One of those days..

One of those days in Beijing which doesn’t quite go to plan... 

It started well, with ring-side seats for the staff team building exercise at Fashion Studio, a local hairdressers. The 16 staff stand on the pavement  in two lines facing each other to perform a choreographed dance routine to loud pulsating music. Everyone throws themselves onto it, under the enthusiastic direction of a young manager.  

We could not sit around idly watching team building exercises though - oh no - this was our day to visit the area near Mao’s tomb.  (We are saving the tomb itself for when we are staying in a hotel in the centre and can get there very early, before the crowds).  Once out of the subway, we took a short (hooray!) while to orient ourselves and found a lovely, if somewhat fake, pedestrian area with lots of Chinese decorations and roast duck restaurants, each with a waiter outside lustily crying out for clients.  Lots of statues of traditional Chinese figures, a Chinese wax museum à la Madame Tussauds (in fact, borrowing her name) and hordes of Chinese tourists. (I think every day we’ve seen 0-8 non-Chinese people, mostly towards the low end of that scale).  We also managed to check out a possible hotel, but decided not luxurious enough for the two days of respite at the end of our trip!

(Below, a very Chinese Starbucks!)

After a while our stomachs told us, despite the spun caramel rabbit on a stick we had shared, it was time for lunch. We identified through Lonely Planet a small, interesting-looking international restaurant in a “peerless location” near the Forbidden City. At last, a fabulous meal with no soy sauce to worry about!  

90 minutes later, after near sunstroke from walking in 35 degree heat, and a very long and unsuccessful wait for a taxi - the few that were empty refused to stop for scary white people - Rachel, the navigator supremo, managed to identify a suitable bus route before the phone battery ran out (always a race against time).  A happy 10 minutes on a crowded bus and then a short walk until we located the restaurant, which looked very promising indeed. Shut, however. 

Another bus ride and long walk later, we find ourselves in the beautifully air conditioned lobby of the Grand Hyatt,  We’d been planning a big meaty meal but the only item labelled gluten free was a salad.  True to say we have had better and considerably cheaper salads elsewhere, but my goodness, we made the most of the air conditioning and the loos!

We then jumped into a taxi, armed with the Chinese characters for a Walmart some distance away, which a helpful concierge had written down for us. One of the few places in Beijing (and the only one we’ve ever been in striking distance of) where you can buy cereal. Cereal, of course, has taken on a magnified role in this place where good food (for coeliacs) is very hard to find. 

After an unfruitful conversation with the taxi driver about our desired destination, and after a suspiciously short time, we are dropped off outside “Lotte Mart”. Ever optimistic, we plough round the store, only to discover it sells toiletries and household cleaning items - and nothing else. We realise we are in a completely unknown part of town and our phone is dying. In a fit of hysteria, Mum loses herself for a while in a nearby karaoke box, singing her heart out. 

Cue deep soul-searching about whether cereal is really worth it.  Concluding that yes, it definitely is, we manage to work out where we’ve been dropped, find the local subway and travel four stops to the real Walmart. A fabulous place indeed. Mentally fortified by the thought of the bowlfuls of sugary cereals ahead of us, we wearily get back on the subway. How will we answer our hosts when they ask us what we’ve seen today?  There’s no good answer to that question. Instead we amuse ourselves by spotting interesting t-shirt slogans...

... and reviewing the number of steps we’ve taken each day. Scores on the doors:

Mon - 13 955

Tues - 11 431

Weds - 9 084 

Thurs - 15 788

Fri - 12 458

Sat - 18 500

Sun - 10 333

Today - 17 468

Do we really have the energy for The Great Wall tomorrow?  Planning to be on the subway by 5.15am...