Charlton in Hong Kong
Beautiful Beijing
May 2, 2010
With Easter break came a wonderful time to travel, with Beijing's forecast of perfect sun shinny weather for a full week awaiting us we knew this was going to be amazing. Before the trip had been taken
we resolved with a local friend to order tickets online but on a Chinese website because it was around 1/3 cheaper in price than any flight findable on an English search engine. Not only did our local friend find us a huge discounted flight ticket, his father actually picked us up at the train station in Shenzhen to take us a full hours drive to the airport, and once there he even provided us with Mainland China SIM cards!! With such an amazing start to our trip things were only looking up, North that is, to Beijing!
Our first taste of Beijing life was a rather amusing one when the taxi driver at the airport would not give us a ride because our hostel was too close for him to make much money the police supervisor jumped in his car to steal away the taxi driver's license, then a game of keep away ensued very similar to how a 4th grader would taunt a 1st grader. 
This had all of the international travelers cracking a smile, but during this tirade from the taxi driver we brisk fully got into another taxi to take us to our "authentic" Chinese hostel.
The streets of Hutong were as traditional as they come with cheap, delicious street food for $1 RMB a stick. Just be careful as the motorbikes fly around like angry wasps, beeping at any and everyone in their way.
The hostel is just a big house converted into a hotel for travelers, little did we know that the majority of its guests were children. The family that runs the hostel has several children, there was a German group with upward of 10 kids staying there as well, so contrary to the typical night in a youth travel hostel, it was extra quiet by midnight which was rather nice due to our exhausted state from touring Beijing all day, when sometimes you might have to take a taxi just to go two blocks. Everything is so spread out, in comparison with Hong Kong it seems like Beijing built out, not up. Not only are the city limits huge, there is actually room on the sidewalks to walk unmolested! This roomy feeling is great, but short-lived upon arrival in the subway where everyone "congregates" piling on top of each other when there seems to be no room to spare.
Each statement above is the complete opposite of life in Hong Kong with both good and bad qualities. O yea, everything is 1/2 the price of Hong Kong goods and they are so desperate for business you should always have a starting haggling price 1/4th of what they offer, paying over half the price is you getting ripped-off. With these few differences in mind our journey could not have been more enjoyable!!! The order of our journey is as follows:
Tienanmen Square
Forbidden City
Great Wall
Beijing Opera
Summer Palace
Temple Heaven
Lama Temple
and the Olympic Stadiums
Charlton Pence is junior in Industrial Engineering. He is studying Chinese language and one engineering course at Chinese University of Hong Kong in Spring 2010.
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