing ever goes exactly as planned and our return trip was no exception. A reliable source had told me that trains run 24/7, but that’s not exactly how it works. The commuter train between Beijing and Tianjin was done for the night, but then I spotted an ambiguous sign that looked promising:
My experience in theatre came in very helpful as the lady behind the counter and I communicated with a combination of carefully orchestrated hand-gestures and (my) limited understanding of Mandarin. It worked! Believe it or not, I understood perfectly that she had space — albeit a different definition of space than I imagined — on a standing-room-only railcar that would pass through Tianjin. We were packed like sardines and squeezed right against the door. Don’t worry mom, the door opened inward which mean less chance of falling out in transit, although it was quite the squeeze to allow the conductor to close the door after taking this photo:
Once we finally arrived at the Tianjin West station, we caught a cab home and I attempted to hold a conversation with our driver; exhausting my Mandarin vocabulary on the ride home made for a fine end to another exciting adventure.