BEIJING - delicious tasty food, crazy cab drivers, amazing sight seeing, and a sense of Communism

Beijing – cheap delicious food, crazy cab drivers, amazing sight seeing, and a sense of Communism.

Hostel Garden

Our lovely hostel

What a wonderful trip to Beijing, I am not even sure where to start off, so many stories to tell. To start off it was so nice to fly with Air China, which is not an economy airline. We actually got food served, and had individual TV screens. The flight was three hours long, pretty much a normal distance to go anywhere in Asia. Once we arrived in Beijing I realized how much I don’t miss the cold weather, and how much I am not looking forward to coming back to Canada in January. We arrived at night, and decided to head straight to the hostel and get ready to explore the city the next day. Our hostel was super cute ,and cozy and people working there were very helpful and friendly. 


The things I did not enjoy about Beijing are the; pollution, the unfriendly cabdrivers, and in some instances the sense of Communism. Beijing is a huge city that is hard to explore in 4 days but we tried to do our best. We still had a chance to go to many  tourist attractions.

just for you to realize how big the streets are

the love the "squatting position in Beijing" just chilling:)

The morning after our arrival we went to get some winter clothes, since in HK there is no real winter and we had no warm clothes. Oh how much I will miss HK weather once I leave, and in general returning to Hong Kong feels like returning home. How can I get so attached in 3 months? OK I got off the track back to Beijing. The city really reminded me of Moscow, my Russian friends would understand what I mean by that. The boulevards are very wide, huge streets, with very big buildings in Soviet/Communist style. 


On of the fist attractions we visited was The Forbidden City, it is located in the middle of Beijing and was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. While waiting for our friends  by the Forbidden city many people asked to take a picture with us or just took pictures without asking anything. We saw lots of Chinese babies with very strange pants. I don’t even know how to describe it, the pants have a hall in them and when babies squat they can just go to the bathroom since a hall is created. It was very funny seeing many naked baby bums when it is 0 degrees. Those babies were all around the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is very big and you can spend hours checking out the small rooms that were used by the Emperors’. It is fascinating to walk on a land that previously was only used by Emperors’ and regular people like me were not allowed. I was expecting to see many more tourists from the West and Europe in Beijing but I guess the cold climate scares them away. After the Forbidden city we proceeded to the Tiananmen Square it is a large city square in the named after the Tianamen Gate (literally, Gate of Heavenly Peace) Since it was enlarged four times its original size in the 1950s, Tiananmen Square became the largest city square  in the world (440,000 m² - 880m by 500m). It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history. The square was the center of the 4 June 1989 protest, where soldiers opened fire, killing 400–800 protesters.