What to eat when visiting Beijing Part I
While in Beijing, be sure not to miss out on Uyghur food. The Uyghur are a Muslim minority that live in Xinjiang , a province in the north west of China. Beijing offers a great variety of different local foods, and Uyghur food is one of my favorites. The Uyghur cuisine uses ingredients that are [...]
Restaurants: The “Golden Tripod Attic”
The “Golden Tripod Attic” (Jin Ding Xuan) is near the Lama Temple, and it‘s perfect if you‘re looking for a place to have dinner either with a couple of friends or a large group of people. You can get there by taking the subway to Lama Temple station (Yong He Gong) and then take the [...]
Beijing Bargaining for Beginners
China used to have a two-price-system, one set of prices for Chinese and one set of prices for foreigners. While that was abolished a while ago, it still sticks in the heads of some people. Vendors think that all foreigners have an incredible amount of money to spend and will often charge you three times [...]
A Night at a Five Star Hotel
I booked a room through www.ctrip.com at the Beijing Nikko New Century Hotel, a five star hotel run by Japan Airlines, The hotel is located in the western part of the city between the third and the second ring road. Booking through ctrip, the hotel was only 788 Yuan ($100) per night.
As I got there [...]
A Trip to… the Hospital
During my one-year stay in China as an exchange student, I was very careful not to have to go to the hospital, and, in fact, the only time I ever had to was when I accompanied someone else. Apart from that one time, I managed to stay away from hospitals and was very grateful [...]
National Day
I went to Tian’anmen Square one last time before leaving China. I’d read about the decorations for National Day on October 1 in the newspaper and seen the first preparations myself. National Day celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949 and is accompanied by a week of vacation, during [...]
Sorry for lack of posts recently
Things became a bit hectic during my last couple of days in Beijing, and I had some problems with my internet access on top of that, so this is why I haven’t written anything recently.
I just got back to Germany a couple of hours ago, but I’ll be posting more soon about what I’ve been [...]
The Great Wall Part 2
My roommate and I talked about ways to get to the Great Wall the night before I went, and she told me about a bus that was going to Badaling. I still insisted on taking the tour bus that night since I didn’t want to miss out on the joys of taking a tour. After [...]
The Great Wall Part 1: My Not-Tour
My agenda for today sounded quite simple: take a tour to the Great Wall at Badaling. Badaling is the section of the Great Wall closest to Beijing and most overrun by tourists. I had only been to other sections of the Great Wall so far, but never to Badaling. I had, however, taken various tours [...]
Buying Tea in Beijing
After reading in the newspaper that this year’s tea had just newly arrived in the stores, I definitely had to go to Maliandao to buy some. Maliandao is in the southwest of Beijing, just south of Beijing West Railway Station. It’s basically a whole street just lined with tea stores, some bigger ones, but mostly [...]
The Summer Palace
The Summer Palace is a huge park area in the Northwest of Beijng, three quarters of which are covered by Kunming Lake. It was build in 1750 and destroyed during the second Opium War. After it was rebuilt in 1886, it served as Empress Dowager Cixis Summer Getaway. The Summer Palace also had one of [...]
How to get to your hotel from the airport
Since I arrived much too late on my first night in Beijing I went back to the airport the other day to find out first hand what the best options for getting to your hotel are.
The first thing I noticed though, both when I first got to Beijing and when I went back to the [...]
Means of Transportation in Beijing
The Subway
The subway is the most convenient means of public transportation in Beijing for various reasons. First and foremost: you cannot get stuck in traffic. With some of Beijings roads almost constantly jammed, this is worth a lot. Also, it’s no problem to take the subway even if you don’t speak Chinese. Stations [...]
Lakes and Laoshe Teahouse
Last Sunday was a really nice and sunny day, so I went for a stroll around Xihai, Houhai and Qianhai, all of which are lakes Northwest of the Forbidden City. I started out at Xihai Lake, very close to Jishuitan subway station. As opposed to the other two lakes, it’s allowed to fish there, so [...]
One day from the perspective of someone who does not speak Chinese
I’ve always admired people who come to China even though they don’t speak any Chinese, and I‘ve always wanted to know how they manage. That’s why I decided to pretend that I did not speak or understand a word of Chinese for a whole day. The experiment did not always go smoothly. I switched [...]
2008 Olympics Mascots
The “Friendlies”, the five Olympic mascots, have taken over Beijing. Well, not quite, but two years before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, merchandize is a big deal. Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini, which together form the sentence “Beijing Welcomes You”, come in all forms and shapes: as stuffed animals, on key chains, badges, t-shirts, baseball [...]
Trip to the 2008 Olympics Venues
First thing on Thursday, I went to see the “Bird’s Nest” the National Stadium right next to the North Fourth Ring Road, which is still under construction. The Bird’s Nest will be the main track and field stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It’s a building made of overlapping steel bands and does [...]