After settling into our apartment and eating a well deserved breakfast, we headed to my old haunt of San Li Tun. I spent many a happy night enjoying the nightlife of Beijing and was looking forward to seeing how the area had changed. Where in 2000 and 2001 there had been a scattering of foreigners in the area there were now hundreds of people from all over the world. The calculator was the tool of trade in the hours spent wandering the markets in the summer of 2000, but now the market vendors could converse in several world languages! A few hours of wandering around the markets amongst the never ending abundance of clothes, shoes and various stuff, a well deserved dinner was required. We visited a famous Peking duck restaurant where I was told the duck was amazing :-) the rest of the food was great so I take the general consensus as true. The night concluded with a trip to the bars of SanLiTun.
The CTV offices an incredible building
The ladies taking a picture of the incredible building
Duck dinner
SanLiTun fun
On Friday Anna and I headed to District 798 which is located near Beijing University Art Campus and is an amazing few blocks of galleries of photography, sculpture, painting and shops full of pretty pretty stuff :-) It was hours of fun admiring the sculptures dotted around the place, eating a really good cheese sandwich and sifting through the pretty arty shops.
Anna with a statue we met :-)
This one is for Michael
I love this one
Saturday morning was time for 'Dirt Market' which is essentially an antiques market but it is really lots and lots of nicknacks, and lots and lots of fun! Linda, Anna and I had the best meal in a Muslim Chinese restaurant below our apartment block. I move forward to Sunday afternoon after the wedding banquet when HC and I paid a visit to eyeglasses city. Yes they have a whole block dedicated to glasses, in fact there a number of them around the city. Sunset was then spent back with the group watching the event of lowering the flag on Tianamen Square a site of so much pain in recent history and yet at the same time a monument to the magnitude of the nation as the square is full of people from all over China who have travelled for the daily event.
Lovely lunch
The Great Wall will get an entry to itself but here I will include the delightful tour lead by Tony himself around the old neighbourhoods of Beijing. It was Monday morning and after the fun of getting 6 people ready and out early (5 of them ladies!) we arrived at the meeting point a few minutes late but ready to explore. The small Hutongs of Beijing are a testament to the rapid changing landscape of the city. On one side of the road are towering over us were the new glass covered sky scrapers casting a shadow over the old houses from the time of the Emperors. We learned of the famous people who had lived and built here in the past, and of the recent history where large villas were divided to house lots of families moving to Beijing. The rest of Monday consisting eating and being pampered! We had the second lots of amazing amazing dumplings ordered by the bride herself and that evening we ate in a typical Hunan restaurant. The afternoon consisted of a full Chinese body massage which is something everyone should experience, followed by an amazing foot massage while looking at the most beautiful Chinese man I have ever seen - he looked like a young Genghis Khan! Unfortunately he wasn't doing my foot massage so all I could do was admire from afar!
A typical 'well-off' family in the Hutong
Kids being kids
The groom and our fantastic guide
Making noodles the traditional way
Wednesday morning was our departure for Shanghai, but my 6 days in Beijing and really experiencing it from the perspective of people who live there left me wanting more!
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