We only gave ourselves 4 days in Beijing as our main goals were to hike on the Great Wall and go to the Forbidden City.  The Forbidden City is one of China’s most venerated monuments.  It was built during the 15th Century, involving up to 10,000 artisans and about a million laborers.  The halls were laid out according to geomantic theories, which is the balance between yin and yang (or negative and positive energy).  It’s also similar to a labyrinth, there are long halls and tall walls with large doors everywhere…some that open and some that don’t.  Soon after we arrived, we had already gotten lost and kept wandering until we found ourselves back in the Imperial Garden where we had started.

The good thing about winding up where we started is that we got to explore the Imperial Garden more and were invited into a tea shop for a free tea tasting.  We tried several different kinds of tea and Paul, who spoke great English, told us a lot of interesting facts about tea.  He also showed us some very cool tea mugs that were black with red Chinese symbols on them, but when you poured hot water in them they would magically change to a scene of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, or the Summer Palace.  We loved them and since we are both avid tea drinkers we had to buy some.  He didn’t have all of the ones we wanted and we didn’t want to carry them around all day, so he said he would deliver them to our hotel that night…now that’s service with a smile!

After that we wondered around the rest of the Forbidden City and took a zillion pictures…we also posed in several pictures for Chinese tourists.  Then we set off to find The Emperor Hotel that we had read about that had a roof top bar with a view overlooking the Forbidden City.  When we left we had the hardest time getting a taxi to take us back to our hotel since none of the cab drivers could speak any English or even read a map.  We would get in each cab, tell them where we wanted to go, and would receive blank stares in return. So then we would point to where we wanted to go on a map and they would just look confused, shake their head and motion for us to get out.  We must have gotten in and out of 6 cabs before we finally showed a cab driver a picture of a hot pot from our guide book of a restaurant we wanted to go to..finally we got a nod and were on our way.  We’re not sure if it was the same as the one in the guide book, but it was a hot pot restaurant.

The menu at the restaurant was a little overwhelming as much of it was things like cows tongue, chicken feet, sea urchin, intestines, etc.  We settled on cows brain beef (which we think means it was near the brain, not actual brain), and several vegetables…it was so delicious.  We cooked everything in a huge sizzling hot pot on our table, which is a traditional Beijing Meal.

When we left the restaurant we only had 30 minutes left to get back to our hotel to meet Paul and get our new tea mugs.  Unfortunately, we had just as hard a time as before getting a cab that would take us where we wanted to go.  Some of them even got out a magnifying glass, and scary enough, one of them even pointed at his eyes and shook his head to tell us that he couldn’t see well enough to read our map (don’t they give taxi drivers eye exams?)  Finally, some very nice people who worked at the restaurant and must have seen us repeatedly getting in and out of several cabs, came to our rescue.  About 5 people had joined our mission to get us in a cab that would take us to our hotel.   Even their first attempt failed and the cab sped away.  But luckily the 2nd cab they gave directions to in Chinese, agreed to take us.  In all of the countries we’ve traveled to, we’ve never experienced one where so few people spoke any English…and Beijing is the largest tourist destination in China and it hosted the 2008 Olympics.  We read in our guide book that all taxi drivers were supposed to learn English before the Olympics, but that the most of them didn’t.  But at least the staff at our hotel, the Hutongren Culture Hotel, (www.ccthome.com) spoke English and were super sweet and helpful.  Although they wanted to charge us three times the amount than was listed in the guidebook, but we were able to negotiate them down to a way better rate.  And we did really like it there…it was very homey and cozy with different little private living room areas, waterfalls with fish ponds, and a roof top patio.  The best part about it was the laptop computer in our room.  The hotel is located in the district of Hutongs, where the bustling alleys behind Houhai Lake reveals the city’s real side that is vanishing in Beijing.  We fell in love with Houhai Lake.  The scenery is beautiful and it offers great people watching and is a great drinking and dining hot spot.

The morning we left we had to leave for the airport at 6:00a.m.  When we walked out to the street in front of the hotel there was a cab sitting there.  We told the driver that we wanted to go to the airport, he shot us a blank look (which we had been getting use to seeing) and started rambling to us in Chinese.  Since we were in a hurry and we knew this could lead into jumping in and out of several cabs, Rana got out the Lonely Planet book and luckily in the language section it had the word “airport” written in Chinese.  We pointed to that and 30 minutes later we arrived at the airport.  Thank God we had our Lonely Planet book…we’ve never used it more than we did in Beijing.