The next morning we woke early and went downstairs to claim our hotel breakfast. I wasn’t too enthused about eating breakfast in a hotel – I’d have rather gone out to some kind of local place, but time was limited and we had already paid for it in the price of the tour.
Despite the feeling that there were only a few guests at the hotel there were quite a few foreign guests at breakfast. It looked like two other groups besides ours were eating there – a group of older English people and a group of middle-aged Americans. Kuniko and I found a table and looked through the buffet, and luckily they had a Chinese buffet and a western buffet. I hit the Chinese buffet and stocked up on all kinds of interesting foods, mainly noodle-based. The noodles were pan fried with hot peppers, so they were nice and spicy for a morning wake up. There were plenty of new things to try without going to the western table for omelets, bacon, potatoes and the like.
The staff of the hotel wandered around collecting used plates and dishes, and they gave me some interesting looks as Kuniko and I were eating with chopsticks, while the rest of the groups ate western food with forks and knives. When in Rome, you know…
We were picked up soon enough by Shin and whisked off to the other hotel to get the rest of the guests. Shin gave us a quick morning pep talk and then we set out for the Great wall, about 90 minutes outside of Beijing. Of course, we had to stop midway for another “shopping stop” at a silk factory in the middle of nowhere. Just as before we were led inside and given a short presentation on how silk was made, and what made it such a great product to take home as a souvenir.
Again, we were rolling our eyes and wandering around instead of listening to the presentation, and this time it wasn’t just Kuniko and me. More people joined in and I think Shin was starting to identify us as a possible disrupting influence. However, this time there were several buyers of silk sheets in our group (just $200, please don’t wash them in water) and after passing through an impressive showroom of cheesy silk outfits we were back on the road.
Once we hit the mountains north of Beijing things started to get more interesting. Every now and then you could catch a glimpse of the wall on the top of a hillside somewhere, and traffic got slightly thicker as more and more tourists converged. Luckily the wall is long enough that the tourist destinations can be split up and that helps with the crowds. Summer is the peak season, and there were still lots of people there.
As we pulled the bus into the area we hit a gridlock of cars and buses going the same way. Shin did some quick thinking and got us out of the bus and walking, and we were able to get there much quicker. It was quite hot by that time, and because of the walk I think some people were a little less determined to climb to the highest point in the wall. For us this was almost the entire point of the trip, so we were chomping at the bit as we waited near the entrance for Shin to count everyone and then go in.
At the bottom of the wall Shin directed us to stand together for a group photo, and while he kept the rest of the group there explaining how to buy the photo from him, Kuniko and I snuck away and started climbing.
The Great Wall was awesome. We were on a section that was partially restored and so it was pretty easy to imagine the history as we climbed. We took the steeper of the two directions because there were far less people on it, and some of the steepest sections almost had us climbing with our hands and our feet. It took about 20 minutes of hard climbing to reach the uppermost section – kind of tower overlooking two valleys – but from there you could see the wall continuing off into the horizon, climbing over hills into the distance.
Kuniko and I were properly impressed, and this experience made up for all the cheesiness we had to endure both before and after. We stood together at the top and took in everything, with people walking by now and then. Eventually after soaking it all in, we headed back down, passing some of our group starting up the incline.
Shin had us wait for the other members in a special air conditioned room, but the walls were lined with cheesy souvenirs and a Chinese saleswoman tried to get us to buy stuff while we waited. Always looking for an opportunity. We went outside to wait without the sales pressure, and eventually we all got back together and headed to the bus. Kuniko and I tried to buy a soda, but they didn’t have price tags and when we asked they tried to overcharge us again. We didn’t buy a soda at that time (really just on principle) but it wasn’t that expensive compared to Japan.
Back on the bus we headed to lunch. Since it was a bit of drive Shin spent the time trying to get us to buy little Chinese candies as souvenirs. He and his assistant passed out free tasters, and then followed up with a brochure. The prices were typical for souvenirs from Japan, but seemed quite high for China. Still, many of our group bought some from Shin. I wondered how much of these sales our tour company actually knew about.
Lunch turned out to be pretty good. It was held at a huge tourist stop with a banquet hall the size of an American football field. Upstairs was lunch and downstairs was tables and tables of cheesy souvenirs (again). We had an all-you-can-eat dim sum lunch. Everything was tasty and I ate a lot, thanks to our exertions climbing the wall. The staff gave each table two free small bottles of liquor to drink with our meal, and at almost 56% alcohol it was pretty hardcore. The glasses they gave us to drink it with were tiny even by Japanese standards, but that was probably for the best.
After lunch we headed back to the bus, and Shin’s assistant walked behind us picking up the half-full liquor bottles off the table and slipping them into her purse. Nice move! We took the bus the rest of the way into the city, and then stopped in at our last “shopping stop” of the day, a tea factory. Actually, this one turned out to be much more interesting and interactive. We sat around a table and a lady introduced some of there teas by making them for us, and then passing around both the tea leaves and the finished tea to try. We had fun there tasting all the teas and learning a little about how they make them, and we actually ended up buying some as a souvenir. I think Shin was relieved to finally see us buy something.
Next stop was dinner – Peking duck. We stopped in front of a small restaurant in the heart of town, and everyone in our group stopped and exclaimed how lucky we were to be eating at this particular restaurant. As our tour group members lined up to have their picture taken in front of the restaurant, Kuniko explained to me that this place was very famous within Japan, and considered the best restaurant in China for Peking duck. In Japan Peking duck is considered a top delicacy of China, so I could start to understand everyone’s excitement. I took a picture of the outside, too, and then we followed Shin inside.
As we walked as a group through the restaurant we took a couple of turns and suddenly we walked right out a back doorway and around a corner. There we went inside another building completely detached from the original restaurant, and sat down at some tables laid for us. Kuniko and I grinned at each other and wondered where exactly we were eating. The only sign of the famous restaurant was that we had their logo on our paper napkins; other than that we could have been at any Chinese restaurant in China. Who knows if we were really eating at this famous restaurant or not.
The food was excellent, however, and the Peking duck was tasty as well. We ate with some different members of the group and they seemed nice enough, although they mainly kept the conversation to themselves. This time we knew enough not to order beer at the table, and instead decided to pick some up on our own later.
After dinner the bus took some people to their next evening of purchased-from-Shin entertainment, but we skipped that and headed back to our hotel. Shin again insisted that there was nothing near our hotel, so we’d be better off enjoying the Peking Circus. No thanks!
Once we had dropped off our backpacks and gear in our room we headed back down and outside into the streets around our hotel. This was what Shin had been trying to prevent us from doing the whole trip, and we were both looking forward to exploring. Less than two blocks from our hotel there was a small supermarket, and that’s where we got started having some real fun.
Anytime we go abroad Kuniko and I have the most fun in the local supermarkets. You can find all kinds of interesting things, and these are the things that locals eat and use in their daily lives. Not the tacky colorful toothpick holders, but the real stuff. We spent almost an hour shopping in the small store. We found that beer was actually only 2 yuan a bottle (rather than the 30 that they charged in restaurants), drinks and bottled water were even less (Shin charged only triple on the bus for water). We stocked up on items for omiyage, including many of the same candies that they had tried to sell us. It felt like we were stealing sometimes because the prices were so low.
While we shopped now and then locals would watch us buying up the store with some amusement. A cute little boy came over and smiled at us, and even some of the clerks came by to see what things would interest us. I could barely carry the basket so we decided to cash out and head back to the hotel to drop stuff off. The big basket of goodies completely covered all our omiyage needs, plus lots of fun stuff to party with that evening (cheap beer and mysterious yogurt in clay pots). Everything worked out to about 1500 yen, or about $15. Yes!
We lugged the bags of groceries back to the hotel, and as we brought them back in we walked right past some of our tour group who were loitering around the lobby. I lifted the bag and smiled at them, pointing outside, and they just gave me a dazed look. Back up in our room we organized our omiyage, drank a cold beer, and relaxed. It wasn’t long before we decided that the supermarket was too good to pass up, and so we went back down again and shopped another round. This time we bought much less, but it was so much fun to shop with impunity.
On the way back I decided to stop in at a small street restaurant, since it was probably our only chance to eat local during the trip. Probably a restaurant a block away from a tourist hotel is not exactly eating local, but it was much better than the touristy food we had so far. They even had a yakitori, and so we ate some BBQ pork (after double checking for the dog kanji to make sure we didn’t accidentally eat a puppy). We also had some ja-ja men – thick, flat noodles with sliced cucumbers and a spicy miso meat sauce.
The waiter even spoke to us in English, and warned us not to buy beer when his boss asked, because it was a rip off. We followed his advice, and the meal was excellent. I could eat there every night and be perfectly satisfied – no famous restaurant walk-throughs required.
Finally we headed back to the hotel room stuffed with food and laden with souvenirs, and after experimenting with a few other goodies we had bought we hit the sack. It was a long but very satisfying day.
