The great loop of China - April 2018 - Page 2

Before even getting to the palace I went for a long walk on the search for coffee and ended up walking around Houhai lake, just in case I didnt get to do enough walking later. People fish in this lake, brave people. There are also numerous heavily amplified karaoke sessions going on to wake up everyone withing a 5 mile radius.

Unfortunately I was too early to rent one of these boats, but the attendants in their blue overalls stood to attention and sang an old sea shanty as their boss corrected their posture.

I found a place nearby for breakfast, obviously not Chinese style, it even has Chia seeds, with yogurt and banana. Coffee was terrible!

Still not at the summer palace, but I did find a newly restored old street. Newly restored old streets are the newest sensation in the old parts of Beijing.

Now I am at the summer palace, and its very popular with domestic tour groups. The few foreigners that I spotted all had guides. Why would you want a guide? Everyone I see who has a guide is busy trying to educate their guide on how their country compares favorably to China. The guides pretend to care, because they are guiding Americans, who will tip at the end of the day based on how well you have received criticism.

Instead of going to the palace, I went the other way, because I am a fool, and walked the entire perimeter of the lake. I am always securing the perimeter of something.

Here is an old bridge to an island. I needed a zoom lens today (my camera is a fixed prime lens), and of course it would be good if the pollution disappeared.

Here is another bridge. The water was very clean, in some of my photos it looks greener than it was. Possibly reflections from all the awesome trees.

And here are the awesome trees, it was very pleasant walking along under them looking at the blossoms and making Chinese children anxious.

Another bridge. Old people were actually swimming in the water near here! I couldnt really get a photo that looked like anything other than debris floating in the water. Old people love to parade around like proud peacocks in their bathing suits.

There are many snack stores along the path that look like ancient temples. Water was not ridiculously over priced like it was on the great wall. Probably because there are a lot less foreign tourists here.

Another bridge, most of them were built in the 1700's.

Here is every color of blossom, white, red, pink, yellow. I guess orange is missing, I have definitely seen orange before.

This family of swans have even constructed a small house for themselves with a nice view of their pond.

Here we have a touching scene. Nanna has been brought to the lake to look at the blossoms once more, before her daughter rolls her into the lake for becoming too much of a burden.

A different kind of bridge.

This is the man made causeway thats a couple of miles long. There actually was a sign saying it had been constructed specifically to mimic the west lake at Hangzhou. There is actually somewhere in Japan where they did the same thing, I went there and took a photo of that too. I have now been to all three Hangzhou west lakes.

NO ROMPING!

A bit more of the green lake.

Now we leave the lake and head into palace world, here is a gate and some ladies who have dressed up for the occasion.

If you suffer from hay fever, do not come here

This ancient boat is made from solid ivory. It must have been a huge elephant!

Now I entered the land of the Buddha. Everything from now on had some kind of ridiculous name. The grand hall of indeterminable incense for divine predictions.

Looking out over the effervescent courtyard of the 7 truths of the condor. Looks like a computer game.

Looking back up from my vantage point at the former site of the well where the prince king ascended and transformed into a sacred ghost.

This is actually a garden according to the signs, without any plants. The garden of divine gratitude, that is its real name. How can it be a garden!

This grandma is posing in the sun, in a rain coat with an umbrella. They were having a great time. Everyone was! I posed for 5 photos with random middle aged Chinese women who insisted I be in their photos.

This is another garden, I forget its name, something harmonious. There were goldfish.

After walking through the actual garden areas, I arrived at the last stop today inside the summer palace compound, Suzhou street. Suzhou is a famous water city (think Venice) near Shanghai. I have already been there twice!

A bit more Suzhou street, I wonder how many people fall in when this place is crowded? There is no guard rail and the path is very narrow in places.

Second to last photo, Suzhou street with a bridge.

And one more for good measure with a lantern. The summer palace was an excellent place to go, accessible by subway, entrance fee about $10 that gets you into everything, opportunities to walk an epic distance, a hill to climb, all it needs is a proper place to sit and enjoy a coffee - the Hangzhou west lake has lots of places!

I am staying in the old city, very near the forbidden city. Tonight I walked towards the new city, where the buildings start to get taller and more modern. However the even bigger buildings are still a long way off in the distance in the smog. The CCTV 'pants' building is still a few kilometres away from here. Beijing is enormous.

The worlds largest bank by every measure (I think or is it their competitor ICBC?). Either way, Bank of China is huge and has a huge building. Actually they have lots of huge buildings.

Here is a line. Everyone has seen a line before. Maybe you have also seen youtube videos of crowded Chinese subway stations. Well this is a line to get into the station, and the platform is a long way underground, so presumably that platform is full, as are all the stairs and escalators, resulting in a line out into the street. Glad I decided to walk.

A whole street full of dubious clubs and karaoke bars. They dont want me as a customer, my awesome singing would intimidate the other patrons into leaving.

In the up market mall area now, and here is the biggest advertising installation I ever saw. The screen behind everything here is easily 4 floors high.

Its a giant monkey, hanging off a building, shooting laser beams out of its eyes.

Here, have a bit more mall.

I have absolutely no idea what this store was selling, it also does not seem to be an art gallery. The guy running the store was asleep.

I like it when they light up the trees.

This is the awesome intercontinental hotel. It has an LED exo-skeleton that can be lit up in any color of full motion video. You would have to see it to understand.

Sorry about the blurry vision, it was a moving subject in the dark. In amongst the parade of Lamborghinis this went past. A husband and wife transporting plastic crates on their bicycles. The lead bike is electric, pulling the second one with a rope. They were adding to the general traffic chaos.

I found my dinner under here somewhere.

OMUSOBA! Its an omelet filled with soba noodles. I think I have eaten too many noodles. Presentation was lacking but it was delicious.

Nearby is a car dealership for future electric cars that dont exist yet. You know they are electric because they have used an exciting electric blue pattern, blue being the globally recognized color of electric car.

If you saw cola flavored potato chips with a black colored pug dog on the packet, would you buy them? Of course you would. The cola flavor was really very strong too!

And now as I was typing this, some cards appeared under my hotel room door. Another day over, another 45,000 steps today, many more tomorrow!

Here is the entrance to the fragrant hills park, it has an entrance fee of about $3. In a communist country everything must have an entrance fee otherwise the people will over use it.

Inside the gate is the first of many temples. They were all great and the gardens and stone work were very high quality, sparkling clean. The photos will be ruined by the smog.

This is what China calls a hiking path. Everywhere was this quality of path, even paths where I saw no one for hours which I assume are never used. The majority of people take one of 2 cable cars up, but there were still a few people walking the main route to the top.

The title of todays post says many amenities. There were bins everywhere, countless public toilets, and no rubbish anywhere. I read a review that talked about wading through waist high piles of garbage, I saw nothing at all. Did I go to a different park?

A bit more path, despite being a very over engineered hiking experience, it was still very enjoyable. I was surprised it was as hard as it was, steep in places, long stair cases, people doubled over sweating gallons of hot water.

A view across to another peak. I walked all along the top to this peak in the distance. The park has a mini great wall all the way around it with razor wire on top to discourage locals from cheating on the entrance fee. I did read that some local un-harmonious citizens offer a ladder service for a discount rate of $1

Here we have the Chinese girl hiking outfit. Its about 30 degrees celsius today. That means you need a full long sleeve, long pants plastic shiny pink track suit. Useless little bag, furry toys attached to useless bag, multiple cell phones, useless crap hanging off the cell phone, inappropriate shoes.
They are also both wearing headbands with plastic flowers glued onto them which I saw an old lady selling by the entrance. You might be wondering why there are no headphones to complete the ensemble, dont worry, one of them is streaming Korean pop music on her phones loudspeaker.

Here is the 'view', squint and you might be able to see the cable car.

Have a bit more view, featuring blossoms.

It only took about an hour to reach the summit snack bar temple, but I enjoyed it a lot. The summit area wasnt even crowded today, probably because most people would only bother spending the money for the cable car on a clearer day.

Summit view.

View of angry psychopath.

Here we have the summit rock marker, and a large citizen monitoring camera tower to make sure everyone behaves in a harmonious manner. Swearing will get you 3 points on your license, littering 5, 20 points and you cant fly anymore, 50 points and you cant buy train tickets. Chinese facial recognition artificial intelligence technology is next level. There was a news story the other day about a camera locating a wanted man in a stadium with 30,000 people, they were not looking for him there specifically, its just that the cameras are scanning everyone, all the time.

The view over the back of the mountain. There seemed to be paths and temples and pagodas everywhere the eye could kind of see if you squinted and invented things in the distance.

Incense Bumer, sea ievei, enshrouding the perk. I think enshrouding the perk is my favorite.

I keep mentioning snack bars inside temples. here is the inside of the summit temple. I think this is great, Japan should do this! Instead they mount neon lit vending machines to the side of their temples.

More attempted view of cable car.

Beijing, and a listening monitoring station. These dishes were everywhere!

Now we get to the surprise brand new awesome temple. It really was brand spanking new, not even on the map. It was also awesome.

It was also 'free' as in, included in the park entry price, with a giant curving stair case to the top. I was excited.

Some of the view from the top, this was all well hidden because it is built on an extreme slope, I had no idea it was here until I stumbled onto the top of it. It is impossible to photograph the full compound from the top or the bottom due to how steep it is.

One last temple shot, or so I thought.

Here are some local thugs forced to do community service gardening.

On my way in, it cost money to go into this temple. But I must have descended down a path that sent me into the back of it without knowing for free. Nice trees, nice bridge.

The street back to the super slow tram was also quite nice, lots of little shops and cafes. It will look a lot nicer once the leaves return to the trees properly.

Back in town now, and if you live in a big Australian city and go to where the Chinese people live, you will have seen these karaoke booths. Here is an entire store filled with them. I paid my money and sung the milkshake song by kellis, not too many words to remember.

And here is my very late lunch, Sandwich and salad. It was very good, the balsamic dipping sauce thing was excellent.

This is a modern Beijing apartment building. It looks like London or Paris, only they are not limited to exactly 5 levels.

The formal ballroom dancers have arrived. I cut in and took the next dance, it was my lucky day, the foxtrot. I excel at the foxtrot.

Here is a humble office building, glowing in the afternoon haze.

And here it is. Beijing station. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
This is the central Beijing station, the only old station without a high speed service. Only the slow trains to places I am not allowed to go to come here (Russia, Mongolia, North Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Tibet etc). Kim Jung-un's train came here with him on it the other week.

I came to Beijing station to make my ticket exchange. The line experience in a Chinese train station is about as you would expect. I told a few line cutters that they were a disgrace to their country and culture, as I grabbed them and pushed them back behind me.

Sea of thieves. Not joking really, there is a huge police presence at this station. I made it out fine! The pedestrian bridges over the highway are full of beggars and people playing that game with 3 cards where you have to guess which one is the ace or whatever. You can also buy lasers to shine at aircraft from some random Russian dude who asks you if you perhaps also want a Kalashinikov?

I fled the scary station and headed into Beijings gay district. I assume thats what the rainbow means?

This took me to the modern SoHo area. These are mostly little restaurants. Its a very nice place.

A bit more of SoHo, its an integrated commercial, retail, residential community with no cars.

I selected a small place for my $4 dinner, and here is the beef! It was pretty good too, excellent quality noodles.

It was late by now, but I walked along the main road past all the huge modern malls. I still have never properly been to this part of Beijing and it looks like I will run out of time on this visit too!

But I did get to the pants building. A great feature of my camera is the screen folds out, which I never use for its intended purpose, instead it works as a make shift tripod for long exposures.

Last photo for tonight, a tall modern building. Came out quite well for hand held. Unlike the pants building, this one was very brightly lit.

This is the end of the line for the subway, but its actually a different city called Changping. It had a huge number of bakeries, I indulged in a cake before starting my bus stop comedy routine.

I am constantly amazed at how many public toilets there are in Beijing, and also signs pointing you towards them, they are just about on every corner. Here I am out in a farming orchard, and a brand new toilet block has appeared. It is the only building for hundreds of metres in any direction (I was taking a short cut).

My short cut took me around the back of this huge reservoir, apparently the main one for drinking water for Beijing.

It has an island with a pagoda on it. There is a big fence all the way around it to prevent me from swimming out to the island.

After at least 3 hours of travel, I had found my park! CLIMBING STEPS! Other signs told me it was the longest set of climbing steps in China. I dont know what that means though.

Before starting the climb, it was time to play Mario kart rainbow road stage at the Buddhist temple.

And here is the fat Buddha, celebrating diversity with his love of homosexuals and their rainbows. Actually for whatever reason it was the first annual Holland windmill festival? Those are the destination mountains for today in the background.

Thats a bit more of Buddha, he told me to hurry up and climb the damn mountain.

I progressed through the rainbow umbrella tunnel...

...and arrived at the amusement park. More windmills.

At first there was a false start, I found some wooden stairs but they were closed off. But then I found the real climbing stairs! Like the great wall there were a few work groups doing team building here today.

I heard a rumor that the view is great on a clear day.

That is the resort area at the top where I talked to middle aged women who insisted on wiping the sweat from my overly large forehead.

This is why the wooden step path was closed, still under construction. There is no cable car today, rare for China!

Hiking info is hard to come by, but wherever I see hills I see little huts on the top like this. It seems hard to get to most of them. That one is outside of the fenced off area for the park that I am in.

I thought that pagoda looking thing in the distance would be my destination today when I was squinting up through the fog and smog from the bottom, but subsequent investigations reveal it to be a fire spotting tower, off limits.

Here is a cat, there were actually 3 cats and a Chinese girl feeding them cat food. They were very happy cats.

I even got lost exiting this park, following the grand pathway down to a series of less grand rocky trails thinking they would lead somewhere. They did not, I had to loop back to the parking lot and go out the only entrance back to the bus.

Back to the satellite city and I went to a different bakery, there really were at least 10, and bought a delicious sandwich.
I went hiking up something every single day I was in Beijing!

On my way to Tiananmen square I passed the Crowne Plaza hotel, normally this big sign has the menu for the night on it, right now me and lots of interested local delivery drivers are watching somebody update a spreadsheet. Accountants everywhere are wishing they could do similar, perhaps its time for SPREADSHEET STADIUM!

Now I am in London. This place is 8 levels high.

I remembered this garden from last time I was here. Still here, still great. This photo was taken right at dusk, hence the funky lighting.

Here is the security line to enter the square. There was security everywhere.

On my way under the road I saw the changing of the guard. I wasnt sure if I could take a photo but locals were following along taking video. Blurry vision photo, dont bother loading the large version.

And this is as close as I can get to the square today. Why was it closed? I cant be sure, but the army was having a night time sports day inside, a running race in full uniform. Some soldiers were cheering others on, the runners really seemed to be trying hard.

More square. I couldnt tell who won the race, but they seemed very happy! None of this translated into photos at all. I wanted to run a lap though!

The entrance to Qianmen shopping street.

The area now extends to various side streets, last time I was here these were all closed for refurbishment.

I passed an art auction. I get the feeling it was all staged to lure tourists. The auction was being conducted in English.

A bit more of the main shopping street here.

This area has some western stores now (H&M, Zara), but the main places are still like this, very Chinese, mostly junk. Also theres lots of cafes, restaurants, bubble tea, bakeries. So many bakeries.

I dont remember this street from last time, it runs off the side of the main one for many miles. I followed it all the way into a hutong (old neighbourhood).

The further you went the older looking the new buildings became.

I selected a restaurant, it was one of about 5 similar places adjacent to each other where a number of laneways met. Ordering was easy, not only are their pictures, but theres English. I was surprised there was English.

I chose what I thought was the healthiest thing, scrambled eggs with leeks and chilli. Theres also a bit of black fungus. I added a lot of chilli and black vinegar, it was delicious.