Hutong Pedicabs
For my final morning in Beijing, we were able to enjoy a pedicab tour of Hutong, considered the old city. Hutong is this charming part of Beijing with narrow streets, and all the buildings are in the old style—one story with grey tile roofs.We’d driven through this part of town briefly the night before, so I was glad to be able to take a closer look. It is kind of an eclectic mix of old and new, sort of like the rest of Beijing. Along the river, there is an area known as “Bar Street” which in the summer months is packed to overflowing with locals spilling out of the doors of their favorite watering holes, all with river front views.
Our first stop on the tour was to meet a local family, pictured here. Mr. Wu and Mrs. Wang. I was able to take a peek around their house and courtyard, which nosy me really enjoyed. They live in one house on a courtyard, while the other two houses in the same area are occupied by their sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren. Their entire courtyard area would originally have just made up the (rear) daughter’s courtyard of the original nobleman’s house.Although Mr. Wu spoke no English, we did get to chat through an interpreter. Now retired, he was originally an archaeologist for the Chinese government, with a specialty of porcelain and metalware. When they would unearth a new dig site, the pieces found would be sent to Mr. Wu for dating. Very cool stuff
After our chat with the Wu Family, our next stop was at a kindergarten school. While it was fun to see the children, I actually found this place kind of sad. Many of the children (aged 2-5) stay at this school all week long, only going home on weekends. Some of the kids are even long-term boarders and don’t go home for a month a time. I just kept 4emembering my days at summer camp and how depressed my seven year olds would get when they were separated from their parents for just three or four days, Anyway, I’m sure the children get used to it, but I couldn’t imagine being separated from a two year old.
The children here were quite cute, and very mischievous, so it was fun to watch them in high-energy action. May, my tour guide, had bought me a candied fruit stick, and stupidly we carried the candy into the kindergarten. So the whole time we were there, the kids plotted ways to steal the candy from us. When we did finally turn over one stick, there was a near war over how they were going to share the candy.
The final stop on the tour was a visit to the Huton Bell Tower. I think my Hutong guide was hoping I’d want to skip the climb to the top, but no way, I’m not missing a thing. So up we went, on what turned out to be a steep, but not difficult climb. The view was quite nice from the top, and here you see a photo of the roofs of Hutong in the foreground and New Beijing in the background.Hutong is directly on the main Meridian lines I was talking about a few days ago, so we were in direct line, immediately between Tiananmen Square and the Ming Tombs. The Hutong Bell Tower was the original end of the Meridian Line, before the Ming Tombs were built. (As an interesting note, the Beijing Olympics Village is also being built on this Meridian Line, somewhere between Tiananmen Square and the Hutong Bell Tower.)
After the Hutong Tour, we stopped for lunch at a Sichuan (Szechuan) restaurant. The food here was quite good, and I enjoyed a Kung Pao Chicken (among many other dishes) that had some kind of very fragrant peppercorn attached.
After lunch it was time for me to head to the airport. May (pictured here) and my driver, Mr. Su, knowing how much I enjoyed the Chinese 56% rice wine had bought me some loose tea and some rice wine as a present for being such a nice guest. I really enjoyed traveling with them, and wish they were heading on with me to my next destination.At the airport May and I even had time to enjoy a nice Starbucks (total Mocha withdrawls here), before I boarded my plane.
Xian City
Xian is considerably larger than I expected it to be. In total the city is about 7 million people, with about 5 inside the city borders and another 2 outside. I guess I expected it to be more of a country village, but I was very wrong.
Because I arrived at Xian rather late, my dinner tonight was to be in-hotel dining, at the Sheraton hotel, which is quite well known for it’s cuisine throughout the area. However, as soon as I learned it was Mediterranean food, I rebelled against the system.
I knew that Xian is very famous for a type of lamb stew with dumplings, so I found out (from the gift shop lady) a place that serves this famous dish. She wrote everything I needed in Chinese, so all I had to do was show the taxi driver and off I went.
My 20 minute taxi ride into downtown was only $1.50 and the dinner, which included a huge bowl of the most delicious lamb stew, as well as a bowl of Hot & Sour Soup (giant-sized) and two large sized bottles of beer, only cost me $6. I was living like a queen.
Tomorrow morning, we’re off to see the Terra Cotta Warriors, Just can’t wait.
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