Woke up at 1.45am due to jet lag--- couldn't get back to sleep and so ended up watching Channel V (excellent Asian music TV channel., better than MTV).
After a hearty buffet breakfast, we met our taxi driver, Mr Qin, at the hotel
entrance at 8am. We wanted to go to Badachu (Eight Great Sites) first
and then Fragrant Hill---- both places were in the northwest part of Beijing.
Mr Qin couldn't speak a word in English, so it's a fun day for me to practise
my Mandarin.... The first real test to see how much I learnt in the past 6
months.
En route, we drove past a cluster of new modern-looking buildings in the Xidan district--- these were definitely not there in 1998. The area used to be the hutongs for the Beijing residents, but now it's turned into a commercial/financial district.
There were eight temples in Badachu, and they were all built on a hill. By
the time we visited 4 temples, we got a bit bored (they were very similar,
and it didn't help when I was not religious) and so instead of wasting any
more energy to climb further up the hill, we decided to go to Fragrant Hill
and so headed back down.
Forgotten my map of the Fragrant Hill, but still managed to find the chairlift
to take us up to the top of the Incense Burning Peak. Thought the cost of
RMB30 was a bit much, but then the whole thing was 1.4km long and so retrospectively
it was well worth the money!
The view from the summit of Incense Burning Peak was magnificant---- there
were already some red leaves, but not as spectacular as I expected, probably
because it's just the start of the red leaves festival. Still, the different
colours of the autumn leaves were beautiful. We could also just see the Central
TV Tower and a few skyscrapers in the west of Beijing. However, there were
so many noisy tourists and hawkers around and so we only had a quick bite
and drink before taking the chairlift back down to the bottom of the hill.
Then we walked to Azure Cloud Temple and checked it out---- it's actually
not that large, but interesting architecture.
Having walked past a cage full of peacocks (and one outside that was chained
to the top of a wooden platform for photo sessions with tourists---- very
sad!), we arrived at a small lakeside pavilion where we decided to have a
rest and sample some nice gongfu tea in a teahouse. Ordered some Four-Season
Oolong tea, and the waitress was so patient in explaining and showing us how
to make gongfu tea---- she was speaking so fast at first I couldn't understand
a thing, but then I asked her to speak slower and surprisingly I actually
understood about 90% of what she said.
We spent well over an hour in the teahouse, and by the time we finished we were ready to head back to the hotel. Mr Qin was really nice and he was pointing out all the various places in Beijing while driving past them --- places that we wouldn't bother making a special trip to visit.
Had a quick swim in the hotel swimming pool before heading to Fangshan Restaurant in Beihai Park. It was already dark when we arrived at 6pm, but a girl in traditional Qing Dynasty costumes waited at the entrance with a lantern in her hand, and led us to the door of the restaurant complex. We decided to splash out and went for a special tailor-made menu, which included:
Surprisingly I didn't feel too stuffed after dinner, but decided to walk back to the hotel rather than take a taxi. Saw a large group of people dancing outside the entrance of Forbidden City--- now that's what I called stylish! Imagine people doing tango outside Buckingham Palace!
Walked past the Dong'An Food Stalls. It's cleaner and wider than before, but somehow lost a bit of its charm and the chaotic fun before, as well as the smell of the food. Saw the stall selling scorpion skewers again, but still not brave enough to try.... Well, there's another chance tomorrow night!
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