April 4, 2016 – Beijing, China Days 1 & 2

The past three days have been an exciting, wonderful experience. We’ve been looking forward to the 3-day overland excursion to Beijing. For us, it was one of the big reasons we signed up for the Crystal 2016 World Cruise. Planning for this adventure must have been a major under­taking for the ship’s shore excursion team and, undoubtedly, a busy team back in Crystal’s home office in Los Angeles.

Seven hundred people from Serenity were part of this adventure. In fact, there were 24 buses chartered to transport everyone around the capital of China for three days. Bottom line is that it was a great trip, and everything went like clockwork once we were off the ship.

We were both surprised and astounded with this modern, active, growing world city. There were constructions cranes everywhere, and the core city was full of large, modern high-rise apartments, office towers, and traffic jams. The tallest building in Beijing is the China World Trade Center Tower III at 1,031 feet. World-class retail stores abound, with all the upscale names: Dior, Cartier, Tiffany, and so on. Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, 7-11 stores were proliferating everywhere we looked; we suppose that’s good and a sign of progress. Here are some pictures of what we saw from our hotel room:

We suppose Beijing is large in size because it’s China's capital city and has been for about 800 years. Our tour guide told us that Beijing is the political, educational, and cultural center of the country, with only light industries and not much manufacturing. Its population is the second largest in China (after Shanghai), with 21 million in the metropolitan area. 

Beijing is now such a large city that the government has constructed six concentric “ring roads” (like beltways) around the city, with one actually being in the center of the city and the 6th ring going through the outer suburbs. The center of the city is now, and always has been, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. From our perspective, the most modern, prosperous areas seem to be within the second and third rings, but there was also a lot of construction between portions of the third and fourth rings that we passed through.

Beijing Day 1 – April 3, 2016

Crystal Serenity cruised north from Shanghai in the Yellow Sea with mainland China to the west and the peninsula of Korea to our east, until we arrived in Tianjin at 8:00 am this morning. Tianjin is a very large city at the westernmost point of the Bohai Gulf in Northeast China. It is a manufacturing center and acts as the shipping gateway to the inland city of Beijing.

The day didn’t start out well, as it took us 1 hour and 30 minutes to get off the ship and through a mandatory face-to-face meeting with Chinese immigration officials in the Tianjin terminal. We all tramped through the lines with our overnight bags for the 2-night stay in Beijing and showed the immigration people our passport, visa, and a paper copy of the photo page of the passport (which they eventually stamped). After making it through the terminal we had to find our bus (#12 of 24 buses). At that point, we surrendered our passports to the tour guide. The tour guides gathered all passports for transport in advance to the hotels being used.

We found our bus and were on our way at 10:15, after all passengers were on board the bus. For our entire time in Beijing, all three days, we stayed on the same bus with the same guide. That was very lucky, as our guide Mark was outstanding and had 25 years’ experience doing this in Beijing.

It’s about a 2-hour drive, in good traffic, into Beijing from the International Cruise Port. Along the way, Mark told us a lot about Chinese history (he’s a real history buff) and the surrounding countryside. For most of the way into town, the land was barren, dry, and flat -- Beijing is, after all, not too far from the Gobi Desert.

Of some interest was the large number of so-called “ghost towns” along the way. These are high-rise apartment and condo towers (probably at least 100 of them that we saw) built out in the middle of nowhere with nobody living in them. There are even major highways, traffic signals, toll booths, and other government construction; but no people. Mark told us that the government has been paying to have these cities built now, assuming they will run out of room for people in the large cities, and they will fill up these ghost towns eventually. So far, almost nobody seems interested, as there are no subways, no restaurants, no parks, and no activities for people out there.

The name Beijing means “north capital,” and it has a 3,000-year history, most of which Mark covered. We won’t bother to write out any of it. If interested, look it up in Google under Chinese History. The short version is that there have been innumerable wars with Manchuria and Mongolia over the centuries. A second fact – “In the past 30 years, we’ve built another China,” a reference to the massive amount of construction undertaken.

We got very lucky with the weather in Beijing. It was beautiful all three days, with the temperature today in the low 70’s (F) and mostly blue skies. Most amazing was that there was almost no air pollution, which Mark claimed was very unusual. He did say that the government is converting coal-fired heating plants to natural gas, and they are starting to build plants outside of the city. Maybe that’s helping. Of course, the government only supplies heating to the people from November to March, so we missed out on that luxury. The pollution did gradually increase over our three days in Beijing, but it didn’t even come close to being unhealthy as far as we could tell.

Our first stop of the day was for lunch at the Grand Beijing Hotel in a very large, attractive indoor courtyard. Of course, as we found throughout the three days, many of the buses from Crystal were all there at the same time. Nonetheless, the hotel staff handled our group of people very well, and the buffet food was very good. In fact, this was a nice hotel in a great location in the city.

After lunch we rode through terrible traffic congestion to the Summer Palace, in the northern suburbs of Beijing. This was a near mob scene, as today was a Chinese holiday, and the palace grounds were very (repeat very) crowded. This must be a favorite place for city dwellers to come on a day off. On the way here, we drove by the Beijing Zoo, and it was also very crowded; probably local people wanting to check in on how the pandas are doing. The tour company gave each of us an excellent radio headset, where we wore earplugs and could hear the tour guide very clearly as he was speaking. In fact, without those earphones, we don’t think we could have kept all of our people together in this crowd. Periodically, Mark would tell us to follow his sign as he turned at a corner, or to say where he was standing.

As the name implies, Summer Palace was the summer home for the emperor and his royal court. We passed by the Emperor’s house, the Empress’s house, and the Royal Mother’s house, while Mark kept us informed of what we were seeing. We couldn’t go inside any of them. The best part of the grounds, in our opinion, was the natural landscape of hills and a large lake. An impressive man-made feature was the “long corridor,” a nearly half-mile highly decorated, outdoor, wooden walkway along the lake. Another prominent feature is a large Buddhist temple, built by the last Emperor for his mother. The lake was crowded with families in small boats, but we did enjoy riding across the lake in a larger dragon boat.

On the way to our hotel we stopped for a photo opportunity at the “Bird’s Nest” stadium, site of the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Mark told us that the Chinese people are very proud of how well the games were received and felt that it put the spotlight on recognizing Beijing as a modern world capital.

Crystal split the 700 travelers between two hotels – either the Grand Hyatt or Shangri-La's China World Hotel. Our home for two nights was the China World Hotel, a genuinely great facility, smack in the center of a modern, commercial business district. Our room was excellent; food was great; and staff couldn’t have been nicer. 

For dinner the first evening, we were each given a voucher for 350 Yuan (US$54) to use in any one of three restaurants in the hotel. We went to the very nice Aria (International) Restaurant and both had excellent dinners.

Beijing Day 2 – April 4, 2016

Breakfast in the hotel was early this morning, as we had to be at the buses by 7:15 am for our journey to the Great Wall of China. We went down to one of the hotel’s restaurants at 6:30 and made it to the bus in plenty of time.

Leaving the hotel that early meant there was only minimal traffic, and the ride took about one hour to the parking lot for Juyongguan Pass – the nearest section of the wall to the city. Mark said the last time he did this drive in a bus it took five hours. Another reason to be early is that we were able to park the bus close to the base camp for our climb up the side of the mountain.

Juyongguan Pass is located in a valley lined by mountains on two sides, and it was a military stronghold as far back as the 7th century BC. In ancient times, smaller walls were built by various warring kingdoms to guard their areas of influence. According to Mark, it was during the Qin (pronounced Chin) dynasty that these kingdoms were united into the first imperial dynasty of China, and construction took place to link the walls together (about 210 BC), as a barrier to Mongolian and Manchurian invaders coming down from the north. At that time the wall zig-zagged for about 3,100 miles. It was extended to the west over time and then rebuilt during the Ming Dynasty 600 years ago. We read that the average width of the wall at the base is 21 feet, and at the top, some 18 feet. The standard height of the Great Wall is said to be 22 feet. There was much damage over time, including during the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976). Portions of the wall were renovated in the 1980’s using original materials and were opened to the public in the 1990’s.

We started our walking at about 8:45. The weather was absolutely perfect for our climb, with a bright blue sky, temperature of 66º F, low humidity, and no wind. We were given two hours to climb as far as we wanted and then return to the bus. Ginny stayed on the bus reading and working on a new needlepoint project she started on the ship.

Jim greatly enjoyed the climb, which was almost all steep stairs – some tall and some short (interspersed). Sometimes there were handrails to hang onto, and it was possible to make rest stops along the way at several towers and platforms. He returned to the base at about 10:00 and bought a magnet and t-shirt at a gift shop conveniently located there. Coming down was much harder than going up, in Jim’s opinion. The path was steep, and it was necessary to look down all the time to make sure of the height of the steps. He didn’t like going down the sections (mostly near the top) where there were no railings. If it had been rainy or wet, he wouldn’t have tried it. However, the view was beautiful, with Spring flowers and blossoming trees covering the mountains that we don’t see in Florida.

Everyone returned to our bus on time, and we set off for lunch, stopping at a local restaurant on the second floor of a large building. On the first floor was a government-controlled store with very expensive jade products for sale. The government guaranteed genuine jade, and the pieces we looked at were quite well done. Ginny did make one purchase – a Diet Coke -- but we didn’t acquire any of the jade treasures.

After lunch our bus returned to downtown Beijing for an unusual tour of one of Beijing’s hutongs, preservation areas of narrow streets and alleys. Mark said that a portion of the population (as much as 20%) don’t want to move into the new high-rise towers either inside or outside of the city. The government has allowed some of these older areas to remain behind, as a reminder of the old days. Near the Bell and Drum Towers (that used to announce time to residents before clocks were available), the area we visited contained courtyard houses, which formed quadrangles surrounded by high walls. Outside the quadrangle walls are hutongs – narrow alleyways that join the quadrangles to one another.

We toured this area on rickshaws, similar to the three-wheel cyclos that we rode in Hué a couple of weeks ago. The two of us were able to ride together in one “rickshaw.” A highlight of this unique experience was visiting with a local family, where we were able to converse with the owner/resident of a very small home. He claimed he and his family had lived in this quadrangle for more than 200 years, and he would live there until the day he dies. He had three relatives living in equally small homes within the single quadrangle. His house consisted of two rooms and a very small kitchen. There was no bathroom, as all residents of the hutongs must use public toilets located every few blocks or so within the community. We even saw a mahjong game in progress as we rode along.

This evening all 700 of us (24 bus loads) were invited to dinner at the Great Hall of the People, located at the western edge of Tiananmen Square. We understand this very large building is used for legislative and ceremonial activities by the National People's Congress (the Chinese ”parliament”), and by the Communist Party of China. In short, it’s the political hub of China. The Great Hall is also used for meetings with foreign dignitaries on state or working visits, as well as large anniversary celebrations. We felt honored to be invited to this function, which our guide Mark called a “state dinner.” Even though we were allowed to bring cameras, the two of us didn’t carry ours with us. This is a photo we took the next morning of the building from the center of Tiananmen Square.

Keeping this narrative short, we’ll summarize by saying that the visit involved walking up long flights of stairs, going through metal detectors, and admiring the size of the corridors and halls. To get up to the second floor, Ginny did find an elevator. We finally arrived at an extraordinarily large, regally decorated banquet room. Dinner was delivered by an army of formally dressed young people onto typical “Lazy Susan” arrangements at each table. 

After dinner there was a lot of entertainment – a classical symphony orchestra playing Viennese-waltz type music, followed by two singers of Italian opera, several acts of traditional Chinese theater (music, dance, and acrobatics); and lastly, a group of 7-year old girls doing traditional singing and dancing, followed by a similar size group of boys doing Kung Fu martial arts. It was quite an evening, and we didn’t get back to the hotel until after 10:30 pm.

We’ll include our third day in Beijing in our next blog posting.

Jim & Ginny