Nee Howdy

Today we spent a few frustrating hours trying to call Air Berlin, the Beijing Airport, and really anyone who pretended to care that I was in a foreign country with nothing other than the dirty clothes on my back, when we finally decided that we had to get back on the horse. You’re only in Beijing once, and maybe we can still get some tickets to a game?

After a quick internet search, and a survey of the scalpers around town, getting one ticket could be easy, getting two would be hard, and getting two at less than 200$ a piece, would be impossible. So, we resigned ourselves to watching the games on the seven 24 hour dedicated channels of CCTV, and decided to go see some culture.

We headed off to the Temple of Heaven, this is a huge sprawling place of worship and sacrifice for the old emperors, and is now a beautifully landscaped living piece of Public Park and historical museum. It was acres upon acres of manicured lawns and cypress trees over 1300 years old, culminating in a series of temples and surrounding long buildings for official ceremonial purposes. Like many temples and homes in China, the Temple of Heaven is built around a rectangular (they call it a quadrangle here – but I think it’s the same thing) layout, with several exterior rings with gates and corridors, which lead inward towards the most important structures. This is how the whole city is laid out too, with 5 rings all laid out along a North / South axis, with the most important structures lying along this axis. All of this has to do with Feng Shui – but my understanding of it is so inadequate, I won’t even try.



We wandered for 5 or so hours in the Temple complex, from the plush green park, where no one is allowed on the grass, to the open marble promenades where people sit wherever they like and have a picnic lunch.

Having not eaten all day, we were suckers and bought ourselves some second rate overpriced BoBa tea and sipped while we strolled in the balmy 90-degree heat.

Other than getting a good dose of culture, the only real “must do” for the day was to find somewhere where I could buy a clean shirt and skivvies. Where else can you go other than the mall? Oh, and what a mall it is – the Oriental Shopping Plaza is about 10 city blocks long, and 3 or more stories high. It is ridiculously huge. We figured that it would be a good place to grab a bite to eat and do my shopping. So we headed to the food court.

Now everyone has been to a food court in a mall before – you have a pretzel place, your fast food burgers and fries, some pizza, and if you are lucky one or two sit down restaurants. This mall had at least 60 different sit down restaurants, and then in the middle of all of the craziness was a central booth called Megabite. Here you could fill up a card with credits and then wander the maze of nearly 30 street style stalls making grilled meats, soups, stir fry’s, etc – point to what you want, and have it deducted from your card. It was the oddest food court ever. We had a sit down meal of dumplings and noodles at a little restaurant on the side, and then followed up with a famous crème puffs filled with ice cream place, called Beard Papa. Oh so yummy.



After a successful shopping outing we headed outside to explore, and happened to stumble across what I assume is called “Famous Tourist Gross Out / Guilt Into Buying Crap” Street. It was packed with people from all over, stuck elbow to elbow with their neighbors, jostling to get the best view of the live scorpions and sea horses skewered on sticks in preparation for grilling. We got squeezed along the streets; not really having to move ourselves as the crowd just pushed you along. It was thoroughly entertaining, watching western tourists dare each other into eating grilled grubs, and Chinese children nag their parents for sugar dipped fruit sticks. We wandered around the streets until we finally had our fill of watching people watch other people eating oddities, and decided to catch a cab – a feat which took over an hour (and included being turned down by one cabbie). We finally got back to the hotel around 11, just in time to get ready for our big-guided tour the next day – We’re Going to the Great Wall!