99,380 Steps in 4 days and Other Spring Break Tidbits

That is nearly 50 miles in 4 days.  It was a killer.  But it was worth it.  What did we do, you may ask.... We spent the girls' spring break in Beijing.  There is so much to do there and we didn't even scratch the surface.  But before we get to the sites we saw, I'm starting off with some (non?)interesting tidbits.

Getting there:

According to Google maps, it takes 10 hours 50 minutes to drive from Changzhou to Beijing.  But by high speed train you can get there in 4 hours.  It costs about $71 per person. Cheaper than flying. Faster than driving.  I will say that those are 2nd class tickets and the 2nd class car is a bit of a dive (okay, really quite the dive), but we have gone 1st class before and the upgrade wasn't worth double the price. We traveled at 304km per hour, which is about 188mph.  Really quite convenient.

Population:

Population reports are all over the place when it comes to China, but there are about 22 million people living in Beijing, plus or minus a million or two.  Close enough.  (I guess....)  All I know is it is A LOT of people!  We live in a city of 4-5 million, depending on the source.  To put that in perspective, we live in a city that would be the 2nd largest in the US.  (New York is the largest with almost 8 million people. LA is the 2nd largest at 3.7 million.)  And compared to Beijing, Changzhou is a village---and you can feel it.  

The Subway:

So half of our experience in Beijing was just digesting the sheer number of people there.  The subway was one of the most crowded places.  If you go to Beijing, beyond the recommended sites, you have to ride the subway, just to experience it.  There was one time that the doors opened for us to get on, and it was already jam packed. We were hoping a few would get off, but no one did. About 8 people were ahead of us and they squished on.  What did we do? Tom quickly physically pushed all of us onto the car far enough that he could get in for the door to shut behind him.  Talk about sardines.  I wanted to take a picture, but I couldn't move to get my phone out!  So you get pictures when we had plenty of room!  Thankfully masks are required on the subways--being that close to people who don't wear deodorant, we were thankful for a buffer! 

First stop:

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.  We took the subway-- even getting out of the subway station, there was a long line.  When we finally got out of the station and through two security passes, (in which they touched each part of our body, unzipped every zipper on our bags and asked questions about contents.  I was asked about my toilet seat covers and Lysol spray, thankfully they gave up before inspecting the stand-n-pee....).  We entered the fortress of the Forbidden City. Only to find out that the 80,000 tickets they sell a day were sold out.  We thought we were early enough.  Nope.  So we can only say we've been 'to' the Forbidden City, not 'in' the Forbidden City.  We hope to go back some day to remedy that.  Next to the Great Wall, it is the number one thing to see in China.  

The roofs are designed so that birds cannot land on them, so a congregation of birds fly around kind of like they are hired to put on a show! 

Many people dress up in traditional clothes to take pictures inside. (Actually, that isn't so very special to the Forbidden City, they do this all over China in every park....)

Forbidden City in the background.  It's the best we got....

Instead of going across the street to Tiananmen (which is just a big open square, that we saw from across the crowd of people and traffic) we went the other direction to the nearby Beihai park.  That was nice. The centerpiece of the park is the White Tower.  It was built in 1651 to honor the visit of the Dahli Lama.  It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1659 and rebuilt the next year.  It was a steep climb to the top. 

We were stopped SEVERAL times for photos. (This was the case our entire time in Beijing. I always pray that Jesus Christ's light in us will make a difference for these sweet people!)

While I love the experience of seeing the sites, these are my favorite scenes.  90% of them don't make it onto my phone.  There are just SO many awesome and endearing things to see here!!

Next we went to an acrobat show.  Wow.  Some of the things they do are unreal. 

We wanted to go to the night market on Wangfujing street, but the night market has been closed.  It has been replaced by a high end shopping area.  Which was cool, but not the experience we were hoping for.  But we found a good place to eat.  We didn't need to eat at the famous Beijing Duck restaurant because it is a chain and we have eaten there a couple of times in Changzhou and we wanted a different experience. When the day was said and done, we had put in 28,970 steps.  Gulp. We thought we had planned an 'easy' day to be prepared for the Great Wall the next.  Oops.

The next day was the Great Wall.  There are several places you can visit the Great Wall, many of them are near Beijing.  The most popular spot is called Badaling.  They say that 10,000 people visit the Great Wall each day--most of them on this section.  We opted for a more 'wild' adventure and hired a tour guide and driver to take us to an unrestored section of the wall.  This was an awesome choice, even if it was very difficult.  We learned so much from our guide and got to walk an incredible piece of history. The smog and the time of year didn't make it very picturesque, but it was cool to be there none the less.  Make sure you watch the videos for a better idea of the whole experience.  

We hiked up to the wall on the enemy side from a small village.  To access the wall we got to climb this cool ladder.

This is on a restored section of the wall.

Some places were very steep.

Very steep stairs down.

We had planned on going down the wall on some coasters (an Alpine slide), which everyone did but me.  I went down several guard stations early on a cable car.  I was sad to not continue on, but I was slowing everyone down.  

The great wall tour included a meal in a small village.  It was quite the restaurant.  But very delicious.

We were SO wiped out after all of that hiking.  But it turned out to be our shortest distance covered.  Only 20,264 steps.

The next day was Universal Studios.  We had told ourselves that we would take it pretty easy there.  Well.  That didn't happen.  We pulled another ALL dayer.  At Shanghai Disney lines were long, but the crowds were not the same insanity as Universal. On average we waited 2 hours for each ride.  At 10:00pm, we had only gone on 6 rides and that was skipping a meal. The lines were so crazy. 

You have to check out this video....

24,298 steps. Plus a WHOLE lot of standing.  Just outside of Universal there are a bunch of restaurants and we found a pizza place that was quite good.  It was the best American food we've had here.  Good way to end a long day.

On Saturday we planned an 'easy' day.  Or so we thought.  We wanted to check out the Bird's Nest (Olympic Stadium).  We gingerly walked around because we were all so sore.  To see inside, you had to buy a tour, so without too much thought for our feet, we paid our ¥80 each and went on in. When we got inside, we just kept exploring.  Which took us up a few escalators, but mostly stairs to the very tip top row in the stadium, back down and then to the highest point on the roof!! What??? Why???  I don't really know, except we were there and we paid for it and we wouldn't get another chance. But it was very cool and we're glad we did it even though stairs do quite a number on sore legs.....

At the top of the lower bowl.

At the top of the upper bowl.

Good idea, Tessa.

Bing Dwen Dwen 2022 Olympic mascot.

At the very top!  Sadly this was the only picture I got up there....

At that point we were utterly exhausted and opted for the easier venue:  the Summer Palace over the Temple of Heaven.  It was closer and fewer steps from the subway.  However, it didn't turn out so easy peasy.  The subway stop we went to was the LONGEST route to the palace (through a beautiful meandering park near a lake--which is also part of the Summer Palace).  

See the structure on the hill over there?  That is the summer palace.  This photo was taken after walking at least 15 minutes in the park....just to give you an idea of the distance it was!

We had to cross a few bridges such as this to get over to the palace.

As in all parks these photography sessions with traditional clothes take place.

On the street outside of the summer palace, the day winding down.

By the time we got to the palace, we met up with more stairs and thousands of people, so we walked right past the palace and out the gate.  Again we are going to have to claim that we've been 'to' the Summer Palace but not 'in' the Summer Palace.  Oh well.... we were so tired and so hungry that that is what happened! In the long run, that was a good choice because the subway station closest to the Summer Palace, wasn't so close either.  Tom found some place to eat on Baidu (Chinese Google), but once we got to that part of town, we walked the streets trying to find it, only to find it closed.  So we picked another local joint.  It was good to finally rest and get something to eat!  There we were entertained by a large man, who we think was drunk, but that was just a guess.  He was sitting at a table near the door waiting for something/someone.  He fell asleep and was snoring so loudly that everyone could hear him. That was quite entertaining, but then he fell out of his chair.  The restaurant workers ran to his rescue, but he did not wake up.  He was still snoring very loudly.  It took several people, plus several tries, but they put him back in his chair and tried to put things around him so that he wouldn't fall off again.  They finally had one worker stand by him to keep him from slipping back down.  Tom said that they said the hospital was sending someone over.  We didn't stick around for the finale of that episode, but it was sure interesting to see how different cultures respond to such things.  Always something to learn!  By the time we got back to the hotel we were DEAD.  Another 25,848 put on our pedometer. For the grand total coming to 99,380 steps.  Not quite 50 miles, but quite close!  (We came up with the extra to make it 50 miles the next day by walking to the subway, then to the train, then back to the subway in Changzhou and back to our apartment. We just didn't record those.)

It took a few days for our feet to recover, but it was well worth pushing ourselves to see all that we did.  And now we know what it is like in a city with 22 million people! And I'm thankful to live in a 'village'. One thing I kept saying in Beijing was from a cross-stitch my Grandma used to have that said, "God must have loved Porters, He made so many of them."  I changed it to say "God must have loved Chinese people, He made SO many of them!"  I only hope and pray that our smiles and interactions help someone feel loved--we sure smiled at A LOT of people this trip!