When I made the decision to come to China about 4 months ago, that cemented the idea of my parents taking a tour of China. Today, we met up in Beijing (along with some family friends of ours) to begin the 17-day odyssey. I’m only going to be participating in about half of the trip, but, regardless, it will certainly be a journey to be remembered. Yes, there will soon be “touristy” posts on this site, but the touristy stuff is touristy for a reason and I’m very excited to see it all. Also, what better way to enjoy it? China is a very tough place to get around without knowing the language. Even beyond the language, there rest of the system is almost as puzzling. So, a tour was welcome. Well, my parents and our friends endured nearly a 2-day trip to get here, whereas all I did was wake up at 6am to catch a ride to the Shenzhen airport. The comfortable flight was three hours, but now three hours feels like a simple taxi ride.

Beijing looks much different from Shenzhen. For one, it reminds me a lot of Denver, without the mountains in the distance. It’s a wide expanse of brown buildings, not picturesque at all. There are few tall buildings, at least few compared to Shenzhen or Hong Kong. To me, so far, it’s felt like a very large small town. The architecture is quite different. Whereas Shenzhen has virtually none of the classic Chinese architecture, it’s quite common in Beijing, though I’m sure most of it is a cheap knock-off of the real thing (for example the district toll booths).

Beijing rooftops:

While some folks took a well-deserved rest, we decided to head out and see at least one site. We went to Honhai Lake and the Drum and Bell Tower nearby. The lake is surrounded with small bars and restaurants. Private tour guides aggressively hawk their wares and stopping to look at a map or a sign will have them all around you. I explained to my folks, the best way to deal with them (assuming you’re not interested in hiring them) is not to speak to them, not even to make eye contact. Of course, this is hard to get used to as an American or a westerner and so we had a few tailing us for a while.

At the constriction point of the Honhai Lake:

We actually bought tickets to go inside the Drum Tower, an old building built back in the 1200′s to announce the time across the ancient city. It’s not really a tower, but really just a tall, but squat building that houses a bunch of drums in the upper part. There’s one long, steep, dark staircase to get you into the drum room. Here’s a shot of the stairs:

I had to take a short movie of them playing the drums, announcing that it was 2:30 in Beijing, China.