Beijing

I had a fabulous time in the capital city with my family. We definitely did Beijing with style and a good balance of sightseeing, dining, minimal shopping and R&R at the hotel. The sites that we saw included the Great Wall, Tinamen Square, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. We also went and saw a kong fu show. It was very entertaining and contained many of the things in chinese theatre that we wanted to see. It definitely target the tourist (and charged tourist prices) but i still recommend it if you don't plan on seeing many shows in China. It offers the works :) Also, we got to take pictures with the main actors afterwards :)

 

We went out for dinner with Danny's friend Jo one evening. I was so good to catch up with him. He first moved to NZ for study about 8 years previously and Danny was one of the first friends he had. We couldn't quite believe that we'd known each other for that long. Since I was in 7th form and High School doesn't feel like nearly a decade ago... anyway, dinner was absolutely delicious. I finally got to eat real Peking Duck (it puts NZ peking duck to shame!)

 

The hotel did my homesickness some good. We stayed at the China World Hotel which has an international platinum 5 star rating. All the staff (including the cleaners) spoke at least a little bit of english which mum and I were very pleased about (can't  say the same about where we're staying in shanghai though). There were so many western comforts like western beverages aaand my bed was actually comfortable (Chinese beds are like rocks). We started each day with a buffet breaky that consisted of western and eastern cuisine, and plenty of different fruit to choose from. It was devine. There were so many cooked breaky things like waffles, crispy bacon, pancakes. There was also congee and things but since i can get that easily in shanghai, I didn't bother. Anyway, there was just so much variety and best of all, there was real milk! All you in white-people land need to appreciate the milk that we have. It's hard to explain but the milk in China just doesn't taste right.

 

In saying that, there are also many good things in China that you can't get in NZ; like quality Yum Cha, a vast selection of  fresh fruit and veggies, 24-hour everythings (eg. haircut), pretty much a large selection of most things within any budget range. E.g. You can find hundreds of shoes in the under NZ$15 range aaand still, you can do the same if you're looking for shoes in the NZ$300+ range (mind you, you often get the quality that you pay for).