3rd and 4th day in Beijing

On my third day in Beijing, I bought a train ticket to Xi'an for the next day through the tour desk at the hostel and then took a long bus ride to the Summer Palace. It's on the northwest side of Beijing about one and half hour from the Tian'anmen square. Short ride buses in China have a fixed rate (1 yuan) and there is a box next to the driver that you must put the fare in. Long rides are different and depends on the distance there are different charges. There are one or two ticket persons on the bus who will ask you where you're going, sell you a ticket and give you a receipt. This is a job that doesn't exist in North America. Well, it takes a lot of creativity to have jobs for a billion people.

Summer palace must be visited in the spring or summer, when there are actually some green trees to see. The fact that half of the palace was under construction "For the Benefit of the Future Generation" as it read on the sign, didn't help neither. The only things that looked like a garden were the evergreen trees. The architecture was similar to those of Forbidden City. The river, or lake I'm not sure, was frozen and people were walking on it as a short cut. I thought to myself it would have been a good idea to make it an ice-rink for skating.

The garden is huge and there are several bridges connecting two sides of the garden. I didn't get to see much of the palaces since it was under construction but I walked around the hills, watched the imperial boat, dragon statues, phoenixes and enormous stones. After 3 hours of walking in the cold, I was happy to get back on the bus.

The city of Beijing is preparing for Olympic games in 2008 and they are building new stadiums and accommodations. There are huge sites under construction everywhere. Beijing must feel and look differently in a year from now.

That night, I went to an Internet cafe and caught up with my emails. Shopped around for a flight ticket from Hong Kong to Taipei for the 16th of January and found the best deal at a travel agency inside a hotel near the City Center Station.

Next day, I checked out of the hostel before 10, went to the travel agency to pick up my flight ticket. I found a Starbucks, and while sipping on a cup of hot chocolate, I tried to figure what to think of Beijing. It was extremely cold on the 4th, felt like a cold winter day in Montreal. At 5 o'clock pm, I was at the train station's cafeteria, having Chinese noodles.

I had bought a long distance calling card to call home and noticed that the card is valid only in Beijing. I looked for a public phone at the train station. In Canada, you can call the toll free number on the calling card from any public phone without having to put a coin. But in China, of course, it's different. The pay phone worked with phone cards and wouldn't dial the number on the calling card. Even when I bought a phone card and put it in, it still didn't dial the number. I was frustrated so I asked the information desk if there was any coin public phone. There was none. They tried to help me by taking me back to the card public phones, and I had to explain that I've already tried it and it doesn't work. I asked if I could use their phone at the reception since it would be a local call and free. They said they couldn't let me. I was being persistent when a young man in uniform with relatively good English asked me what the problem is and I explained that the card is only valid in Beijing and I need to make a call before my train leaves. He was helpful and asked the reception staff to pass him the phone. Dial the number for me, entered the password, and pass me the phone to dial the destination number. I talked on the phone for 5 minutes or and had to hang up because the reception staff was asking me to "quickly" end the phone call. Later when I was sitting in the waiting room, I saw the kind man in uniform and insisted to take my card and use the rest of it. It was the only thing I could do to return his help.

On my way to Xi'an, as the train was going through the outskirts of Beijing, I realized that I didn't really like this huge city, and decided that I would never want to live in the capital city of China.