The trip on the Trans-Siberian railway

China: Beijing (Jul 13 – Jul 20)

This section covers the time spent in China, including the first day when we left from Finland to first take a plane to Copenhagen and then from there to Beijing.

Jul 13

The plane from Copenhagen to Beijing left two hours and a half late. However, the fire fighter officer from Hong Kong who was sitting next to Juha made the time go fast. He had visited five European countries, including Finland, and shared his opinions on reindeers, growth of population, and many other issues. He also told us of a certain Chinese spirit, Mau Toi, which should be had at one gulp. If you sip, then you will get drunk, that's what he said.

Jul 14

We did not end up taking a taxi (80 yuan, approx. 10 USD) from the airport but a bus (2 * 16 yuan) in order to start living on a budget from the first minute on. The bus dropped us off two kilometers from the hostel that had confirmed our reservation by email one day before we left Finland. Those two kilometers quickly showed that this was not the right time and place to get pennywise, considering the weight of our backpacks and the weather of 37 degrees Celsius.

Finally we got to the hostel, and got ourselves into a dormitory room of six people. There was an American guy writing postcards when we came in, and he told us he was also going to go by train to Moscow.

In the evening we went to eat in a place which had the menu and service only in Chinese. We still managed to get some pretty good although very spicy chicken by pointing at Chinese symbols in our Lonely Planet guidebook. A crash course on using chop sticks resulted in us being the center of attention for the waitresses.

Jul 15

Because of the strange sleeping hours of our roommates, we did not sleep too well. We rented bicycles from the hostel for quite a high price of 40 yuan for one bike in such a condition. Due to our holiday of exactly four weeks, we had reserved the train tickets in advance in Finland, and were to retrieve the tickets for the trains from Beijing and from Ulan Bator using vouchers. Had we had a looser schedule, it would have been cheaper to buy the tickets on the way, but then you obviously cannot be sure to get one for the train you like. So the first thing we did in the morning was to bicycle to the CITS building, where we were instructed to claim our onward tickets. This indeed succeeded with a surprisingly small amount of hassle, although we did have to wait for quite a long time. However, after leaving the CITS building, we had a setback. Having ridden the bike for a couple of meters, Juha realized that there was something wrong: it felt like the tire of the rear wheel would have been flat, but it was not. Before he could figure out what's wrong then, an old man almost bumped into him from behind a corner. At this point, we had cycled for maybe a dozen or two meters onto a small alley.

The old man started pointing at the front wheel of Juha's bike and of course talked lots of Chinese. Before Juha had the time to say anything, the man was already detaching the flat inner tire. Obviously it was not intact, so the man started changing it. At this point we started to realize that although we had already seen several bicycle repairers in Beijing, it still sounded quite improbable that a tire goes flat and in maybe twenty meters we bump into a man who immediately notices the problem and has exactly the right tools with him. However, we got sure about this when the tire had been changed: mysteriously, the chains had also broken, although they had been all right just before, since Juha had actually been riding the bike. The man of course rushed to get new chains which he not surprisingly had with him, and that's when Juha tried to say it was enough. The language barrier however was not nonexistent, and the man obviously insisted that the broken chains needed to be changed. This was indeed true: there was quite a long distance to the hostel where the bikes had been hired at, and an even longer distance in the total plan left for the day, so the bike clearly had to be repaired. So we let the man finish, although it was quite clear that the old chains could also have been fixed instead of having to install a new set. Juha also tried to share this opinion, but of course it was not in the man's interests to even try to understand the gestures. Actually the same applies for the tire, which would have been easy to patch with stickers that are readily available for that very purpose at least in Finland. There must be something like that in Beijing as well, since bicycles are used so extensively here and the locals definitely do not buy new tires every time one goes flat.

When the man had finished, he asked for 100 yuan, which Juha was able to cut down to 60 (8 USD). We also took the "broken" chains with us, so that the man would not be able to sell them to his next victim, although the set that he had installed was indeed a new one. As a sign for a job well done, the chains dropped down after half a kilometer of cycling, but luckily they were easy to put back there.

So what is there to learn about in this story? Never leave your bicycle outside a guarded parking area in Beijing — they are quite cheap, and definitely worth it. If a tire still goes flat, don't let the first guy who bumps into you touch your vehicle, but rather find a repairer who did not get there "by accident".

The rest of the day was better, although cycling in the heat frequently required us to stop to have some water. We went past the Tiananmen square to the Beihai park, which was, compared to those parts of the city we had so far seen, a peaceful oasis.

On the way to the night market two art students came to talk to us and persuaded us to go with them to an art exhibition they were organizing. They used quite a lot of time to show us different kinds of paintings, and finally they even got us to buy a couple of pieces. Later we found out that this kind of a thing is a business to many many students, if it is even true that they are students. At least not everything they said was true, so we suggest that anyone facing a similar situation does not let their friendliness fool common sense. The paintings we got were quite nice, so we didn't feel like being ripped off, but then again we are no art experts and it is very much possible that we paid way too much for them.

The art students were useful in the sense that they spoke very good English and were able to help us find a bicycle park close to the night market: at the time they came to talk to us, we had already been looking for one for some time by looking around and asking people. However, the market itself was not worth many sentences: it was quite small and the prices were pretty high at least compared to the place which this one reminded us of, namely the night market in Krabi, Thailand.

When we finally got back to the hostel, we had been cycling for quite some time and our bottoms were a little bit sore, since the saddles in the bikes were not of the most ergonomic model we had seen. But still bicycling was a great way of moving around in Beijing, and we definitely recommend it provided that one can find bikes that are cheap enough for rent; of course you can also buy one and then try to sell it when you leave.

Jul 16

Our day started before six a.m., when we went with Patrick, our roommate from the United States, and an Italian girl and a French guy to a nearby park to see some tai-chi. All the different dance-likes with fans and even sabers made it definitely worth the early wakeup.

The climate was still as hot as it had been when we got to Beijing, and we were starting to get annoyed by that. After tai-chi, we visited the Forbidden City and the Tiananmen square. We also went to the Jingshan park which is located north of the Forbidden City.

Especially in the Forbidden City, but also in other places, we were frequently asked by locals if they could have their pictures taken with us smiling there with them. The best example was a large group of pupils, whose teacher explained us that they were from the countryside and many of them had never seen a foreigner. These kids were very pleased when we agreed to have several photos taken with them. Of course we also tried to be polite and take some pictures with our camera as well, and some of them can be seen through the link on the right. In general having pictures taken with Chinese people was quite nice at first, but it might be that the twentieth asker was not just able to make us smile as much as the first ones, since at this point we were starting to get a little bit bored...

We also had Beijing roast duck today, but it probably was not as crisp as it should be when properly prepared. In the evening we were brisk enough to walk the whole way from the centrum to the hostel, since we did not have bikes anymore.

Jul 17

Juha's stomach was not behaving nicely, but we still decided to leave the hostel. We walked to the Lama temple where we found an enormous buddha statue and a whole lot of smaller ones. From there we went on to the Drum Tower, where we got in at just the right time to see a show which consisted of about seven young men beating the drums. We also had a look at the nearby Bell Tower, but did not bother to go in. From the towers we went on to a park in the north, but then returned to the hostel early in order to do some laundry and also to rest a little bit. However, it was already quite late when we started sleeping, as we had some interesting discussions with our Korean roommate Hoon.

Jul 18

Today we were supposed to go to the Great Wall with a group that was leaving from the hostel (and organized by the hostel), so we woke up soon after six. However, when we got downstairs we noticed that the trip was cancelled due to the rain. They said that "the wild wild wall" would be slippery and too dangerous. This might have been true, since the target was the Huanghua section of the wall.

We were already starting to get worried, since we didn't like the idea of leaving Beijing without having been to the wall. Luckily there were also some other people who were disappointed by the fact that the trip had been cancelled. So in the end there were four of us for whom it was the last or the second last day in Beijing, and since there was no guarantee that the weather would have been any better the next day, we decided to go anyway. However, we chose the Simatai section of the wall, which was recommended by all the guidebooks at least over the touristy, restored or even rebuilt sections of Badaling and Mutianyu. The Simatai section was farther away from Beijing, roughly 110 kilometers, but we did not let that bother us (except maybe a little bit).

So we were accompanied by Ji-Eon from Korea (nowadays United States) and Liz from England (nowadays Japan). Ji-Eon could read the Chinese script at least moderately, which was quite helpful. At the bus station we somehow found two more people who were interested in joining us: Adam and Natasha from Australia. First we took a bus to a halfway town and then got ourselves into a van that took us to Simatai.

We walked the wall for roughly three hours, and there were no signs of raining at all. That was good, since some sections would definitely have been too slippery. With great views and the company of very nice people, the day could not have been better with the organized trip to Huanghua which was cancelled.

The bus back took a scenery route, and the driver used the horn so extensively that a westerner would have thought that somebody in the bus was going to die unless he could drive to a hospital in a record time or something like that. After we got back to the hostel, we went to have dinner with Ji-Eon and Liz to a Syrian restaurant. Liz was also going to take the same train to Mongolia, so we expected to see her there...

Our roommates were now all Asian: In addition to Hoon, there was a medical doctor from the countryside of China, a boy who was going to a school in Singapore or something like that, and his father. Except for the father, everyone was speaking at least a little bit English. This did not seem to bother the father who kept insisting that we eat his water melon.

Jul 19

In the morning of our last day in Beijing, we went to a military shop which had lots of supposedly genuine military gear for sale. Then we took the subway to the centrum, where we, while doing some shopping, met Hoon by accident. He accompanied us and got us t-shirts for half the price we had been offered. Then we went to see the Temple of Heaven, although Hoon was the only one to actually get in. That was because there was an entrance fee of 35 yuan, and we were already very much short on the Chinese currency and did not want to exchange it anymore, so we just went to the park outside the temple (15 yuan per person).

From the temple we went to eat noodles in Beijing Noodle King, and then got back to the hostel. In the evening the three of us were chatting about all kinds of things, and playing some cards as well. The Chinese doctor also joined the game after some persuasion, and he actually picked up the rules surprisingly quickly, so we were having a pretty good time.

Jul 20

We woke up at 5:20 to be certain to catch the train which then left Beijing at 7:40. There was a nice Mongolian family in the same compartment with us: father Byamba, mother Oyuna and their 7-year old daughter Inkuuzh. They spoke some Russian (the daughter goes to a Russian school), or at least more than us. They had lots of things with them, mostly related to the mother's beauty salon, for which they had bought for example some large mirrors in Beijing. They insisted that we eat their peaches and drink their beer, which was kind of embarrassing since we did not have much to give back in terms of food: however, we were able to give the father some bandaid for a wound in his hand.

The views from the windows of the train varied: sometimes you could see mountains, sometimes just some fields and sunflowers. And cows, sheep and goats.

The local people in the train seemed to have a habit of throwing all their garbage out of the window. It was obviously quite difficult for us to do the same, so we didn't. However, this was not too helpful since when we had accumulated some rubbish, the man in our compartment started to throw them out for us. When he noticed that we did not actually like that, he started to say "sorry" each time he threw something. We just never found out whether he said that to us or to the people living next to the railway.