A sea of people

It was National Day holydays this week. The whole country was off work and on the move towards Beijing, the capital and obvious destination of choice on this occasion for God knows how many thousands of people. Thanks to Stéfanie, who agreed to let me stay a while longer, I had a place to stay because it would have been practically impossible to find an available bed in town.


The festivities reserved me a rather rough start last Saturday as I got scammed by a trio of Chinese girls. I admit that I should have caught up earlier with it but it’s also partly I would have never even imagined that tea could be that expensive. They wanted to go have a drink so why not? They brought me to a traditional tea place. I could see that the prices were relatively high (50 RMB = 7.15$) but that was that high and it was going to be a new and rather charming experience. The pretty girl all dressed up with a red silk traditional uniform was serving us the most minuscule cups of tea no more than half the size of a shooter glass. A first serving than a second and then I simply ask if it was 50 RMB per “cup”? They answered that it was per kind of tea not by cup. After one or two more I realised that we had been having pretty much all different kinds for each “cup”. So then I asked how many kinds were we to try? While she was serving the next, they explained me that people that usually went there tried 8 or 10 kinds but that we were only going to try 6 since it had to be a pair number and 4 supposedly being a unlucky number in China. After not even 20 minutes, it was already too late. The bill arrived and she of course gave me the total... (2000 RMB = 285$) Of course that was no way I was going to couch up that much for 10 small sips of tea. I argued it down to 800 RMB which id approximately 110$ still a bloody rip off though. It was the first and the last time I get conned like that.

Another couch surfer landed in Stefanie’s flat an English lad originating from Hungry. An awesome bloke he is. Together, we went visiting the Fragrant Hills Park on the North West extremity of Beijing. It was very crowded from the base to the top of the small mountain. It was a rather beautiful and sunny day. We were quite popular and many people asked to have their picture taken with us. The return trip was a bit more challenging than the way there. All the busses were packed and paralysed in a dense sea of people. After 1 or 2 hours of walking, without really knowing where we were going, a bus finally stopped to pick us up. It was so packed there must have been two people per square foot, or almost... We finished the evening with a beer in a dodgy pool hall at the back of a small alley not far from Stefanie’s. Being probably the first white people to play pool there we didn’t go unnoticed there either.

This was not the actual pool hall. Ours was an interior one.





























The next day, Wednesday, wanting to “relax” from the hike at the park, I went to Tiananmen Square. It is the center of Beijing and where the Forbidden City is located, at least what is left of it. It is also where several tens of thousands, for not saying hundreds of thousands, go pay a visit and for a stroll during this National holyday. I took advantage of the view point offered by the main gate building of the Forbidden City, to look at the immense crowd.



The Lowering of the Flag Ceremony coincided with Sunset in front of a dense crowd. Militaries did their best to make the first 50m of the mood surrounding the mast to sit down.