ItchyFeetBlog

The last couple of days have been packed visiting the Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Beihai Park and toured lots of hutong – these are ancient alleyways lined with shanty town-like dwellings and old shop fronts and house up to 4 generations of one family in tiny spaces.

Temple of Heaven

Outside a hutong area

Ordering Chinese

One issue that I wasn’t actually expecting is that very few people here know English; not even ‘yes’ or ‘no’. A lot had advised that English was well-known here so I was surprised. Ordering meals consists of a lot of pointing at my China phrase book, some make shift sign language and lots of laughter! It’s great fun though. I’m sure I’ve already eaten some weird and wonderful things but, touch wood, no dodgy stomach yet so can’t have been doing too badly! And besides one incident of a bucket load of tofu that tasted like rubber, it’s all been delicious! Two of my favourite Chinese dishes are below: congee and noodle soup.

Congee

Noodle soup

Scams and tourist traps

Scams is a fairly strong word so I wouldn’t call them that as such, but Beijing is covered in people trying to sell you something. Whether it’s an overpriced rickshaw or a “Rolex”. However, I was approached by two Chinese girls who were art students. They invited me to see their paintings and artwork at a nearby small exhibition – it was stunning! Of course there was a sales pitch at the end. Still, I’m happy that I purchased a gorgeous silk scroll at a fairly reasonable price (I could have done better I think) with a horse painting on it that is an imitation of one by one of my favourite artists, Xu Bei Hong, just like this one:

Xu Bei Hong horse painting

Photo Attraction

I’ve been photographed a thousand times. It’s hilarious! Chinese women especially tug on my arm and point to their friend who is waiting eagerly with a camera in hand to take a snap as she poses next to me. It’s VERY funny. I should start charging though! It’s probably because of my painfully white skin! Chinese girls do everything they can to keep their skin white, even wearing elaborate sun visors to protect them from the sun. The guys do like to do a bit of paparazzi’ing too – it’s funny when you catch them at it:

There are hundreds of other things I have seen and done that I want to write about, but two things are stopping me: the first is that I could spend my entire time blogging about it all instead of seeing it (a no-no), and the second is that the Internet is fairly slow which makes uploading photos very tedious! But keep watching my Flickr photo gallery (see thumbnails in the right-hand sidebar) as I’ll add photos and stories there that I can’t fit on here! And of course, the odd tweet from my Twitter account will fill the gaps wherever I get wi-fi!