Day 3 - Sunday, Sept 15 - In Beijing

The sun was shining brightly when I woke up before 6am with a surprisingly good night’s sleep.

The breakfast restaurant had a huge variety of Western and Chinese foods, from made-to-order omelets to spring rolls, salads, fruit and more. There must be a number of Muslim guests as most of the foods had labels “Muslim” or “non-Muslim” or Halal or non-Halal.

After breakfast, we bought a map of Beijing at the hotel desk and headed out. We stopped at a clothing shop near the hotel and my mother bought a light-weight shirt for only about $10.

Although there are crosswalks where pedestrians nominally have the right of way, bicycles and motor scooters tend to charge through a red light even when pedestrians have a green “walk” light. We were crossing one street when the light was red for vehicles and a car made a “right on red” turn without even slowing down – we had to jump out of the way. In order to reduce pollution, all motorized scooters and trikes need to be battery powered.

Couple on battery-powered trike

Distances are much further than they would seem on the map. We thought we would visit the natural history museum a couple blocks away but it turned out to be over a mile. We started to walk down a little alley and a woman coming out motioned that we weren’t allowed to go in. She called someone who spoke English to give us information on how to get to the history museum near Tiananmen Square including which bus to take. I don’t know if the person we spoke with was the English tourist information or just someone who knew English. We didn’t want to take the bus but the woman kept on trying to help us get the right bus!

It was very confusing how to buy tickets at the museum. Near the entrance there were signs explaining how to do something, not sure what, on one’s cell phone. We found a ticket booth and were about to pay but the ticket person asked for our passports and said we didn’t have to pay anything. It looked like the cost was $2-$3 but my ability to read Chinese is very limited. The museum was very interesting with displays from dinosaurs (some animatronic) to prehistoric mammals to current wild animals around the world. It was interesting to see the displays about evolution – creationists certainly wouldn’t approve. Fortunately, there was some English signage in the museum so we could understand a bit.

From there we walked down to the large park around the Temple of Heaven but decided not to go in as that is part of our tour on Tuesday. At this point we had walked about two miles and had to walk back to the hotel. My mom was feeling much more tired than usual from walking and a small miracle occurred when a mini-taxi stopped and asked us if we wanted a ride. It was basically a motorized tricycle with a back seat barely large enough for the two of us. Along the way he gave us commentary by speaking Chinese into his phone and showing us the English translation. He informed us that the British didn’t want immigrants (!) and that this was the 70^th anniversary of the Chinese revolution in 1949 which I had forgotten. He wanted 100 yuan (about $16) for the 10 minute ride to our hotel which seemed excessive and we got him down to 80 yuan which still seemed too much. The two-hour ride from the airport was only 180 yuan. He was quite a cheery guy and was happy to have us take a photo of him. He welcomed us to Beijing and hoped we had a good visit.

Mini-taxi back to hotel

We had lunch at the hotel restaurant, ordering an interesting cucumber salad, noodle soup and local beer. The cucumber salad was interesting because the cucumber was sliced so that the pieces were all still attached like a spiral. It was seasoned with chili peppers and was quite tangy. The noodles were a challenge to get out of the bowl and eat as they were about two feet long! The beer was very light, like Coors.

Lunch at hotel - spicy pickles

We met our local tour guide, Bin, and our trip guide, Tamara, at 6pm to have an orientation meeting. There is a total of 14 people in our group which is a nice size for getting to know everyone. There are 3 men and 11 women in the group. The group had a dinner of steamed dumplings and some other Chinese dishes at a restaurant across the street from the hotel.