Bye Bye Beijing!

This was getting a samey by now, and you probably know what is coming next. Yup, we were packing up our stuff, leaving the big bags behind reception and heading off for a few hours before returning to collect our things and get on our way to the next destination. The next destination was Xi’An, home of the Terracotta Warriors, and I think I can speak for both of us when I say that we were pretty glad to be getting out of the hotel in Beijing. The city itself was great, apart from the fact that if you wanted to get anywhere around Tiananmen Square you would have to go via the underground walkways, which were just a pain in the backside after 4 days!

According the rather sketchy map that the Beijing Leo Courtyard had given us there was a market nearby that might be worth exploring, so we set off in the general direction and hoped that there was something interesting to be found there – we had almost 6 hours to kill, and not much to do. When we entered the indoor market we saw little sign of the electronics that were supposedly housed within. Instead it seemed to cater more for women and/or hairdressers/beauty salons. No matter though, there were 6 floors to check out. After 4 floors of beauty equipment, accessories and products we decided to get the heck out of dodge and leave it all behind. Maybe it was an old map…

When we got outside and I read out the market name to James it seems that there had been a mis-communique and we had gone in the wrong one. But it looked there was another just down the road, so we poked our heads in there hoping to find something that would be more interesting than scissors, shampoo and hairdryers. It was, but only just. There was more variety at least, but there was just loads of stalls selling home appliances and shoes. Again, not really our thing so we cut our losses and bowled out the exit.

Anyone need some shoes??

We returned to Helen’s for lunch and then chilled out with a few rounds of cards. I have lost count of how many games we have had on this trip but it must be into the thousands by now. And don’t ask me what the score is either! We both assume that it’s pretty much even…

The clock was showing gone 2pm so we were making our way to the nearby park for a wander when James remembered the Museum Of China was nearby, and hopefully affordable. So we hung a right and went through the underground walkways (again) and then through security (again!) to get into the museum. Thankfully it was free and we just needed to show them our passports to prove who we were – two travelling English gents and not two home-grown radicals intent on staging a protest, or worse, inside.

It's big inside the museum...

Our first investigation was through the Ancient China exhibition. Detailing all about the early history of the country and the warring states back in the day there were amazing collections of art, stone-age and bronze-age artefacts and even a couple of terracotta warriors, but we tried no to look at them as we would be enjoying them in Xi’An in a few days time.

Ol' Big 'Ead

We needed to get a move on as it was 4:00pm and we had only done the one floor, and briefly at that. We wanted to try and squeeze in the flag ceremony at 4:50pm or thereabouts, so we would need to speed our way through the other floors in order to get a good viewing point on Tiananmen Square. We did just that and then took our place by the flagpole ad waited in the cold.

The ceremony only lasted about 10 minutes, if that, and was a little bit underwhelming. Haven had told us that the morning ceremony at sunrise (something that we definitely wouldn’t have seen!) was quite enthralling and made her feel proud of her country, but the afternoon one was just taking the flag down and marching off back into the Forbidden City.

We finally saw the flag ceremony

After we had picked up our luggage we attempted to hail a taxi from the main road nearby. It took about 15 minutes and not the best if you are standing outside in Beijing in winter. But we arrived at the station in plenty of time and it only cost a couple of quid. Inside we found our waiting room and tried to find a spot in amongst all the other passengers, of which there were many! The only two incidents of note are a Chinese girl coming up to James and asking him what we call the big pot noodle jobbies in English (as we were both having our tea sitting on the floor) and a middle-aged guy (who I later saw downing a small bottle of 56% rice wine) coming up to both of us, holding 4 fingers up and not really saying much – I shrugged my shoulders and said I couldn’t understand him about 5 times before he moved on to James and tried the same. We were very grateful when he remained seated when our train was called for boarding.

A very crowded Beijing West station

I had been a little excited about getting on the Z53 train to Xi’An as supposedly it was a pretty nifty bit of kit. Not the fastest or the most expensive but it had carpets, curtains, hot water taps, a TV for each bed, climate control, power points, you name it! We were first in to our 4-bed booth and thankfully nobody had joined us by the time we pulled out of the train station. We were very comfortable and settled in for a nice 12 hour journey through to Xi’An, where hopefully it would be a little warmer than the chilly capital.