Guilin – Reed Flute Cave and Elephant Hill

Posted on August 10, 2015 by borysSNORC

The Reed Flute Cave was something I was really looking forward to in Guilin. It is a natural limestone cave, and a world heritage listed area, with multicolored lighting all through it. According to Sue, our guide, it has been one of Guilin’s best kept secrets and local never told outsiders about the cave until the 60s. But according to everyting I’ve read on the internet, it has been one of and has been one of Guilin’s most interesting attractions for ages and has been attracting visitors for over 1200 years – inside, there are supposed to be more than 70 inscriptions written in ink, which can be dated back as far as 792 AD in the Tang Dynasty and these aged inscriptions are supposed to be evidence of its long standing history as an attraction in Guilin ever since. But Sue didn’t mention them, and the cave formations are remarkably well presereved if it has been having visitors for over a millenia.

Anyway, the cave itself is over 180 million years old and formed in the same way limestone caves the world over are formed -harder rock, softer rock, water seeping through, limestone hanging onto the ceiling, limestone crowing up from the floor, columns grow… 20cms every 100 years and, Ta-da! Pretty cave. This cave got its name from the type of reed that used to grow outside the primarly entrance, which was used to made melodious local flute instruments. The Reed Flute Cave is filled with a large number of stalactites, stalagmites and large rock formations in weird and wonderful shapes – lions, owls, christmas trees, veggie cardes, and all sorts of things. The cave is much like many other limestone caves that I’ve visited, only the multicolored lightning artificially illuminates the cave and makes it look really rainbow coloured ‘ooh, aah, pretty’.

The Christmas tree: The fruiit and veggie patch- beans, peanuts, string beans, broccoli etc.
The two towers – amost joined up:

This section is believed to be a cityscape of Guilin:I thought this section of the cave was really pretty – it is is about 18m high and about 30m across, so it is a large cavern, so the management of the cave, felt for some reason this is a great place to put on a show. The show consisted of a video projected onto the roof ceiling of the cave in the one flat spot available, and then a projection of two people doing ballet to Swan Lake beside the pond in the above picture. Bizarre. The cave is quite interesting enough, but for some reason the Chinese have decided to add value to the ticket entrance with these strange ‘shows’.

The ‘chandelier’ of the largest cavern known as the Crystal Palace:

A lion:
As far as we could see the only thing living down in the cave were tiny bats that kept flapping around. Very cute. It was also lovely and cool down underground – around 20 to 22C, which was much preferred to the 35C and 75% humidity up top.

After the lovely cool of the caves we ventured back out into the heat to visit nearby Elephant Hill. Guilin is a city of only 700,000 people (only!) so it is a lot less hectic and easier to get around. Far fewer tourists and far less crush – though we have discovered that in an enclosed space like the caves, one Chinese family of three on holiday can make as much noise as an entire air craft’s passenger manifest. O.o

Nest stop – Elephant Trunk Hill, which is considered the main symbol of the city of Guilin. The small mountain got its name because it looks like an elephant drinking water. As the legend would have it the Jade Emperor came down from Heaven with the elephant and the poor elephant got sick. When the Jade Emperor went back to Heaven, he left the sick elephant behind. The people of the area nursed the poor elephant back to health and when he was well, he decided he wanted to stay – but the Jade Emperor wanted him to come back to Heaven, so he sent troops to come and bring the elephant back. The elephant fought the Emperor’s troops for seven days and seven nights and then one of the Generals from the Emporer’s troops stabbed him in the back with a sword while he was drinking from the LIjang River. The elephant died, but did not fall over, and now there is a pagoda named, Sword Hilt Pagoda up high on the elephant’s back and the elephant stays here on earth forever.

The round opening under the elephant’s trunk is known as Water-Moon Cave – at night the reflection of the moon can be seen through the arch and it looks as if it is under the water and floating on the surface of the water at the same time.

We also happend to see this woman fishing with her cormorants. I have seen many documentaries on China showing how efficient the cormorants are at catching fish, but it was lovely to see them here. The cormorants are pretty much domesticated birds, not like the shags we have back home, and they have been hand raised, have clipped wings so they can not fly off, and when they are fishing, they have a string around their throat so they can not swallow the fish they catch. Only once their work is done, do their owners feed them.

This stone is on Lover’s Island. Near to Elephant Trunk Hill is the questionably romantic place of Lover’s Island where couples like to meet up for courting. The little island itself was quite quaint. It was lined by floating restaurants selling mostly meat-on-a-stick, and lots of lovely shady spots to hang out…


…but it was also full of these complete weird, and not a little bit tacky sculptures that apparently light up at night. Perhaps this was another weird example of ‘value adding’, as the park is not free to enter during the day time. But it is at night and early morning for locals only. Anyway, it is full of ‘famous couples’ – Romeo and Juliet, Adam and Eve, Mickey and Minnie Mouses, Donald and Daisy, Rose and Jack from the Titanic! 😀

Next we made our way to Seven Start Park. Which at first was a little confusing, as the locals here tend to give the toilet facilities ‘star ratings’… “This one only 2 star Happy Room, not very good. 4 star Happy Room just around next stop in Palace”. So we were expecting a park with excellent bathroom facilities!! 😛 The Seven Star Park is lined up from the air with the seven star shape of the Big Dipper, and it is a truly impressive public garden. There are lots of lovely open spaces, ponds, a zoo, amusements, wide open spaces for public events and another small cave system.

I became enamoured of this 1997 sculpture that was designed to mark the occasion of Hong Kong coming back under Chinese rule. It depicts many famous things in Chinese history. China and the birth through the mountains 5000 years ago, and the building of canals:
A depiction of the one artefact that carbon dates China’s history to 7000 years – the large pottery trough with the pig motif on it. It also shows on this panel, the use of water wheels to move things and generate energy to save labour. Traders from the West, and the use of water wheels to lift heavy objects in construction and bridge building:
The invention of paper, and Chinese characters, also the constellations. In the centre right of this picture is an urn with dragons heads hanging off the top, each dragon head is holding a marble – this was an early earthquake warning system. If a tremor was felt, the dragon would drop his marble and it would show which direction the eathquake was coming from. The pillar at the Forbidden City, depicting the symbols of the Emperor and the Hau animal that protected the Imperial Family..

Buddha showing that Buddhism came to China 1800 years ago. Taoist symbols to represent the balance of the universe.

The building of the Great Wall of China, and the construction of the Heavenly pagodas.
    The Terracotta Army and a flying horse which represents ‘tourist’s in China (not sure why, she didn’t elaborate on that one).
It is a very impressive piece of mixed stonework, probably about 70m long.   The Seven Star Park is also home to many wild monkeys, and there are many many warnings telling people not to interact with them, as they are not very friendly, and potentially not very clean. But apparently people insist on feeding them anyway.
    Lovely lakes and cool spots to enjoy the park – somewhere for everyone, many people had their own hammocks up for the day, or were out in little rentable boats, or were jumping around in the inflatable pools etc that were up for the summer holidays.
    Also inside the park is Camel Hill – so call because, well… hello? Apparently Bill Clinton made a large speech on this site about the importance of protecting the environment, so it has become another very famous spot.

Then, a late lunch and crashing back at the hotel. We need to recharge before we hit the rivers tomorrow, and the Yangtze River Cruise later in the week.

Xian – Muslim mosque and markets

Posted on August 10, 2015 by borysSNORC

First stop this morning was The Great Mosque of Xian which is near the Xian Drum Tower – traditionally Chinese cities had large bell towers and drum towers to let the townspeople known when to start work. Bells in the morning. Drums signalled the day’s work was done.

The mosque was nothing like I was expecting as it looked nothing like a traditional Middle Eastern mosque at all. It is the oldest mosques in Asia, built in 742AD during the Tang Dynasty – however, the majority of the existing Great Mosque was constructed during the Ming Dynasty and further expanded in the Qing Dynasty.

It is a popular tourist site of Xian, and is still used by Chinese Muslims as a place of worship, so I was expecting headscarves and shoes off and imams and minarets. But unlike most mosques in Middle Eastern or Arab countries, the Great Mosque of Xian is completely Chinese in its construction and architectural style. Except for some Arabic lettering and decorations, the mosque has no domes or traditional-style minarets, and no headscarf requirement or shoes off. It was more an outdoor courtyard surrounded by buildings.    The prater hall section of the mosque; and the building for cleansing before prayer:

After this we had a chance to visit the markets in the Muslim Quarter. We noticed a distinct change of produce and items for sale here compared to other markets. Lots of date, figs, walnuts, dried persimmon and pomegranate. Also lots of knock-off handbags etc, toys and pashmina.

After the markets it was over to the Xian City wall to have a look around – but with loads of steps and a flight to catch this afternoon, I decided to give it a miss. We had seen quite a bit of the wall on our night your last night and after a month on the go, a couple of hours to rest was much appreciate.   We got to Xian airport around 3:30pm and then had one of the worst flight / airport experiences I’ve ever seen. Bad enough to get its own post… stay tuned.

Xian – Terracotta Warriors

Posted on August 9, 2015 by borysSNORC

The Terracotta Warriors are one of those iconic Chinese things without which, no trip to China would be complete. The warriors are actually a collection of some 8000 soldiers modelled on the armies of an egomaniacal emperor, Qin Shi Huang, the first (self styled) Emperor of China, who started the tomb at the ripe old age of 13. They were created around 200BC with the goal of creating a complete underground replica of his kingdom to protect him in the afterlife.

The life size figures were discovered in 1974 by some local farms in the Linton District of Xian, and depict 8000 soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 horses, 150 cavalry horses and other non-military figures such as officials, acrobats, dancers, musicians, magicians etc who were to entertain the Emperor in the after life. There are 3 main pits open to the public, numbered for the order in which they were found, but there are up to 600 pits in the region, with many thousands of figures yet to be unearthed.

Nearly all of the figures were found in varying states of damage, some of the damage caused by a Farmers Rebellion and some damage is believed to have occurred during local earthquake activity. The warriors are entombed all facing to the mountains in the East, where the Emperor’s greatest enemies were located, so that the army would be ready to protect him. The complex is laid out to mirror his imperial court – offices, halls, stables, earthworks walls and gateway entrances just like the actual palace areas. All the figures were found at various levels underground according to rank and position, but the first were found approximately 5m below ground level when farmers were digging a well.

The Emperor’s tomb itself is located about 1.5kms away and has not yet been unearthed. Historical records from the period indicate that that a ‘river and a moat of mercury’ surrounds Qin Shi Huang’s tomb and preliminary testing reveals high level of mercury in the area, which has hampered archeologists efforts to excavate the tomb itself.

Each individual figure varies in height, rank, uniform, hairstyles (according to rank and occupation). They originally held real weapons such as spears, swords, crossbows, and longbows; they were also painted in bright colours of pink, red, green, blue black, brown, white and purple with a light lacquer finish. They were also supposed to have been modelled on real life soldiers and each figure has unique facial features and clothing – different shoes, belts, buckles, armour. Most of the original weapons were looted over the centuries or have rotten away, and the bulk of the brightly coloured paints have oxidized on exposure to the air and faded away.

No detail appears to have been left out – even the servants in the stables chambers are dressed as real servants would have been and have all the work and food implements that they would have used in their duties and daily life.

Qin Shi Huang was quite the character apparently – he did many great things for China, created a standardised script called ‘seal script’, he also standardised weights, measurements and distances etc. But he was also a dictatorial tyrant who wanted to control the populace and did so by variously squashing the thinkers of the time – he was known to have buried 460 scholars alive, and burned thousands of ‘unapproved’ books to control ideas and quell the populace.

The place is fascinating, but also a complete tourist clusterfuck. We are unfortunately here during peak season, which means that nearly all of the Chinese countryside are on their summer holidays and area touring major historical areas of interest – like the Terracotta Warriors of Xian. To get anywhere near the edges of the pits to take photographs, you literally had to stick your elbows out and barge your way in. When you were finished at the rail, you would edge out in such a way as one of your friends could take your space. The crush of sweaty humanity was distinctly unpleasant, but we are led to believe it is like that for much of the year, the ‘odd season for tourists really only being November and December.

Being short blonde and western, I seem to really cop it in these environments. People who come from rural countryside villages and towns tend to stop and stare, yell at their children to look at the white woman, poke their partners and point at me, or as happened today – some old guy literally pulled my plaited hair while my back was turned. Hard enough to snap my head around. It completely detracts from your enjoyment of an historical and culturally important location when you are busy worrying if you are going to be assaulted. So, as a result, I am loving the places I am seeing in China, but fucking hating the Chinese people and their rude manner, lack of courtesy and different customs that are just gross – hacking up phlegm and spitting in the street, yelling at each other without any care for who is nearby, letting their children run around without pants on in the middle of a museum, allowing them to pee wherever and whenever, smoking in public restroom… all sorts of just undesirable behaviour. So you find yourself spending half your day saying ‘excuse me’ or ‘sorry’ to people who bump into YOU, when you really want to say ‘FUCK OFF AND GET OUT OF MY WAY’.

After the warrior we went to lunch at a nearby Elegant Hotel – lovely banquet spread again but way too much food. We then had a long drive back to Xian where we went to the Small Goose Pagoda (nothing special, more 14thC crumblies) and the Xian Museum, which would have been marvellous, if only there was a guide or more placards with information in English. Hell I would have settled for Latin or French to be honest. Not hard to whip through 5000 years of history when you can’t hardly read any of the artefact notes.
   Badger seal from 200AD:

Tang Dynasty Guardians: (that much I did get)

We have a big dumpling dinner and a Tang Dynasty cultural show of music and dance to attend tonight – so I will have to come back and edit this a bit later and report back on what that was like. 🙂

Update:

Well, dumpling dinner was excellent and as per usual, they seem to be bringing us way too much food and not enough beer. 😛 We have some drinkers in our group, so we were constantly harassing the staff for more beer (unfortunately China doesn’t seem to know what cider is *unhappy face*) There were chicken dumplings made to look like little chickens, duck ones that looked like ducks, pork ones that looked like pigs, seafood ones that looked like little fish, and well… you get the idea. Cabbage dumplings, sweet potato, eggplant and all good things as well. One of the girls on our trip was having her birthday the following day so our guide had arranged a suprise birthday cake… it was an interesting cake to say the least. Two think layers of sponge covered and filled with cream, and decoraded with fruit and tomato and parsley. Yeah. Tomato and parsely on a cream covered birthday cake!

The show itself was quite interesting – everything you expect in a Chinese culture show from the Tang Dynasty (expectations schmexpectations!). There was lively dancing, colourful costumes, drumbs, cymbals, instruments I didn’t recognise and singing that sounded like cats mating in an alley way. Absolutely fabulous!

Beijing – Temple of Heaven

Posted on August 8, 2015 by borysSNORC

Today we went to visit the Temple of Heaven which is a famous Taoist temple built in 1420 on a site that has historically held important harvest worship festivals. The site is about three times larger than the 44ha of the Forbidden City – 80% of which are lovely garden spaces that are largely used by Beijing’s retiree population for dancing, tai chi, chess, cards, mahjong and matchmaking… yeah.

Matchmaking. It seems the parents and grand parents of young people who work too long stuck in their offices with no time to meet people, get together with official matchmakers in the park to overlook profiles of young available men and women. Their profiles are written on cards and laid out on the floor and list such into as: Age. Height. Clean background. Height. Weight. Apartment. Car. Education. Chinese Horoscope for compatibility. Sometimes there were photo attached. The matchmakers arrange dates for the young people and get paid according to satisfaction and also more generously if they make a ‘good match’ for the young people.

The Chinese horoscope is very serious business when it comes to marriage and some matches are considered far more favorable than others. A chicken married to dog no good, apparently. But a tiger married to mouse/rat is good. Tiger married to tiger is also ok… ‘You can have two tigers on a mountain, so long as one male one female. No two male on one mountain’.
I am a Pig but sort of on the cusp with the Rat – and the description of both is scarily accurate in some ways:

PIG: pig people are kind, honest, generous, and good humoured. They usually love their homes but are generally not very good housekeepers. They like indulging in their pleasure and would rather spend their time buying, preparing and eating good food. They are steadfast, patient, and enduring, good at organizing without being bossy. Pig people are very trusting and very trustworthy. Very sensual lovers and may enjoy love between satin sheets with caviar and champagne nearby.

RAT: outwardly cool but charming and sociable, endowed with intelligence and observant. Rats are quick to grasp a situation, and can easily size up what is going on from everyone’s point of view. This enables them to give good advice to others who are slower to catch on, though rat people may say more than people want to hear.

LOL. So much of both these sounds like me. I had an opportunity to buy a personalized Jade chop with my name and a pig on it. He’s very cute and I have red ink, ‘just like Emperor’. It seems the Emperor chop was with red ink, the Empress in blue ink, and the common people, black ink.

Mr K is a Water Rabbit which with my Metal Pig make good match, “you make him”.

RABBIT: peace loving rabbits generally like to keep out of arguments and as a result can be very diplomatic and also good at negotiating. The rabbits strength is in observing the game, assessing the situation, and coming up with a solution or innovation when the time is ripe.

But I digress- back to the Temple of Heaven and the beautiful gardens which are predominantly comprised of beautiful shady juniper and pine trees some of which are up to 500 years old.

According to traditional beliefs, the Jade Emperor is the Emperor of Heaven (which is, we remember, round – heaven is round, earth is square). And in his round heaven, the Jade Emperor has a palace of 10,000 rooms to be bigger than the Earth Emperor’s 9,999 room Forbidden City.

At the centre of the Temple of Heaven is the Hall to Pray for the Good Harvest. Again, the building has been created in a large round pagoda shape because heaven is round and earth is square. There are three levels of the pagoda as well as three tiers of marble resting under the pagoda representing: earth, human and heaven. Each tier has 9 steps leading to the next which represent power and longevity.

The roof of the Temple is blue – unlike the Imperial yellow of the Forbidden City – which represents the sky (‘600 years ago, you know, the sky is blue every day, now it is sometimes blue because pollution’). Additionally it has many green and blue decorative accents, the green of which represent the harvest and jade which is the colour of the Emperor of Heaven.

The Chinese people believe that jade is a treasure from the earth, and that jade can protect yourself and your family. So they worship the Jade Emperor but also the jade itself to protect the people and have a good harvest.

Inside the Temple of Heaven pagoda is a throne for the Emperor for when he comes to pray. Also there are 28 tablets inside that symbolize the 28 stars. Further in Taoist temples there are often prominent dragon and Phoenix designs that depict the yin and yang – male and female balance of the universe.

The Emperors of China visited the Temple of Heaven on this site to carry out the rite of worshipping the Jade Emperor from the 26th century BC until the early 20th century AD. While this particular pagoda was built in 1420AD, there has been a Temple of Heaven on this site since 2600BC.

The rites are performed on December 22nd and at Chinese New Year at 4:15am when the Emperor would come to pray before sunrise. The Emperor of Earth made prayers and gave offerings to the Jade Emperor in heaven – offerings of rice, silk, jade, and roast ox, pig etc. He prayed 9 times to protect the country and also offered large animal sacrifices.

Whenever the Emperor went out of the Forbidden City, all the common people would be ordered to stay home, as it was forbidden to look on the emperor. Palace spaces would clean the streets and lay down special clay and water to prepare a smooth royal street for the emperor. If someone did look on the Emperor it might be okay if you were to stay quiet, but if someone disturbed the Emperor he may have them killed so ‘wise not to look at Emperor’.

After the ceremony all the people offer congratulations to Emperor for worshipping the Jade Emperor in the the heavens, and then edicts were issued to proclaim the worship is complete. The rites continued until the last Emperor in 1912.

Buddhism came to China 1800 years ago. Christians came to China 1000 years ago with Marco Polo. Judaism came to China only 500 years ago and Shanghai has a famous synagogue and Jewish Quarter.

In 1942-45… Jewish were forced from Shanghai but the Chinese secretly fed the Jewish people who were detained and 500 babies were born in this period.

So after all this culture and religion we were off to the experience the wonders of China’s billet trains as we head to the ‘small city of Xian, only 8.5 million people, you know’, this afternoon. Bye-bye Kelli Family. We will miss your Happy Rooms in Beijing (the Four Star Happy Rooms that is … not the Two Star ones!).

Beijing – The Great Wall of China

Posted on August 7, 2015 by borysSNORC

So this was a Bucket List Day. We went this morning to climb up to the Great Wall of China. I’m not sure what to say about it really, it is one of the most famous endeavours of man in the entire world – up there with the pyramids as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The building of the Great Wall started over 2200 years ago during the Qin Dynasty, when the then Emperor decided to build a wall to stop the Tibetan invaders from the North. The Tibetan people were stronger and more fierce than the Chinese and they were rightly fearful as they were constantly under attack. The Qin Emperor who started to build the Great Wall set 100 years of construction in motion, with farmers, soldiers and ordinary people shanghaied into building the wall. Over 1,000,000 people died during this first 100 years of construction – all of whom were buried within the wall.

After the Qin Dynasty came the Han Dynasty and the work on the wall continued for several more generations … another 120 years of work on the wall and approximately another 1,000,000 died working in the hazardous and freezing conditions of the mountainous terrain. Rock was all moved by horse and camel, and by men over land.

From there the Song Dynasty took over (approximately 1400 years ago now), and the wall continued to be built, with rock being moved over 1200km over water by rivers. The workers would dig trenches to allow water to freeze so rock could be dragged more easily over the ice by pack animals – horses, oxen and donkeys. Another half a million people died during this period of building.

When the Tang Dynasty took over another 150 years and several generations of Emperors prioritised securing the northern borders throwing more and more resources to continue building the wall. Another 1,000,000 workers are estimated to have died during this 150 year building period.

Following this, the Ming Dynasty also continued to build the wall for another 200 years. The Ming Dynasty had three priorities – Build the Wall. Save food to feed the people. Give the people property… (Ming Emperors must have been a bit Machiavellian way before their time).

It was a section of Ming Dynasty Wall that we visited today in Mutianyu, built over 600 years ago. The Great Wall stretches over 21,000km across the northern Chinese border, and when you look at the mountain ranges it crosses, it is a truly remarkable feat of human endeavour. All up around 5,000,000 people died during the construction and all are buried deep within the walls.

We walked ten minutes up a neat, modern paved walkway that was ridiculously steep, to reach a modern and convenient cable car that took us to the top of the mountain so we could walk a section of the wall… and once on top of this incredible fortress that stretches as far as the eye can see in either direction, all I could think was how on earth did those men get these huge building stones all the way up here without any modern machinery?! It beggars belief.

In China, our guide Kelly, tells us they have a saying, ‘You are not true man until you climb the Great Wall’, and I can well understand that idiom stems from people making a pilgrimage (sans cable car) up the mountain to spend time walking on the Great Wall.

After our monumentally mind blowing morning, we stopped at a nearby restaurant for a ‘farmer’s lunch’… which sounded like it would be simple fare, but turned out to be another overwhelming Chinese banquet consisting of about 8 different dishes for our table of six adults and two small very fussy eating children. So much food. I tried a couple of dishes, but avoided quite a few of the spicier looking dishes.

We had a long drive back to Beijing – Mutianyu is a less popular area of the wall as it is 90 minutes drive out of the city, and obviously much favoured by foreigners as we simply do not enjoy the crush and press of the crowds. So there was a higher percentage of foreigners where we were today, and less domestic Chinese tourists. Mind you it was still plenty busy enough for my liking, so I can’t imagine what it is like where the Chinese tourists (who are used to the crush) go to see the Wall.

When we arrived back in Beijing, we stopped for a quick look at some of Beijing’s newest landmark architecture – the 2008 Beijing Olympic’s Athletics Centre, also known as The Birds Nest, and the Aquatic Centre, known as The Water Cube. As soon as we returned to the city, the cloying heat smacked us in the face again and even the short walk to see these buildings was draining. Personally, a photo op like these doesn’t really do it for me, and I wasn’t really paying attention when we were told who designed them etc, but all I really took in was that neither building was designed by Chinese architects, and that they had been done by some famous designers from the Netherlands.

Yesterday we spent the entire day looking at how the Imperial family lived, so this afternoon’s plan was to show us how the common people live. So, after lunch we we to see the Hutongs by rickshaw – these are basically Beijing suburbs (the word Hutong originally meant ‘water well’ in Mongolian, but now refers to the Beijing suburbs) . Personally I am not comfortable with this sort of ‘slum tourism’. I feel it is an invasion of privacy and I am pretty sure if I lived there I would not be too pleased with a string of wealthy tourists traipsing through the neighbourhood in rickshaws every afternoon. Anyway, it is what was on our tour, so off we went. The Hutong areas used to be filled mostly with very wealthy ‘Four Beam’ families. You see, the number of ‘beams’ represented out front of your home marked your status in society. Some people have Four Beams, some had Two Beams, and some had none. Four Beam families only married with other Four Beam families and so on and so forth. Nowadays, people marry whomever they want and less arranged marriages occur in China than tradition used to dictate, however the profession of matchmaker still exists and these people often help very busy working Chinese people meet their prospective mates.

Anyway, the Hutongs are no longer dominated by Four Beam families as during the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao made an edict that the wealthy families had to make way for less fortunate ones, and spaces that held one Four Beam family were suddenly supporting up to ten families of all levels of status – many of these merged families were the slaves of the former Four Beam families. So now, the relatively rich live right next door to the very poor with the houses being passed down through only a couple of generations so far. Land in the Hutongs fetches around 200,000 yuan per square meter (about AU$50,000 per square meter)… though it is hard to believe once you see the area. Many of the private homes here don’t even have private bathrooms, and rely on communal bathroom areas which I have to say are positively disgusting, you can smell them a mile off. I took a video of us traversing through the Hutong by rickshaw to capture the chaos and colour and noise of the area, but it certainly doesn’t captures the strong smells encountered as we rode through – from gasoline, to rubbish, to incense, to sewerage, to fresh fruit and flowers, to the stench of urine. It was quite the experience.

From here we reached for the hand sanitiser and head off to our dinner at the famous Bian Yi Fang Restaurant. This restaurant has apparently been on this site serving Peking Duck for 800 years now. Kelly was kind enough to inform us that our duck would not be 800 years old, but that they would get us a fresh one. 🙂 We were served another enormous banquet – at least 9 different dishes on the table for 7 people before the duck was even served. While we waited, we tried a local rice spirit called, Bai Jui – with 56% alcohol!!! And bloody hell doesn’t that stuff pack a punch. It tastes like rubbing alcohol smells! That or really cheap and strong tequila. Whoa.

The Peking Duck was absolutely delicious, probably the best Asian meal I have ever tried, well worth trying if you are in Beijing. So it seems in just a few short days we have hit a lot of the Beijing highlights – The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, The Great Wall of China, the Hutongs and tried the famous Peking Duck. So tomorrow, onwards to Xian.

PS: sorry if I got some of my dynasties mixed up! Our guide has fantastic Enflish but a thick accent. 🙂