Beijing is the Capital of china. It is also very cold.
We spent a long time here, and there was a lot to see.
Word(s) of the day
Bei 北- North
Jing 京- Capital
After a full day of travel on high speed train from Nanyang, we arrived late in beijing. We spent the night at the train station.
The first day was spent walking down the main avenue of beijing and seeing what we find.
Beijing Cat
Bell tower and Drum tower
The ancient town square of beijing has a traditional pair of towers - one for the bell and one for the drums.
This pair of towers is traditional at the entrance of buddhist temples.
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| Walking further down the main street was the main lake, a crowded area. |
We also stopped at a caligraphy store that sells traditional chinese brushes for writing and met an artist. To demonstrate her brushes, she made a test character one a canvas. I asked to keep it - it is my keepsake from the trip.
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Forbidden City
Most people know of the forbidden city located in the center of beijing. There is a large hill directly north of it, so we headed there to get a view.
A unique aspect of the city that I haven’t seen anywhere else, is that the center of beijing is an ancient city - surrounded on all sides by modern buildings. It’s like being in a giant bowl.
On our way back north, we went through another park after dark, for it’s white tower.
The Great Wall at Badaling
The next day we took a bus north of the city to see the Great Wall.
The nearest place is a small mountain site called Badaling.
Badaling is located at the bottom of a valley, and you can follow the wall up the north side and the south side. We went up the north side first.
Some spots were steeper than I would have thought.
Also, being in china, some spots of the wall were crowded. We had to be smart and take side paths to avoid the traffic jams.
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After Badaling, decided to tack on the olympic village in beijing. I think of beijing most when I think about the olympics, and wanted to see the stadium there.
Heaven Temple
The next day was spent exploring on the south side, first at the temple of heaven park.
This is an ancient temple preserved for thousands of years.
We also tried to visit Tiananmen Square. But after an unusual detour through a long, policed corridor, we found out that we needed to have reservations. It was closed for some special reason.
CBD - Central Business District
On the last day, we went downtown to see the tall buildings.
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Finally, after 6 days in beijing, we were ready to go back south towards shanghai.
On our way to the train station, we visited one last place, an ancient canal in central beijing.
But before we needed to leave, we had one more place to explore: Nanjing.