Asia-Europe 2012

As soon as we returned to Beijing from the DPRK we decided to circumvent the mobility problem by renting a pair if bicycles. Finally we were able to move efficiently and to go around the city.

Unfortunately, the more we moved the more disappointed we were. First of all, although there is no exhaust smell (all motorbikes have electric motors and batteries, and the resit of the vehicles are fairly new) the air is so polluted with fine dust that we have never able to see the sky, during our stay. Furthermore, except for a few major sights, most of the traditional buildings are gone (some say as a result of Mao’s Great leap forward movement in the ’60s), being replaced with western style office and apartment buildings. Furthermore, food and drinks are very expensive, something we haven’t encountered in Asia before. Average meal costs way more than it would cost in Los Angeles 🙁

We arrived recently in Beijing and we had one day before departing to North Korea. I felt incapacitated without wheels so I decided to try to rent some bikes from the Beijing bike sharing project. Since we were non residents the situation was a bit more complicated. Furthermore, after some 2 hours of trying we had to give up when we understood that in between the bike rental place and the metro station across the street (the place where we purchased the required metro cards) there was a district boundary and the cards weren’t going to work at that particular rental center. OK… we took the train and after sweating for some 30 minutes we arrived at the Forbidden City. In our opinion the fame is well ahead of the actual value of this objective. Perhaps, after seeing so many exciting sites, the average ones can’t impress us anymore. Anyways, the compound consists of a few similar looking buildings that housed the Chinese emperor from around 1420 until 1925, during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

After that we took a rickshaw ride in narrow alleys in Hutong. In the gate picture, the 4 things above the gate show the social rank of the owner while the 2 rock sculptures on the sides show his employment.

Last thing we went on a nearby hill to have a better view of the palace.