We woke up early to go to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City and explore a hutong near our hostel. The previous night, we ended up eating in a place near Happy Dragon which didn’t have a menu in English or doesn’t even have pictures. So I just ordered what the people in the next table are eating. Since it was already 11pm, only guys drinking beer were left in the place. So I just pointed at the guys’ pulutan or sumsuman. I told my companions to just point at anything. So they randomly pointed on an item on the menu. The randomly pointed dishes turned out good ones, representative of Beijing local food, spicy and oily. I liked the extra spicy vegetables served with beef. If only the guy on the other table stopped spitting on the floor, it would’ve been a really nice meal.
In the second morning, we had breakfast at the place near Happy Dragon. It’s a small eatery where old Chinese folks have their breakfast. They were only serving porridge and an assorted array of fried dough plus hardboiled egg. Each of us had porridge, a hardboiled egg and the fried dough and total cost was just P60. A P20 breakfast!
We then took a train in Line 1 and got off Tiananmen West station, one of the two stations (Tiananmen East) adjacent to the famous square. Since this is one of Beijing’s top attractions, I was expecting throngs of tourists and I wasn’t disappointed. Aside from tourists, the place was also sprawling of soldiers doing drills. It was one of the many grand production numbers Beijing has prepared for its visitors.
After walking around the square, we went to the Forbidden City or the Palace Museum which is just at the back of the square. The palace museum is composed of several palace-like (!) structures, which were used by the Emperor and his family. It is called Forbidden City because before only the emperor, his family and his close minions can live in the city.
The entrance to the city was intimidating. I felt like an intruder. The movie “Last Emperor” was filmed in this city. The entire complex is huge and it took almost two hours for us to get to the other side of the city without even lingering too much. After getting our fill of palaces (after a while everything looked the same), we decided to look for the Hutong where we’re going to stay for our third night. The place is called “Sitting on the City Walls”, a courtyard house in the middle of a hutong. It was adjudged as one of the best hostels in Beijing in 2008 and 2009.
But there was one complication; I forgot the map with directions to “City Walls”. Good thing, I was able to study the map before and somehow I had an idea of the general direction of the place coming from the Forbidden City. So we decided to explore the small streets behind the gugong, and fortunately we saw a tourist information center. We asked for directions from the friendly girls in the counter and fortunately they know where it is. The entrance to the hutong is a small alleyway beside a sports center where people play ping pong and some play some sort of checkers (probably Chinese!). The hutong is a maze of traditional Chinese houses. We ended up walking into a dead end with no signs of the City Walls. Then my companion found an arrow with a sign that says City Walls. The sign was so high up (probably two stories high) that you probably cant see it unless you were watching out for something to fall from the sky. I guess part of the place’s charm is getting lost in a hutong and exploring one of Beijing’s fast disappearing gems, the hutong.
It was Rick the owner of City Walls who gave us an orientation of the place and nearby sites. He gave us helpful tips where to go and eat. Since it was already our second day on the city, I was half-listening.
We decided to walk in the direction of Happy Dragon to get our bags. And all around, we saw parts of hutongs being demolished to give way to high-rise buildings. We had our linner (lunch and dinner) of mostly Cantonese cuisine in Nanluoguxiang, a quaint little street (over a kilometer long) is packed with bars, cafes, restaurants. What stood out are the very dusty tables in the restaurant, which turned out to be my first encounter with the dust from Gobi desert. Beijing suffers periodically from dust from the nearby Gobi desert. (And I thought the ladies were just too lazy to wipe the tables)
Upon leaving Nanluoguxiang, the weather turned nasty cold. So it was an afternoon of Gobi dust and Siberian breeze. We rushed to the nearest bus stop to take a bus to Happy Dragon. But alas, the signs were all in Chinese. Even the bus numbers were in Chinese. But a group of friendly non-English locals helped us. At first it was just the elderly traffic aide then a bunch of elderly folks and finally a young couple whose English vocabulary was limited to “Follow” and then several minutes after “Take Bus”. In the span of twenty minutes, only three words were uttered but those were enough.
They even accompanied us to our bus stop even if they were going towards a different direction. Thank God for friendly people randomly scattered in the streets. The couple's small act of kindness was the highlight is this day.
At night, we explored The Egg (National Center for the Performing Arts) and Qianmen St. The walk towards Qianmen also allowed us a night view of Tiananmen Square without the throng of tourists and soldiers.
Day Two was again an affirmation, every place you visit might have the best sights but at the end of the day, it's the people you meet along the way that makes a place more special. Random strangers with their acts of kindness.
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