Day 11: Nanjing-Beijing, Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Today we traveled from Nanjing to our final destination on this field trip: Beijing, the capital city of China. After the journey in a high speed train, we arrived in the small hutong, a traditional Chinese neighborhood. From there we biked to the biggest public place in the world, Tian An Men Square, which was an overwhelming experience.

High speed train to Beijing (Photo: Heike Mayer)

Can you imagine that we travelled about 1,040 km by train in only 4 hours and 5 minutes? In Switzerland, one can travel only from St. Gallen to Geneva, 360 km, in the same time. This is about a third of the distance we travelled today. The Chinese high speed trains reach a maximum speed of over 300 km/h, which is the reason for the short travel time.

Usually on our trip, after a taxi ride from the train station to the hostel, not everybody arrived at the right place. However, for once everybody got to the right location even though some phone calls to the hostel were necessary. Once we got off the taxi most students were insecure whether they were actually close to the hostel. This was due to the fact that the hostel is situated in the middle of a hutong, which is more like a little village with small winding roads than a mega city. We got this impression by the old-looking houses and the narrow streets with little shops. Taking a closer look, however, we realized that there are many public toilets on the street as many of the hutongs still don`t have sanitary facilities.

Courtyard of our hostel in the hutong (Photo: Heike Mayer)

In the afternoon we made a bicycle tour through Beijing! Equipped with Chinese bicycles (featuring weak breaks and of course great sounding bike bells) we biked through the hutong towards the Tian An Men Square. As a group of Europeans on bikes we were quite an attraction. We had fun finally ringing the bicycle bells ourselves. Surprisingly, it was easy to bike in such a big group through the mega city. There are wide bike lanes which seem to count up to four street-size lanes. The width of the road is probably also used in emergency cases…

Ready for our Beijing bike tour (Photo: Heike Mayer)

The National Chinese Museum in Beijing (Photo: Heike Mayer)

The closer we got to the Tian An Men Square, the more security was present. Not only police and military were visible but also cameras (and possibly also some snipers on the roofs). At one point our group was even accompanied by a motorcycle SWAT team. Did we look dangerous? Coming from the small streets of the hutongs the huge space of the Tian An Men Square and its surrounding buildings were just overwhelming. This is the world`s biggest public place. On one side it is surrounded by the entrance to the ancient Forbidden City. On the other side there is a communist style building, the National Chinese Museum.

Unfortunately, once we arrived at the bell tower, we realized that again an interesting sight was already closed (it was just after 5 pm). This gave us some time to stroll through a hutong and buy some souvenirs for the loved ones at home or to relax on the lake.

Janina and Mao in front of the entrance to the Forbidden City (Photo: Heike Mayer)

The next stop was the Quanjude Roasted Duck Restaurant. Paul Messerli, the professor emeritus who joined us on this trip, guided a group of 10 of us self-secure to our destination. Unfortunatly, it was the wrong meeting point. In the age of mobile phones, this problem could be solved even in China.

Beijing roasted duck (Photo: Heike Mayer)

A restaurant manager even showed us how to eat the duck (Photo: Heike Mayer)

Thanks to the extensive bike ride we all arrived very hungry at the Beijing duck restaurant. This huge restaurant is famous all over Beijing: Unsurprisingly, duck is served! This speciality is cut up in small pieces and served in a crepe with sweetish sauce and some vegetables. Some people were even brave enough to try the heart or the brain of the duck. Those skills could later on be more practiced on the night market where also snakes, silk worms, scorpions and other strange looking food could be tasted. En Guete!

Step count on our pedometer: 18,208

Kilometers cycled in Beijing: about 20 km

Jenny Grütter, Janina Keller