Adam & Stephanie's Travel Blog: Highlights of Beijing

We weren't going to let the chilly weather or a silly tea scam ruin our time in Beijing, so we spend most of our days out seeing the sights, always making it back to the warmth of our hostel just after sunset. We weren't prepared for weather like this. Beijing has some amazing tourist sights, many of them I'd consider 'world-listers' or 'bucket list' or however you want to put it. Here's a few...

Forbidden City
Officially known today as the Palace Museum, the Forbidden City is where the Emperor and his court lived. It is a huge complex covering 14 square kilometers of temples, courtyards, living quarters, and everything else you would need for a private, secluded city. Completed in 1422, the Forbidden City housed 24 emperors until the revolution of 1912 and from then, the Forbidden City was forbidden no more. Today it serves as a huge museum, as most of the buildings have been restored or are left relatively unchanged, and many smaller buildings house small collections of art, clocks, jewelry, tableware, carvings, etc. It would take you at least one full day to cover it all, but not having the energy for that, we sought out what we thought looked cool and wandered around some of the quieter courtyards and alleys.

moat and guard tower around the Forbidden City

Steph loves this shot so I put it in

one of many walkways separating different parts of the city

Tiananmen Square
Many people do a 'superlatives tour' of China - they have a lot of the world's biggest, longest, tallest, etc. to be proud of here (and some maybe they shouldn't be proud of). Well, here is the most populated country in the world we have the largest public square on earth. I must say, it is huge, but I don't really understand what's so great about that. It's just open space. Couldn't anybody tear down a few buildings and have a big open space within a city? The history of this square, though, cannot be disputed. From the proclamation of the People's Republic in 1949 to the massacre of protesting students in 1989, a lot has happened here. Being so big, I didn't find it all that recognizable, except for the famous portrait of Mao on the Tiananmen Gate.

famous spot

the square

Sunset from Jinghshan Park
Beijing is very flat, which is part of the reason the bike is the traditional transportation of choice for the locals. Maybe it was the cold weather or the fact that owning a car is a hot commodity in modern China, but the bike lanes were largely empty while we were in town. Anyways, the city is flat except for 3 hills. At least one of these is the home to Jinghshan Park, just north of the Forbidden City, which makes it an excellent place to watch the sunset.

looking down on the Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven Park
The Temple of Heaven is a famous temple where the emperor would go every year to pray for a good harvest and fair weather. The grounds of the enormous park surrounding the temple were originally closed to the public, until 1912 on the Republic of China's first national day. Today is a sprawling area of trees, grass, and walkways where many locals come to play cards or Chinese chess, practise some dancing, or play music. We didn't care much about seeing the temple and instead just strolled around watching the locals. For some reason, whenever it's their turn to play a card or make a move in chess, they slam down the card with authority. Then there's also the old ladies swaying and gliding around the park as they practise their traditional dancing and sometimes singing.

all the old people gathered to play some cards

these guys are playing chinese chess

Olympic Park
Since the 2008 Olympics, who didn't want to go see the bird's nest and water cube in person? I know I did and they did not disappoint. You walk out of of the subway station and bam! there it is! A huge, jumbled, beautiful mess of twisted steel. It's an amazing sight. We were there at dusk so got to see the water cube first light up and watched as they slowly lit the bird's nest level by level. Two amazing structures, surrounded by some equally enchanting buildings like the big IBM building next door.