Great Wall and the Forbidden City

After two pretty much ruined weekends in a row, it was finally time to get out and be a good tourist. On Saturday the smog situation was luckily quite good as the Air Quality Index on the US Embassy page "only" said very unhealthy instead of hazardous like it did on Sunday.

I had heard that it can be a bit colder at the wall than in the city so I put on some extra clothes. When arriving at the parking lot, it seemed that this was not enough as I was freezing at first. Luckily it got warmer once we got to the wall itself and the sun started warming us up.

Since the wall is so, well, great, there are a lot of different sections to go to. Badaling is most popular one and swarming with tourists in the peak holiday times. We went to the Mutianyu section instead which is a bit further away but it's apparently easier to park there. We left so early that when we got there, the parking lot was almost empty. On the way to the entrance you are bombarded by dozens of people selling souveniers, warm clothes etc from their booths. There were not many tourists to choose from so we got the attention of them all.

We used the same cable car as Big Willy

We opted to use the cable car for going up and then walking back down. This was a good choice since this section of the wall is high up in the hills. Even coming back down seemed to take forever.

The wall was pretty much as seen from the TV. What suprised me though was that it was basically just climbing stairs either up or down all the way. Very rarely was it flat. Even this short section that we walked was a good workout. There were very few others there this early and I think the most number of people we ever saw at any one time was around 20 which is not what I was expecting.

My poor legs

After leaving Mutianiy, we went back to Beijing to see the Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. I knew that both were pretty large areas but after already walking quite a bit at the wall, seeing the actual scale of the Forbidden City was pretty daunting.

Thomas the Tank Engine?

At the Forbidden City we saw very few Westerners. This is not exactly the peak tourist season and the recent widely reported news of the bad air quality have probably made some people reconsider their travel plans.

There are three main halls in the outer court of the Forbidden Palace. They all have imperial thrones like this one in the Hall of Preserving Harmony

Smoggysmog

For the first two weekends, I unfortunately could not go out much since the first one was ruined by the poor air quality outside and the second by me having a cold.

I of course knew about the poor air quality in Beijing before coming here but during the first weekend it was so bad that it broke all previous records. The scale used for measuring the number of small particles in the air did not even go high enough to measure the real level. This was a widely reported news not just all around the world but also here in Beijing where authorities advised people to stay indoors. Looking out the window, you didn't need any scale to realize how bad it was.

The scale used by the US Beijing Embassy. The max value of 500 was not high enough. Just a note: in 2006 when smoke of the large scale Russian forest fires blew towards Finland, the amount measured in Helsinki was 165. 150 is the level of being unhealthy and since the smoke could be seen and smelt in the air, it was a big local news story. In the three weeks I've now been in Beijing, it has rarely dropped below 200.

Past 24 hours

Even so, I have done quite a bit of walking in the Chaoyang District. The main streets are packed with shops and restaurants (and cars) but when you go into the side streets, you can see how the locals live.

The yard of a local school

This is what the coal plant that I can see from my hotel window looks like up-close. There must be hundreds of these things in the city.

Fancy some cheap Nokias or iPhones?

Old buildings get torn down. This site will most likely have a skyscraper by the end of the summer.

I have seen several places where you can rent bikes. Shouldn't be too difficult even though it's not in English

The bikes are not exactly hip though

I hear it snows maybe 3-4 times a winter.

Some yummy veggie dish, or what's left of it anyway

Peking duck. You take the duck (top right), dip it in the black sauce, put it in the tortilla/pancake looking flour thingies on the left, add some veggie sticks and then fold it a few times. After that, it's easy to eat by hand.

Who doesn't like some unexploded small owls?

A Change of Scenery

Before returning back to Finland, I was offered the opportunity to travel to Beijing, China for a couple of months starting from just before the New Year. Again it was not an easy decision but after thinking about it for a while, I said yes. The flight was moved out a week from the original plan so I got to spend five weeks in Finland including Christmas and New Year.

The hotel and the office are in the Chaoyang District in Beijing which has most of the embassies and the central business district. The traffic is quite chaotic but you don't really see any old cars in the streets. This cute pink Porsche is no exception.

The trip to Colorado didn't offer any kind of a culture shock but I knew this was going to a be a different animal. The language barrier is one thing but that's only a part of it. I did not really know what to expect so I went in with an open mind. I was most worried about the food situation as I am kind of a picky eater and Chinese food (or rather, the western perception of what that might entail) has never been my favourite. I'm not exactly a pro with chopsticks and the first few times when having lunch, I felt like a total idiot and had to revert to the strange spoon that's only really meant to be used with soup. The locals did get a few chuckles out of that.

The whole city seems to be full of skyscrapers and more and more seem to rise out of the ground all the time. The Chaoyang District alone has roughly 3.6 million people so it's no wonder that old buildings get torn down and replaced by these high-risers.

The first work week has been mainly spent inside the office and in bed. Getting used to the jet lag takes a while but the worst is now over. The week when I arrived had been a really chilly one but it has warmed up a bit and now the highs in the daytime are above freezing. The smog had varied quite a bit and opening up the curtains in the morning can reveal anything from blue skies to just a wall of grey. One night I woke up twice thinking that something was burning in the hotel based on the smell but it was just the smog creeping in from the outside.

A surprisingly clear sky in one morning

My hotel is right next door to this place

I have not ventured too far away from the office and the hotel area yet since it's already been dark when I've left the office. I'm not really sure what to do in this first upcoming weekend but I'm sure I can think of something :)

Walking to work on a foggy Friday morning. Those electric rickshaws make almost no noise so be sure to double check when crossing roads.