Hi All

Our journey continues to bring many exciting and very different experiences of people, cultures and government approaches to their peoples. China and its capital, Beijing, is a place that is very quickly moving to bring modern facilities to its over 20 million residents. Beijing is the third largest
city in China with its population growing rapidly with many people moving there for education and employment. As China becomes more capitalised in its production and services, it is now finding that it’s labour costs are rising very quickly to make it uncompetitive in many manufacturing areas.
Cost of labour in China has risen more than 3 times in the last 10 years.

We are told that now China, like most countries, is moving its manufacturing production to countries like Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh. So this makes for an very interesting and changing landscape around its capital Beijing.

A most interesting aspect of travelling in China is that you very soon realise that although they seek to be open to many new ideas, there are some ideas that are not possible. There is no access to google, gmail or Facebook. China has blocked any capacity to directly use these internet products. But the Chinese people do wish to use these and now have other ways of still getting to these with a VPN. Which is OK if you can set this up, but not for the tourist. So no google or gmail while in China.

It is said that Beijing’s most interesting tourist spot is Tiananmen Square, where memories of tanks and students may be recalled of years past. Today the square is buzzing with locals and tourists wanting to catch a glimpse of the famous square and the Forbidden City that can be inspected inside.

Our tour group arrives at Tiananmen Square on a Sunday, when all locals are off for the working week, summer holidays are on in Europe and all of Beijing’s population has come out to enjoy the “sunshine”.

We make sure that we get the required photo of the Forbidden Wall and Photo of Mao that is repainted each year to remain bright and dominant. We all have our speaker boxes to ensure that our guide – Lilly – can talk to us even if we do get behind the crowd as we walk through the many Pavilions of the City.

As we walk our way through the Forbidden City where the Emperors of past held their court and administrative activities as well as their wives and family members. We passed through the Main Pavillion, the many quiet areas of designed gardens, The roofs and tile statues to indicate the importance of the pavilions, and the rock gardens.

The next stop is the Buddhist Temple Heaven with its impressive massive round structure and single tree supports. Again the crowds are like an Easter Saturday at the Sydney Show – just a crush of people.

With summer daylight allowing sightseeing till 8 or 9 o’clock we head back to the Hotel for rest and a good nights sleep, awaiting some of our tour group members who are delayed by the attempted overthrow in Istanbul but are OK and now heading to Beijing.

The next morning we need to make an early start to get to the Great Wall and of course walk (climb!!!) the Great Wall. However on the way is an opportunity for shopping for Chinese jade. Never an opportunity to be passed up our group takes a few hours searching for that right gift or souvenir we must have.

We arrive at the Great Wall ready to make our way up the hard side or take the less difficult. Many take the challenge and go for the “harder” side walk on the wall. Again the crowds are out early, the summer temperature is expected to rise to 30 degrees, with thick smog due to the coal fired electricity and cooking stoves.Walking the Great Wall in 1982 seemed very easy compared to the current walk. With temperatures warming up and the humidity, there was a need to make many stops and take in the view and allow the breezes to cool you down.

Eventually reaching the top you could stop, look around and see how effective the wall was for most invaders due to the height and depth of the wall itself.

Our last tourist stop of the day was a visit to the Ming Tombs. These are tombs of the Emperors of the Ming Dynasty who took many years to construct their tombs, so made a start as soon as they took the throne. Along the way to their tombs a pathway was made that highlighted how important
they were by the statues that were along the path to the tombs.

As the day drew to a close and we made our way back to Beijing central and the pollution of the city sky we were able to stop and take photos of the famous Beijing 2008 Olympic Stadium known as the Bird’s nest. From this photo you can possibly get the accurate picture of the pollution that exists across Beijing sky and the reason to take precautions and medication for sore throats that most of us now have with coughing making a chorus of sounds on our tour bus.

The next day we are heading off to the inland city of Datong. This will take us 7 – 8 hours travelling in the air conditioned bus. Our wish is to see blue sky and enjoy some warm weather in this city of
approximately over 2 million inhabitants.

Regards

Wendy & Andris.