7 July 2018, Saturday

I had a good sleep on the train and woke up around 9am this morning. I made myself a cup of hot coffee and admired the scenery outside the window. Now that I was firmly in China territory, there was a lot more greenery and farmland all around, a far cry from the barren Gobi Desert landscape of yesterday.

Being in China also marked another milestone in my trip. This was when I felt like I was truly back in Asia, after spending more than two months in Europe. I started my trip by flying from Singapore to Greece on 1 May 2018. I then made my way through eastern and central Europe, Scandinavia and Russia before traversing through Siberia to Mongolia.

Even though Mongolia is part of Asia, it still felt quite foreign to me because of the spoken language and the fact that they use the Cyrillic alphabet in their writing, just like Russia. However, China is as Asian as you can get. It also helps that I can understand the language and read the Chinese characters. Heck, my ancestors were from China anyway! So being in China definitely felt like entering a different phase of my trip.

If I break it down into phases, I can even consider this to be Phase 3 of my trip. Phase 1 was when I spent the first 25 days travelling with my parents from Greece to the Czech Republic; Phase 2 was when I travelled solo from Germany to Mongolia; now, Phase 3 is when my parents and a few other relatives and family friends are coming to China to join me over the next two weeks; and lastly, Phase 4 will be the final leg when I make my way home on my own from Vietnam to Singapore.

Coming into this China phase, I felt both excited and nervous. Excited because I will be reuniting with my parents once again. The first 25 days of the trip felt special because they were with me and we had some wonderful moments as we explored new places, tried new food and shared the same roof together. We created plenty of shared memories and experiences that we will talk about for years to come. It was very sad when I had to say goodbye to them at the Prague airport. So I am greatly looking forward to having them join me once again on this grand adventure.

At the same time, I was nervous because after more than a month of travelling solo, I had to get used to travelling with companions once again. I love travelling solo because I have the freedom to go wherever I want and do whatever I wish. I don’t have to consider my companions’ feelings or preferences. Being solo also allows me to step out of my comfort zone, strike up conversations with strangers and make new friends. There are pros and cons to travelling solo and travelling with companions. In a way, I’m happy that I managed to do both on this trip.

Actually, my nervousness stems more from the fact that I will be joined not only by my parents, but with another four relatives in Beijing and later, another two family friends in Shanghai. So I will be travelling with a total of eight companions for the most part in China. It is a big group and I will effectively take on the role of tour leader – planning the itinerary, taking care of meal breaks, transport, getting tickets for attractions, shopping etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally welcome them to join me on my adventure, it’s just that I have to make a lot of personal adjustments after more than two months of travelling mostly on my own. As tour leader, I will have to take care of everyone to make sure they are well fed, well rested and enjoying themselves. There is more responsibility involved, and that is contributing to the nervousness. Just to be clear, I’m not dreading it, just nervous.

Nevertheless, I was looking forward to China. I last visited Beijing in 2003 and Shanghai in 2001 with my parents, where we joined tour groups on both occasions. It will be interesting to see how much has changed, especially after the Beijing 2008 Olympics. I was also greatly looking forward to visiting Zhangjiajie in Hunan, home to the Avatar Hallelujah mountains.

The train journey passed by quite slowly and I finally arrived at Beijing Railway Station (北京站) at 2:30pm, 31 hours after leaving Ulaanbaatar. There is no time difference between Ulaanbaatar and Beijing. After disembarking, I said farewell to my neighbours, Lawrence and Giulia, and wished them well in their journey.

After making my way out of the station, I tried to locate my driver among the sea of people waiting outside. The first thing that hits you the moment you arrive in China is the sheer number of people everywhere. China is the world’s most populous country with over 1.4 billion people, and over 21 million people live in Beijing alone. There is no escaping the crowd wherever you go.

For my stay in Beijing, I had booked an Airbnb accommodation and the host had arranged to come pick me up personally. At the time, I didn’t have any mobile data connection so I couldn’t call or contact him via WeChat (without incurring hefty data charges). He had a photo of me but I didn’t have one of him, so I could not look for him. The only way was for him to find me, which was easier anyway because I was carrying a large backpack, looking like a lost sheep. Finally, about 20 minutes later, I managed to link up with him. He led me to his car, which was parked a short distance away. We then drove to our accommodation and arrived at about 3:30pm.

The Airbnb accommodation I had booked was quite a special one. It was a refurbished courtyard house located in a hutong (胡同), which is a lane or alley formed by traditional courtyard compounds lining both sides. Hutongs were where the locals interacted with their neighbours and exchanged gossip, forming an important part of local culture and way of life.  

There used to be over 3,000 hutongs in Beijing but many of them have since been demolished for modern buildings and city construction. There are now fewer than 1,000 hutongs and majority of those that remain have been transformed into tourist attractions and shopping or food streets. Only a very few retain their original purpose of housing the residential population.

It took me a long time to find a suitable place for the 7 of us to stay in Beijing. I had considered booking a conventional hotel but I thought it would be more interesting to stay at a courtyard house in a hutong area, where we can all live under the same roof. The cost for renting this Airbnb accommodation was S$2,048.98 for 5 nights, for a total of 7 people. Because I was alone the first night, I paid a bit more (S$339 for 5 nights’ stay), while my remaining 6 family members paid S$285 each for their 4 nights’ stay.

The house was refurbished with very modern amenities. There were three bedrooms with enough beds for 8 people to sleep in. Each bedroom had a bathroom, which was installed with high-tech shower heaters and taps, and also heated toilet seats with bidet.

The open courtyard had been roofed over to keep out the rain, and also to keep the air-conditioning in. The living room had a large dining table, which was actually a billiard table underneath. There was also a huge TV, a washing machine, a dryer and ample retractable racks for hanging clothes. It was perfect for a family or a big group of friends.

I took some time to settle down because I needed to get all my admin stuff in order first. I felt very handicapped because the Great Firewall of China meant that common apps like Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook do not work here. Communication and navigation thus became a problem.

However, there is always a Chinese equivalent app available – instead of WhatsApp, it’s WeChat; instead of Google Maps, it’s Baidu. I had downloaded these alternative apps beforehand, of course. After connecting to the home Wi-Fi, I fired up my WeChat to let my family know that I had arrived in Beijing safely, and that I looked forward to seeing them tomorrow.

To get around the Great Firewall of China, you can also use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which encrypts your web traffic and masks your IP address, allowing you to access all the Google and Facebook related apps. There are several VPN companies but I read beforehand that ExpressVPN is one of the most reliable ones. It comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so I signed up for it before entering China.

By the time I finished settling down, it was 4:50pm when I stepped out of the house again. I thought it best not to be too ambitious and just explore the areas nearby. The house was located at Zhangwang Hutong (张旺胡同), near Jiugulou Street (旧鼓楼大街) and Guloudajie subway station (鼓楼大街地铁站). The area is called Gulou (鼓楼) because of the Drum Tower located here. Drum Tower means gu lou (鼓楼). The original Drum Tower was built in 1272 during the reign of Mongol general Kublai Khan, and later rebuilt and relocated here in 1420.

Where there is a Drum Tower, there is almost always a Bell Tower (钟楼) nearby. The Bell Tower was built later. Since ancient times, bells and drums were used to tell the time – morning bell and dusk drum (晨钟暮鼓). Together, the Bell and Drum Towers were used for telling time up till 1924, when Puyi, the last Emperor of China, was expelled from the Forbidden City and China adopted western-styled clockwork for official timekeeping.

My first task was to buy a SIM card so that I would have mobile data. I had identified a mobile phone shop at Gulou East Street (鼓楼东大路) so that was my first destination. Without Google Maps, I had to rely on Baidu. I can read Chinese characters but it took more effort and time to get used to the interface. From the house, it was a 10-minute walk away and I walked through some of the other hutongs in my area.

I managed to locate the shop and I bought a SIM card for CNY 150 (S$31.28). I’m not sure how much mobile data it came with, but it was sufficient for my two-week stay in China. By the way, the official name for Chinese currency is renminbi (人民币), but the yuan (元) is the basic unit of the renminbi. It is commonly referred to as the Chinese yuan (CNY) and the official symbol is ¥, the same symbol as the Japanese yen.

Gulou East Street was a main road and there were so many interesting shops here I didn’t know where to start. I decided to have my dinner first so that I could then explore the area in peace. I quickly picked a restaurant and ordered a plate of beef hor fun noodles and a cup of hot chrysanthemum tea for CNY 44 (S$9.17). With food in my belly, I headed out eagerly again.

I soon passed by a shop selling lamb meat skewers. The smell of the grilled mutton was too good to resist and I bought one skewer for CNY 12 (S$2.50). It was so yummy! I felt like I could have more but I was still full from dinner so I kept it to one.

To be honest, I didn’t do much research on Beijing beforehand so I wasn’t really sure where to go. Beijing is a metropolis and it was both overwhelming and exciting at the same time because there was just so much going on all at once. The sheer amount of people, cars, shops, noise…it was quite a sensory overload. I concluded that the best way was simply to go with the flow. That means, to follow the crowd.

If you understand Chinese, it will help in terms of orientation because the street names will often give you a clue of the location. Gulou East Street simply means that the street is located to the east of Gulou, i.e. east of the Drum Tower. I continued walking along Gulou East Street until I saw the north entrance of Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷), where the crowd surged. Nanluoguxiang literally translates to South Gong and Drum Lane, so it makes sense that it lies south of Gulou East Street. There must be a gong somewhere here too.

Nanluoguxiang is one of the most popular and oldest hutongs in Beijing, at over 700 years old. The main alley is almost 800m long and there are eight hutongs on each side. This old neighbourhood has been refurbished and the main alley is now a pedestrian street with many fancy boutiques, snack stalls and souvenir shops. It was very lively and bustling when I visited because it was a Saturday evening and all the locals were out.

As I walked down the main alley, I regretted having dinner at the restaurant earlier because there were so many more interesting street snacks here. I observed the proceedings and I noticed that everyone used their mobile phones to pay for everything, either by WeChat Pay (微信支付 or weixin zhifu) or Alipay (支付宝 or zhifubao), by scanning the QR codes provided by the vendors. The only people still using cash for payment were tourists like myself.

I felt like a laggard, but I didn’t really have a choice because WeChat Pay and Alipay did not support foreign credit cards. You could only use the two digital payment platforms if you had a Chinese bank account. So tourists like myself were stuck with the only option of using cash. But it illustrated how advanced China was in terms of e-commerce and digitalisation. (Update: I understand that at the time of writing this post on 19 May 2020, WeChat Pay and Alipay can now support foreign credit and debit cards)

I finally gave in to temptation and bought a mango dessert from a shop called Tai Mang Le (泰芒了). The name was a play on the phrase 太忙了, which means “too busy”, but the first two characters actually say “mango from Thailand”, which means the dessert originated from Thailand. That’s the beauty of the Chinese language. It can be concise and playful at the same time. I paid CNY 35 (S$7.30) for the big cup of dessert, but in reality, it looked better than it tasted.

I walked to the south end of Nanluoguxiang and it led to Di’anmen East Street (地安门东大街), right where Nanluoguxiang subway station (南锣鼓巷地铁站) was. I went to the subway station and bought a travel card called Yikatong (一卡通). I paid a refundable deposit of CNY 20 and topped up a further CNY 80. There are no cost savings when you use it on the subway but it saves you queuing time, instead of buying a single trip ticket on each occasion.

Travelling on the subway is cheap and convenient. It costs CNY 3 (S$0.63) to travel the shortest distance on one line, and CNY 9 for the longest journey on one line. The Beijing subway system has over 20 lines so you can pretty much get anywhere within the city quickly and efficiently. From Nanluoguxiang station, I hopped on the train on Line 6 to Dongsi, changed to Line 5, alighted at Dong Nan, then changed to Line 1 and alighted at Wangfujing station.

I arrived at Wangfujing Street (王府井大街) at about 8:10pm. This is Beijing’s most famous shopping street with modern malls and department stores. As it was my first night, I wasn’t planning on shopping but I came here more for recce purposes. It was raining so it wasn’t as crowded as expected. I just walked around to get a feel of the area so that I could bring my family back again some other day.

After that short excursion, I made my way back “home” to rest, watch some live Wimbledon tennis action on the TV, and get ready to welcome my family tomorrow. They would be getting on the plane in a few hours’ time and arriving Beijing at 7:15am tomorrow. Let the real excitement and nervousness begin!