My life and experiences in China have been focused on  Daqing and the Heilongjiang province mainly, and the differences that exist here and in cities like Beijing and Shanghai to name just 2 is like chalk and cheese. I have spent the past few days in Beijing and apart from usual idiosyncratic Chinese behaviour and basic lifestyle the difference is enormous.

Let’s start with staring at foreigners, something residents in Daqing do quite aggressively. In Beijing? Non-existent (almost)! With over 400,000 foreigners living in Beijing and more than 20 million foreign tourists every year mostly visiting China through that city, you are hardly noticeable. Except to beggars. While I was walking to Dongzhimen subway station I was approached firstly by a young lady of about 19 or 20 whose opening greeting was a question: Do you speak Chinese? Then it was: Do you speak English? after my shake of the head.

“I am a poor student in Beijing and I have no money for food. Can you spare a few yuan?”

I answered with a question of my own. “Why didn’t you ask one of the 25,000 Chinese people that walked past you before you asked me?” Another foreigner targeted scam. Not 20 metres further along I was approached again, young female, poor student in Beijing. Honestly, the pedestrian traffic around the A, B, C and D exits of Dongzhimen subway station number in the thousands every hour, mostly Chinese of course, but they are never approached. Go figure.

Another major difference is you can get western style food from a whole number of different restaurants, Italian, American, Australian, German and let’s throw in Thai even though that’s also Asian, but you can’t get that style of food where I am. There was even a bar, an Irish bar no less, called Paddy O’Shea’s (I think). We drank draught beer at an Italian restaurant while sitting outside, under umbrellas, on a beautiful Beijing day. Geez, I’ve missed that. The location you will find all this multicultural infusion in Beijing is the Sanlutin Street area which is home to nearly all the embassies hence the strong foreign influence.

The next day we visited the Irish bar and it was a bit of a hiccup ordering because the barman was Chinese and didn’t speak a lot of English. Also, a pint of Stella Artois draught was 40Y, an unfriendly price for beer in China. Upstairs there is an Indian restaurant called the Ganges (of course) and next door was another Italian restaurant into which we went to have a meal. The menu was huge with not only Italian but lots of other western style dishes. My eye spied ‘rack of lamb’ so I did a double take and asked if that was available. Yes, I was told and at 85Y ($13) that’s cheap for lamb in China. Well dear readers, this was the best rack of lamb I have ever had bar none including my own cooked version. I don’t know what subtle sauces they used but the taste was superdelish and the meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender. If there was a place at the Summer palace called the Tastes of Heavenly Delight then I was there! I texted everybody I knew to come to this restaurant sometime in the future and try the lamb!

Ahhh, the Beijing subway system. Like Tokyo in Japan the city needs to move a lot of people around and the subway system, along with the buses and taxis has to be able to cater for the sheer volume. I think Beijing has a population of about 20 million so the scene at a transfer subway station can only be described as frightening. I am the type of person that enjoys people watching but getting on and off subway trains needs your full concentration and the ability to use elbows, do blind turns and find gaps in the crowd. Some subway rides mean getting off at 1 or 2 transfer stops and getting a train on a different line. There are 13 separate lines in Beijing. If you decided to stand near a doorway at peak hour there is a likelihood that you will be forced off the train by a surging crowd, not allowed back on by the boarding crowd and having to wait for the next train! Attendants at the stations are armed with giant shoehorns and as the train is about to leave and they see body parts still sticking out of closing doors they use these shoehorns to force them into the carriage so the door can close! Okay! Okay! I exaggerated that last bit. The bit about being forced off the train and it’s not your stop is, however, true.

The subway system itself is similar to Hong Kong and Singapore, they take almost no time to learn and are very, very efficient. The cost is another plus. The charge is 2 RMB  (about $0.25) for a subway ride….. anywhere. You need a 2 RMB ticket to get through the gates to enter the subway and you only present that ticket when you leave the subway system. You could ride any distance over any number of lines and it’s 2 RMB! 

Last time I was in Beijing I visited Tiananmen, the Forbidden City and old Beijing and missed The Great Wall among other places of interest. The plan was to go and see Beihai Park, the Silk Road and the Summer Palace.  As a park Beihai is very nice and we have parks of equal beauty and serenity and some better in Australia but for sheer attendance numbers it’s going to be hard to beat. Unlike our parks which are free, at Beihai, we had to pay an entrance fee. We arrived reasonably early and every single boat, paddle, motor and tour had been hired and was already out on the central lake. The visitors to the park must have been around the 200,000 mark but hard to judge considering the size of the place. We eventually walked the whole distance around back to our entrance point and walking that perimeter path was a constant battle avoiding the masses walking the same path in the opposite direction. The weather? It was 31C and humidity about 80%, sweaty but okay.

After leaving the park we stopped at a dumpling place and had lunch. Just to give you an idea of the difference in cost of living in Beijing as opposed to Daqing the dumplings cost 12RMB ($2) and we got 3 each. In Daqing we would get a slightly smaller dumpling but pay 5RMB ($0.80) and get a basket full – about 10 or 12. Needless to say we left there a little hungry. While we were up getting our dumplings a woman sat herself at our table ignoring the cameras, the backpacks and the souvenir bag that obviously reserved our seats and she would have been about 55 years old and she had 3 plates of dumplings and 2 different plates of soup and two spice dishes. I thought for sure with that amount of food she was with somebody but no, it was all for her. I was tempted to steal two dumplings from her plate as she stared into space munching her food as a sort of penalty for taking one of our seats!

The visit to the Summer Palace was another subway trip and we got off  at the right station, the signs definitely pointed to the Summer Palace ‘that way’ but either it was a bit of Chenglish or we misinterpreted the sign due to tiredness but we were on the wrong side of the road. Again the crowds at the Summer palace were enormous but this time with a sprinkling of foreigners whereas at Beihai we were the only foreigners I saw there. The palace grounds cover about 250 hectares and we got there at 4 and the place shuts at between 5 and 6. We were confronted by a tour guide whose persistence was admirable but our timing was poor so it was not worth his price which he lowered 3 times in the space of 5 minutes as he saw we were becoming lost customers. At other times I would take a tour guide and would recommend that to anybody visiting China, especially once you have heard them speak and can understand them clearly!

The Summer Palace is at least a half day affair so we were not going to see even a quarter of it. Some of the features we would love to have visited just to see what the exotically translated name meant in reality. The Pavilion of Bright Scenery, Garden of Harmonious Interests, Tower of Dawn Light, Realm of Multitudinous Fragrance and the Garden of Virtue and Harmony would all have to wait another day but we did get to the Pagoda of Many Treasures which I guess meant ‘souvenir shop’! The river that fed Kunming Lake wends its way through the lower level of the palace and it’s called Suzhou Street. That is a beautiful walk with some super interesting shops that sold a fair bit of crap but also some artefacts of ancient Chinese interest and souvenirs the likes of which I had never seen before. At one little shop was an old Chinese guy that looked like I would imagine Confucius to look if he was alive today but the similarity ended there because his English pronunciation of what it would cost to have your name written in Chinese characters was faultless – clear and precise! I snapped his picture while he wasn’t looking lest he charge me 5RMB for that! Inscrutable!!