Cynical Stuff has been perilously low on updates lately, and there have been good reasons: personal issues, social activities and a lot more to do at work. In fact, we’ve been quite busy preparing a partnership with a Chinese company – and I ended up getting to spend two months in Beijing this summer. This is the first post in which I tell of the adventures me and my two colleagues have in Beijing during June and July.

Upon landing in Beijing everyone gets their temperature taken even before getting off the plane. The fear of swine flu is rampant and no sick foreigners are wanted inside China. Unfortunately for me I traveled to China one day after I got back from a five-day hard rock festival, and I had a massive cold. I ended up examined by two doctors; they wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain that I’ve been boozing and sleeping on the ground for five days, so of course I have a cold! But eventually I got to enter China if I promised to report to the nearest hospital as soon as I felt worse.

Yeah, I really planned on doing that.

The first night was spent at a vegetarian restaurant called Pure Lotus, owned by Buddhist monks. Very impressive presentation, but the food was nothing special. Still, that’s the first time I’ve seen something made out of mushrooms look like steak.

The following days were filled with bright sunshine, an unholy temperature, meetings and my first Peking duck. When Chinese people eat duck they don’t mess around – everything of the duck is eaten! Duck liver, duck feet, duck tongues…

I still feel ill when I think about it.

The hotel is located in the Central Business District of Beijing, in an area populated by foreigners and prosperous Chinese. The area is pretty enough, with a lovely view from my room at the ninth floor.

We did some brief sightseeing the first days, but a deep sense of desorientation is always present – Beijing is big with more inhabitants than the entire country of Sweden. Me and a colleague intended to go to the bar street in Sanlitun – but we somehow got completely lost and ended up walking around aimlessly for hours until we magically found ourselves back at the hotel again. We sure learned our lesson then: take a taxi when you want to go to a new place in Beijing!

On Saturday we were brought to the Great Wall by people from the company; a lovely experience that would have been infinitely more troublesome without their aid.

The Great Wall is impressive. There’s just no getting around it. Everything about it is impressive – the sheer size, the location, the surroundings, the history, the view, the crowds of hawkers trying to make you buy more-or-less useless trinkets. It’s also impressively hard work to climb the wall and its steep stairs. We were probably half dead after climbing to the top at the Mutianyu section.

But the view was worth it; excellent for posing and making an epic picture.

After all that hard work we still weren’t satisfied, so we visited Silk Market as well – a notorious tourist trap. You need clothes? Electronics? Trinkets? A locomotive? You can probably get everything there. We did some awful bargaining and stocked up on bare necessities like underwear and socks, leaving the major shopping for the following weeks. Then we decided to call it a week, and spent the rest of the time having relaxing stays at bars and restaurants.

A slow start on our Beijing trip, but stay tuned for exciting things – there’s a lot more to come!

Tags: bars, beijing, great wall, peking duck

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 11:09 am and is filed under Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.