Beijing - Day Two

Alright, well I'm attempting to make up for my lack of posts during my trip to Beijing by writing about it now...

Last Saturday (Day two in Beijing), we made an attempt at waking up early so that we could get over to Tiananmen Square in time before Mao's Mausoleum closed for the day at noon. But with very little success (we were pretty beat from the traveling and lack of sleep the day before), we opted to head to the Beijing Antique Market instead. It's basically a big outdoor market with hundreds of shopkeepers selling all kinds of antique goodies. Chinese souvenirs galore! Ibbi, Paul, and myself spent about 3 hours there, browsing almost every possible shop, bargaining like crazy, and we all left with various Chinese gifts to take home. It was time well spent, and we got a ton of great deals.

Here we are on our way to the market...taking the Beijing subway, which was not as nice or as easy to navigate as the Shanghai subway system ;-)

We got lost, so I had to ask some nice Beijing folk where the market was! Spending 5 days in Beijing was quite possibly the best thing that has happened to my Mandarin Chinese language abilities. In Shanghai, it's hard to retain what I learn because I don't speak Chinese all the time. In Beijing, English is not as readily available, so I was forced to use my Chinese much more often. I enjoyed the practice!

We made it to the market!

It was incredibly hot everyday in Beijing. Hotter than Shanghai (which is tough to do!). Here I am eating a banana popsicle, which are sold all over the city in busy areas. They only cost 15 cents, so I probably had 20 of them over the course of our entire trip ;-)

Here are Paul and I, rocking the sweat towels. The towel was crucial to us battling the heat. Water, popsicles, and sweat towels; that's what got us through each day!

Browsing some things...

Scoping out some Chinese artwork. There was a painting that I really wanted to buy, but it was too expensive, and the artist wouldn't drop her price low enough to what I wanted to spend, so I didn't get it.

After making a few key purchases, we headed off to the Yonghegong Temple (Lama Temple), a Tibetan Buddhist temple and monastery (one of the largest in the world). The architecture of the halls were incredible, and the detail of the design was unlike anything I've ever seen...

The temple was originally built in the late 1600s, as a residence for Emperor's families, and was later converted into a monastery in the mid-1700s.

From the temple, we went back to the hostel, ate dinner, spent some time in the wonderful air-conditioning, and then we headed to the Niu Jie Islamic Mosque (Cow Street Mosque). It was built in the late 900s, and is Beijing's largest and oldest mosque with some very interesting history. It is currently the Islamic Center for over 200,000 Beijing Muslims. First, we washed our hands, arms, legs, feet, face, etc in the Ablution Chamber which is used for body-washing to cleanse one's body and soul before al-Salat (prayer). The buildings' exteriors were all classic Chinese style architecture, while the interiors had very Arabic designs. Paul and I couldn't go into the worship hall, as we aren't Muslim, but Ibbi could.

They required that Paul and I put on these awesome MC Hammer parachute pants after we cleaned up in the Ablution Chamber, because your legs must be fully covered below your knees, so we agreed and happily put them on ;-) ...

We found a pretty cool little motorcycle cart :-) ...

I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: Chinese people love taking pictures with foreigners (especially Americans)! We snapped some shots with these lovely ladies, and then headed back to the hostel.

After hanging at the hostel for a bit, we found out that the famous Beijing Hou Hai Bar Street was just a 10 minute walk down the street (we couldn't have asked for a better location!), so we headed out to get some drinks. It was an awesome area: basically, a pretty good size lake (Hou Hai Lake) with about 50 or so different bars all around the perimeter...

The set up was excellent: as you walk down the street, lots of chinese men try to get you to come into their bar because their's is obviously 'the best and has the cheapest drinks', so you can actually bargain the price of your drinks. We would walk down the street and a guy would say 'you come to my bar, right here, I give you good price on beer, $2 for one'. Then we would reply with, 'right down the street it's only $1 for a beer'. Then he'd say, 'okay, I give you $1 price, you come in, I give you nice table.' (In very touristy areas, they often speak English! funny English...that's probably what I sound like when I speak Chinese)

I found some delicious mango smoothies for only $1.50...if you know me, you know how I feel about fruit smoothies ;-) I couldn't pass it up...

We convinced this guy to give us a ride back to our hostel from the bars on his tricycle that was clearly not made to carry 3 people on the back seat. ;-) I think we maxed out at 6 mph on the ride back, but it was awesome!

Overall, day two in Beijing was a great success :-) A day three update will be coming soon.

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PMM