Day 97 Arrival in Beijing!

We leave Shanghai by our second sleeper train and head overnight to the mysteries of the capital, Beijing.

We arrive in Beijing and David is not feeling well. We are jostled and bustled through another crowded station, swept along by the tide of people and spat out in  front of the station.

We hail a taxi to take us to our hotel  - the Ming Courtyard - located in a hutong to the north of the Forbidden City. Hutongs are a type of narrow streets or alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods. Since the mid-20th century, the number of Beijing hutongs has dropped dramatically as they are demolished to make way for new roads and buildings. They are truly maze like and one looks very like another - very easy to get lost in and hard to find the right bit if you are a stranger in the area. This one is no exception. Having learned our lesson in Shanghai with english script place names and having been dropped off twice to the wrong place, we have a map of our hutong, the area and the address written in Cantonese ready. But sadly this doesnt help! The taxi driver does his best to locate the hotel, he stops twice to ask directions and makes several phone calls and eventually drops us at the end of our alley leaving us to trudge the last 100 metres  into the unknown and mysterious world of a more "local" China.

 

In China, every bit of rubbish is picked through, sorted and loaded onto carts, bikes and wagons. This one was parked regularly at the end of our street, loaded up with "found treasure"to sell for a few coins... hard to imagine this life, harder still to fathom how this vehicle even moved under the sheer weight of cargo! We find the hotel entrance - nothing much to look at save a pair of red double doors  - but are amazed to find a beautiful courtyard hidden away behind the raggedy lane where we had just been walking. To our relief the staff seem to have a good command of English, and despite the early check in, our room is ready! David retires to bed for the afternoon and after unpacking the girls head out to "see what we can see!"

We stumble upon the Lama Temple, not far from our hotel and we explore with a combination of the Lonely Planet guide and the tourist head set which explains each section of the Temple complex.  It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world occupying an area of 66,400 square meters (16 acres) and is described as a mini-palace with yellow glazed tiles on the roof and red walls circling the group of buildings. 

 

The smell of incense in the air and the Buddhist monks chanting enhance the experience and we stand and watch for a while as the monks pray and receive gifts of food.

We are quiet, respectful and curious in equal measure and slightly overawed by the three increasingly enormous Buddha statues, the largest 18 metres high, carved from one single tree trunk and transported from Nepal.

We are fortunate to have experienced the sheer beauty and intricacy of these surroundings.

As we leave we managed to photograph this monk, deep in thought - one of our favourite photos so far and deeply evocative.