AndreaLang

My husband & I were in China from October 4-24, 2012. This trip was 9 years in the planning so I had plenty of time to scrutinize this talk forum for advice. Thanks to everyone who has posted trip reports and answers to travelers' questions. I found all that information to be very helpful and it encouraged me to plan the trip for independent travel. My husband & I are in our 50's & have traveled independently throughout Europe. In addition, I grew up as an Air Force kid traveling all over the world especially in Europe and Asia. My husband grew up in Ohio and does not have as much experience traveling as I do, but was intrigued by China, having studied Chinese history in college and being a voracious reader of the Economist magazine. The challenge with this trip is that my husband does not eat Chinese food so I knew I would have to plan around that. I had taken a tour of China in 2003 with my mother and so enjoyed it that, on my return home, I took tai chi classes & studied Mandarin off and on for several years through my local university and a Saturday Chinese school in my area.

We booked all hotels through the Internet and used C-trip for our flights within China. Since we both work, we could not spend more than 3 weeks on this trip so we decided to fly between destinations. We chose hotels catering to westerners so that my husband would have western food available for at least breakfast and dinner.

Itinerary:

October 4 - fly from Florida to Chicago & Chicago to Beijing on American Airlines
October 5- arrive Beijing (Orchid Hotel)
October 6- Beijing
October 7- Beijing
October 8- Beijing
October 9- Beijing
October 10- Xi'an (Sofitel Xi'an at Renmin Square)
October 11- Xi'an
October 12- Xi'an
October 13- Xi'an
October 14- Lijiang (Banyan Tree Lijiang)
October 15- Lijiang
October 16- Shanghai (Hotel Indigo on the Bund)
October 17- Shanghai
October 18- Shanghai
October 19- Shanghai
October 20- Yangshuo (Yangshuo Mountain Retreat)
October 21- Yangshuo
October 22- Hong Kong (Hotel ICON)
October 23- Hong Kong
October 24- fly from Hong Kong to Tokyo (JAL) & Tokyo back to Florida through Dallas on American Airlines

Highlights of the trip:

In Beijing we especially enjoyed people watching in Beihai Park and the grounds of the Temple of Heaven. We enjoyed sitting on our rooftop terrace at the Orchid Hotel with a view of the Drum Tower at sunrise and sunset and watching the pigeons flying around the hutong. I got a kick out of being asked to pose for photographs with an entire Chinese family. It made me feel like a celebrity and I thought it was a hoot! My husband wasn't so keen on it.

We enjoyed the city wall in Xi'an and the interesting Beilin Museum in Xi'an, the beautiful Jade Dragon Snow Mountain near Lijiang, the otherworldly karst mountain scenery along the Li and Yulong Rivers in Yangshuo, the impressive collections of exhibits at the Shanghai Museum and the incredible energy of Shanghai and Hong Kong. We thought the Chinese people we met were very friendly and mostly helpful (although we did have problems several times getting a cab to agree to take us back to our hotel.) The trip was so great we plan to go again within the next five years.

More details to come on what we did each day we were in China.....

loncall

Interesting start Andrea and I am impressed with all your pre trip planning. Look forward to hearing more.

JPDeM

Your stay in Xi'An was a bit long but only two days in Lijiang for such a detour. Looking forward to read the details.

ileen

I am most interested in finding out how you managed without Chinese food?
KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut are there, but maybe you discovered some unique places to eat or did you sometimes cook?

JPDeM

@ileen - actually it is easy to find tons of restaurants with western food in China unless you are in a small village.

DonTopaz

I will be interested to hear if your husband had the ham & cheese sandwich at the Banyan Tree in Lijiang. That hotel was absolutely gorgeous and the facilities wonderful, but the ham & cheese was foul beyond belief (soggy, Wonder-like bread; velveeta-like cheese). I have no excuses for getting it -- and all of the Chinese food at the BT was terrific -- just looking for some good Western food after having eaten only Chinese for a week.

rhkkmk

no warriors??

kja

You are bringing back some wonderful memories (wasn't the Beilin Museum great?) - thanks!

I had to laugh, though - in my 28-day trip, I don't think I ate anything that most people I know would have considered "Chinese food" and nothing I've ever seen on the menu of a "Chinese" restaurant in the U.S. I was in northern China only, and used various sources of information - but especially Frommer's - to identify and order regional specialties. I had some truly delicious meals!

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed yourselves. Tell use more!

kja

Make that tell US more! ;-)

AndreaLang

Thanks everyone for the encouraging words.

JPDeM- I agree about 2 nights being enough on a 3-week trip for Xi'an. In fact, we had originally planned only 2 nights in Xi'an & 3 nights in Lijiang but the once daily flight from Xi'an to Lijiang was cancelled before we left Florida so we added a night to Xi'an, then we were to fly from Beijing to Taiyuan & stay a night in Pingyao, but on the day of the flight, the plane was first delayed & then the flight cancelled so we flew to Xi'an a day early. More on this in my trip report on that day.

Ileen- we managed without Chinese food by eating the usually included western breakfast at our hotel and western dinners at the hotel. I did have chinese food often, but at the hotel restaurant. In Beijing at the Orchid Hotel, a small hotel in the Baochao Hutong, we had breakfast at the hotel, but since they did not serve other meals there, I had to be more creative than in the other cities. The first night in Beijing, I discovered that a local brewery called Great Leap Brewery was having a special burgers and fries night for their 1-year anniversary so we hustled there for my husband to have a burger. It was interesting too because there was a big turnout of western ex-pats in their 20s and 30s there. We also found an Italian restaurant "Mercante" near the hotel which had steaks and had dinner there 2 nights. The one other night in Beijing, around dinner time, we were on Wanfujing Street, where my husband thought there might be western chain restaurants like Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood. We walked the entire length of the street and did not find any such restaurants, but using my iPhone, I discovered that the Beijing Hotel had an Outback Steakhouse. When we went to the hotel, it turned out that the Outback Steakhouse was gone, replaced by William's Steakhouse which was an adequate alternative.

DonTopaz- Too bad you had a soggy disappointing ham & cheese at the Banyan Tree. Neither of us tried that. My husband had steaks both nights and I had a delicious Thai red curry chicken & rice one of the nights and a Chinese dish the next night that was also very good. We adored the Banyan Tree with its wonderful personal service and stunning views of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. It is one of the most beautiful hotels we have ever stayed in and an oasis of calm from the hustle and bustle of Lijiang old town!

Rhkkmk- We did spend a wonderful morning one of our days in Xi'an visiting the warriors and we saw more warriors up close and personal at the Shaanxi Museum back in Xi'an.

Kja- I so enjoyed reading about your adventures in China & I admire your "go with the flow" spirit as you were traveling all over China on your own.

I will post separate report of our daily activities in Beijing later today.

jobin

Hard to believe as Chinese cuisine is considered one of the premier food preparation and presentation methods known in the entire world. To go to China and eat burgers, steaks and tuna fish sandwiches is monstrously ignorant. But of course, maybe he has a GI disorder or lack of palate.

AndreaLang

Pre-trip planning:

As I said this trip was 9 years in the planning- in the meantime we were taking trips to Europe and in the US. In those 9 years I devoured every book I could find of travelers adventures in China and novels about China, among them books by Peter Hessler, Betty Bao Lord, Amy Tan, Lisa See, Paul Theroux, and the books titled "Factory Girls", "Lost on Planet China" and just before our trip, I read Deborah Fallowes "Dreaming in Chinese. I read trip reports and other threads on this talk forum, I bought and read something like 15 China guidebooks over the years and "Travelers' Tales China" and "A Traveller's History of China" which I read multiple times. I took Mandarin classes at my local university and the area chinese language school- not that I expected to become fluent but to develop some feel for the culture through some small understanding of the language. While we were in China, I was thrilled to understand a simple word or phrase here and there!

I also used to watch CCTV-4, the English language version of Chinese television on DirecTV, until the rat finks at DirecTV pulled the plug on that programming. I complained about it to them, but it availed me nothing. Anyway, I used to watch the Chinese lessons by Da Shan-the Canadian host, Mark Rosewell and other China travel and culture programs and the Spring Festival gala every year for Chinese New Year (coming up this year on February 10, 2013). More recently, I have taken to streaming the online version of the shows (particularly the Travelogue shows) from my ipad to my television through my Apple TV. I also watched any travel DVDs I could find on China, including the Samantha Brown DVD on Asia (which includes Hong Kong) and the Globetrekker series (this series is aimed at folks in their 20s and 30s and traveling on a budget.) All this information was grist for the mill.

I had a pretty good idea of the itinerary I wanted 2 or 3 years ago, but my husband was nervous about independent travel to China so I looked into a private tailored tour through Kensington Tours. I priced the trip this way and, not surprisingly, it was very expensive! But, by 2011, I had convinced my husband that we could do the trip on our own. During our first trip to France together in 2001, I was worried because he was showing signs of being a travel troll, which might crush my dreams of a lifestyle of annual international travel. Happily, he shook that off and I am happy to report that he has taken very well to all this travel!

I began by using C-trip to help me devise a feasible itinerary, which is actually quite similar to the itinerary of the tour I took with my mother in 2003. I really wanted to include some more off the beaten path destinations to see some of the sacred mountains of China but I decided that with the 3 week time constraint, this was just not feasible. I thought the temperatures in China in October 2003 were very comfortable

kja

Thanks for your kind words, AndreaLang! My travels in China were a bit out of my comfort zone (to say the least!), but I ended up with some experiences that I would never otherwise have had.

So glad you convinced your husband to go to China independently!

AndreaLang

Sorry, I accidentally hit "submit" before I was done with this post.

So I decided to go in October right after the National Holiday in 2012. I liked the enormous, over-the-top floral displays everywhere for the holiday. The weather was warmer in October 2012 than in October 2003, but still comfortable. We had no rain on the whole trip except one night in Beijing. More importantly, we had no noticeable air pollution on this trip, although I remember the air being pretty bad in Xi'an in 2003.

Although I enjoyed my Yangtze River cruise in 2003, I decided to cut that out and instead include Lijiang and the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. I thought about going to Datong, Pingyao and Luoyang, but decided to include only Pingyao on this trip. My plan was to alternate a large city with a more rural environment. The plan was Beijing, Pingyao, Xi'an, Lijiang, Shanghai, Yangshuo & Hong Kong. As I explained earlier in this thread our flight to Taiyuan was cancelled so we sadly had to skip Pingyao.

We selected our hotels with an eye to a central city location and availability of western food for my husband. We arranged for pick up at the airport as arranged by the hotel in each location except Xi'an and Hong Kong where we took taxis. All these arrangements worked out well. After we made the hotel reservations, we made the international flight reservations on American Airlines because this was the only flight from the US to Beijing & back from Hong Kong that I could find where the seats in Economy class were in a 2-5-2 configuration as opposed to the more common 3-3-3 configuration. As it turned out we were set to fly to China in the middle of the airlines negotiating with the pilots' union and some flights were being cancelled, but luckily, our flights were not affected. After making the flight arrangements, I used mychinavisa.com to obtain our single entry visas from the Houston consulate. Several people in my Chinese class had recommended them to me. This process was very smooth and fast. I was very careful in filling out the applications and reviewed them several times to make sure they were complete because I had seen some horror stories about this process in this talk forum. About a month before our trip, we made the domestic flight reservations through C-trip. Within a week of our trip, our original flight from Xi'an to Lijiang was cancelled so we rebooked for the next day. I loaded up my iPhone with the Pleco Chinese application including the character recognition and handwriting recognition add ons to the basic Chinese dictionary application. These are cool applications that help you translate characters by writing them out on your phone or using the camera function to identify the character (this part is not as easy to use.) Of course, in the hustle and bustle of getting around in China the fact is I really did not use these much, but they are still very cool! I also had the old Google Maps application on my iPhone and purposely did not upgrade to the new operating system, which would have substituted Apple maps for Google until after I returned home from China. I used the Google maps a lot when we were on foot in the various Chinese cities. The Google maps had first gotten us on course to return to our Paris hotel from a Paris Greeters tour on a very cold day after Christmas in 2008 so I am a big fan. Just before we left for China I found myself feeling very impatient with all the preparation and thought we just need to get this party started!

Since this is the first trip report I have written, I hope I am including the kind of information people are interested in. If not, let me know what other questions you have. I have read lots of reports, but its a lot harder writing this than I would have thought!

Tomorrow I will start talking about each of our days in China.

thursdaysd

Congratulations on traveling to China on your own. Your preparation was remarkable - I went on my own with much less! But I do have some sympathy for jobin's post - China with Western food is better than no China, but Chinese food in China is in no way comparable to the "typical" Chinese restaurant in the US. (I say "typical" because I'm fortunate enough to have a local restaurant with a Chinese as well as a western menu.) However, I have read that package Chinese tourists in Europe don't want to eat western food so it goes both ways.

AndreaLang

Hanging out in the Hutong-Beijing October 5, 2012 (Friday)

We arrived in Beijing from Chicago at 10 pm on an American Airlines flight which was uneventful- a lot of drama isn't really a good thing when you are flying. Passport control, customs and baggage collection were a breeze. As I said earlier in this thread we arranged with most of our hotels for transportation from the airport to the hotel and we easily found the young guy with our names who took us efficiently to our hotel, the Orchid Hotel in Baochao Hutong. The hotel is located on a narrow little alleyway off the Baochao Hutong and not so easy to find unless you know what to look for. The Orchid is owned by Joel, a Canadian fellow who has mostly young 20 something western women (one woman was Italian and another was Russian from Siberia) working there at the reception desk and serving breakfast. The hotel staff was very helpful and accomodating and we really enjoyed our stay there. We stayed in the Yang room which has a rooftop terrace with a view of the Drum Tower. What with the jet lag and all, we found ourselves getting up quite early so we hung out on the rooftop terrace where I drank the special teas they had in the room before breakfast. We also sat out on the terrace in the evening after the day's sightseeing to enjoy the evening view when the Drum Tower was dramatically lighted up. We were so not in Florida! But, on the first night we got there we naturally just crashed after showering.

October 6, 2012 (Saturday) Beijing

We were up early, by 6 am and sat out on the rooftop terrace before breakfast was served at 8 am. In the early morning we could hear the sounds of people getting a start on their day. Every morning we could hear but not see a group performing some kind of martial arts, I think. We also enjoyed the sight and whistling sound of multiple flocks (if that's the right word) of homing pigeons flying around the Hutong. It was very atmospheric. As I said earlier in this thread, we had no rain throughout the trip so there were no weather issues with enjoying the rooftop terrace. On the first morning I realized I was having problems not getting data on my iPhone so I called AT & T and got that straightened out. I really rely on those Google maps when in a city (even in the US).

After a great breakfast at the hotel we headed out on foot through the maze of hutongs in search of an ATM to get cash first and then to Houhai and Beihai parks. We had some difficulty finding an ATM that would take our American debit cards, but before too long we both had cash and then continued on to Houhai Park. Of course, in our jet lagged state, we were a little dazed and had to remind ourselves to watch out for all manner of vehicular traffic (cars, pedicabs and bicycles). The hutongs are really a beehive of activity! When we got to Houhai Park, it was wall to wall people (Saturday at the end of the National holiday week celebration) so we hustled along to Beihai Park. The pedicab drivers in the Houhai Park area were trying to get us to go with them but we prefer to get our bearings in a new city on foot so I perfected the art of repeating a forceful "bu yao" (don't want). We did not have to purchase a ticket to walk around the lovely Houhai Lake.

To access Beihai Park and the lake area we did have to purchase tickets. This park was much less crowded. The nine dragon screen there was very beautiful and and it was entertaining watching the Chinese women dressing up in what I thought were probably Qing dynasty costumes and posing for photographs in front of the screen. At a lakeside pavilion we sat on a bench and watched people dancing and struck up conversation with a Chinese family (parents & young daughter) who had lived in California for 20 years and had recently moved back to Beijing. They were very gracious and friendly. We did not go out to the Dagoba on the island in the center of the lake because we wanted to see Jingshan Park.

After a little rest, we continued around the lake to Jingshan Park and up to the top of the hill to enjoy the great panoramic view of the Forbidden City and Beihai Park. There were red and yellow floral displays in the parks. One display in Jingshan Park was particularly whimsical in that contained life sized figures of ladies decorated with colorful "happy birthday" plates. I loved it.

We then meandered our way back through the hutongs to our hotel where I saw some information about the nearby Great Leap Brewery having a burger anniversary party so we hustled there so my husband could get a burger for dinner. We enjoyed checking out the ex-pat scene there although we were probably the oldest people there everybody helped us out and made us feel welcome. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a small restaurant in Baochao Hutong where I had a delicious meal of fried rice. When I asked for the check in what I thought was passable Chinese (Mai Dan), the waiter looked puzzled but another customer helpfully repeated it (Mai Dan) and that did the trick. By then we were out of steam for our first day in China so we called it a day.

nina88

Looking forward to the continuation... 9 years of planning????? We're going in Oct. and just got the plane tickets and is just starting to research for hotels, starting the IT, etc.

AndreaLang

I'm sorry for the delay in posting the rest of this trip report. Life got in the way. I typed up the rest of Beijing yesterday on a different post No Chinese Food in China part 2, but my MacBook Pro died before I could submit it. Bummer. Anyway, a trip to the Apple store today and my Mac is back in business with a new charging cord. Unfortunately, everything I typed yesterday is gone since I was waiting to finish all of Beijing and start Xian before I submitted the report.

Anyway, enough of that. Here we go with the rest of the report.

October 7, 2012 (Sunday)

We were up early at about 6 am and we sat up on our private rooftop terrace and had tea and enjoyed the early morning sights,sounds and smells of the hutong. We relaxed every morning and evening on the rooftop terrace- it was probably the best amenity for us at the hotel. We had the included western breakfast at the hotel and then waited for our driver who arrived at 9 am to take us for our day's adventures. We arranged for the driver through the hotel and the charge was added to our hotel bill and the driver was paid directly by the hotel. The arrangement worked out very well for us. The drivers arranged through the hotel picked us up and dropped us off on Baochao Hutong right outside the hotel where other drivers were reluctant to drive into Baochao Hutong. The driver did not speak English, but this wasn't a problem because the hotel had told him what our proposed itinerary was for the day. First off, Great Wall at Mutianyu. We arrived there at 10:30 am and the driver helped us purchase the tickets then went back to the car to wait for us. We told him we would be back in 2-3 hours. At Mutianyu there are 2 cable cars to the top of the wall. One at the highest point of the wall is a gondola while the other where we were is a chairlift. You can take either up and or down. I think you can also walk all the way up or down. We took the chairlift up and the toboggan down. From the parking lot to the ticket booth, you pass through a gauntlet of small souvenir shops selling Great Wall and other souvenirs. The owners of these shops aggressively call to you to come buy from them. It adds a nice capitalist spin to the experience, I think. It was a warmer day than I thought it would be based upon my memory of the windy cold day that I was at Badaling in October 2003. I liked Mutianyu better because it seemed a little wilder and was definitely less crowded. There was a little haze in the air which was probably air pollution, but the visibility was excellent nonetheless. We enjoyed the chairlift ride up to the top of the wall. It is a longer ride than you would think. We passed over the toboggan and could hear an obnoxious loudspeaker announcing in Chinese and English that there was no stopping allowed on the toboggan track. At the top, we walked up and down the wall taking in the splendid views and the way the wall snakes up and down the surrounding mountains. Before my first trip to China I thought the wall was flat on top. It is not. There are lots of steps and altitude changes. We did not venture all the way up to the high point where the gondola comes up the wall, but we enjoyed the wonderful view and took our obligatory photos and videos and took the toboggan back down. The toboggan ride was fun, not scary. We were amused to see that there were signs posted warning that people 60 years old and older were not allowed on the toboggan. I was 59 so I was "legal", but I don't get why a 60 year old is too old for this ride! We heard the constant loudspeaker announcements and there were signs posted too about not stopping, but people were stopping anyway. The toboggan ride would have been more enjoyable without this noise pollution! We got back down to the ticket booth area at around 12:30 and wandered through the Subway restaurant on our way back down the hill to the car. We woke the driver and headed off to the Ming Dynasty Yongle Tomb.

We arrived there at about 2 pm and explored the tomb complex. We thought the Spirit Way was right around the tomb complex but we could not find it. I asked at the ticket booth, but wasn't making my question clear. When we found the driver, I showed him a picture of the Spirit Way on my Iphone and he took us there. It turns out that it is 10 km away. The Spirit Way is a path lined with pairs of stone animal and human figures that are guardians of the tombs. This had been a highlight of my 2003 visit to Beijing and I'm so glad we persevered and got there this time! It is a peaceful parklike atmosphere. The driver dropped us at one end of the Spirit Way and we strolled to the other end where he picked us up. We then drove back to the Orchid Hotel and hung out on the rooftop terrace. I had one of the very friendly English and Chinese speaking girls at the desk of the hotel make a 7 pm reservation for us for dinner at Mercante, a relatively new Italian restaurant in the hutongs. One of the girls had told me about it when I told her I was looking for a western restaurant for my husband. The restaurant was near the Great Leap Brewing Company where my husband had the burger the previous night so we didn't have too much trouble finding it. I used a map of the hutongs the hotel provided and my google maps on my iphone. The meals were good-I had tartaglia bolognaise and a glass of red wine and my husband had beef filet and italian bread and a coke. In the dark, now we returned to the hotel and crashed.

nina88

Thanks, more please.

AndreaLang

October 8, 2012 (Monday)

We had our usual early start with tea and the sights and sounds of the hutong from the rooftop terrace. We had breakfast and walked to up Baochao Hutong on our way to the subway. We found that throughout China in the cities we visited there was good English signage as well a signage in Chinese characters. There are also examples everywhere of hilarious Chinglish signs which sometimes are impossible to decipher. We walked to the Gulou Dajie Subway Station, where we struggled to use an automatic machine to purchase tickets. We live in suburban Florida so we only use subways when we are in NYC, London, or Paris etc. We aren't so great at figuring it out there either. Ultimately, a subway station employee led us to a the ticket booth and we took it from there. Navigating the subway was quite simple. We took the Blue Line (Line 2) from Gulou Dajie to Chongwenmen and transferred to the purple line (Line 5.)

We exited at Tiantandongmen (Temple of Heaven east gate). From there we failed to notice that the closest entrance to the Temple of Heaven park was just behind us so we walked north quite a distance to the north entrance to the park. As we walked in the park, we saw people doing tai chi, singing, ballroom dancing and playing hacky-sack. There is lots of activity! People also take their caged birds and hang them in the trees and just enjoy the outdoors. The north entrance to the park was decorated with large freestanding floral displays as well as planted beds of flowers. The predominant color scheme was red and yellow (colors of the Chinese flag). We saw these over the top arrangements everywhere we went in China while we were there. They are special displays for the National Holiday week in early October every year. We moved on to the Temple of Heaven complex of buildings. The most famous building is the 3 gabled blue tile roofed Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests where the emperors prayed for (guess what?) good harvests! Entrance is not permitted to the interior of this building but you can look inside. Other buildings of the complex contain exhibits, the most memorable to me was the striking photograph of Japanese soldiers in the late 1930's occupying the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests with Japanese planes flying overhead. The Chinese government likes to emphasize this national humiliation.

After touring the Temple of Heaven complex we walked through the park to the east exit and noted that the Hongqiao Market (Pearl Market) was just across the street. We walked through this multi-story building jammed full of small booths with jewelry and other goods for sale. I consider myself an intrepid shopper, but I was frankly a little overwhelmed. Don't worry, I made up for it buying pearls and other jewelry in Shanghai! We had cokes at the McDonalds on the ground floor of the Pearl Market. Then we started the Long March to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We used a combination of guidebook maps and the Google Maps application on my Iphone to get us there by as direct a route as possible. We stopped again on Qiamen Street at a KFC for my husband to enjoy some chicken nuggets and a coke. We found McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut to be ubiquitous in the big Chinese cities. This was a good thing for my husband who does not have an adventurous palate, but doesn't want that to get in the way of exploring other countries and cultures.

As we approached Tiananmen Square from the south, we could not readily see how to get across the street to the square. There are stairs down to underground walkways to get to the square. There is also airport level security for bags and people. It is hard to describe the vastness of this square. The square is surrounded by imposing but uninspiring Communist architecture. The floral displays throughout the square do help to soften the gray concrete look. Personally, I prefer Red Square to Tiananmen Square. Moving on, through to the north end, we navigated another underground passage to get to the Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) with the famous portrait of Mao.

On the other side of the gate, we bought tickets for the Forbidden City. I ordered tickets everywhere in China by saying "Liange piao" (two tickets). This was something I had practiced in my Chinese class at home. The Forbidden City is fabulous, with buildings full of beautiful ornately painted ceilings and colorful ceramic tile roofs and scenes embedded in the outside walls and stone carvings. There are also enormous bronze urns and bronze animals, like tortoises and cranes scattered around the grounds. The tortoise and crane are symbols of longevity. The Forbidden City reportedly has some 9,000 rooms so it is a vast complex. Unlike palaces in the west with their large multi-story buildings, Chinese palaces are complexes composed of lots of low one or 2 story buildings. There is not much furniture to see in the buildings but the structures themselves are delightful to see with their use of colorful paint, upturned eaves and ceramic tile. There are two impressive 9 dragon screens in Beijing- one is in the Forbidden City and the other is in Beihai Park. On the north side of the Forbidden City is the Imperial Garden, which is a lovely green space which is a nice balance to the hardscape of the Forbidden City.

We exited the Forbidden City at its north gate and then walked east to Wangfujing Street. It was dinner time at this point in the day. My husband thought this street would be a place we would find some western chain restaurants, like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood. We walked the length of the street and found that the only western restaurants were in western hotels. There is a Hard Rock Cafe in Beijing but it was not close to where we were. Ultimately, we found a steakhouse called "Williams Steakhouse" in the Beijing Hotel where my husband had, of course, a steak and fries and I had a green salad with mustard vinaigrette dressing and shrimp and pasta with alfredo sauce. Across the street from the Beijing Hotel we spotted a line of taxis, showed one of drivers the card from the Orchid Hotel with the name and address in Chinese characters and a map of the location and then off we went. The driver would not tackle driving up Baochao Hutong directly to the hotel, so he left us at the intersection of Baochao Hutong and Guloudajie. Back at the hotel we rested our weary feet after another amazing day in China!