Beijing is the Capital of china. It is also very cold.
We spent a long time here, and there was a ton to see.
Word(s) of the day
Bei 北- North
Jing 京- Capital
After a full day of travel on high speed train from Nanyang, we arrived late in beijing. We spent the night at the train station hotel.
The first day was spent walking down the main avenue of beijing and seeing what we find.
Beijing Cat
Bell tower and Drum tower
The ancient town square of beijing has a traditional pair of towers - one for the bell and one for the drums.
You often see this pair of tower at the entrance of buddhist temples, and they are used for ritual and telling time.
 |  |
|---|---|
| Walking further down the main street was the main lake, which was an incredibly popular tourist area. |
We also stopped at a caligraphy store that sells traditional chinese paint brushes for writing and met a talent caligraphy artist. To demonstrate her brushes, she made a test character one a canvas. of course i asked to keep it.
 |  |
|---|
Forbidden City
Most people are familiar with the forbidden city located right in the center of beijing. There is a large hill directly north of it, so we headed there to get a view.
An very unique aspect of the city that I haven’t seen anywhere else, is that the entire center of beijing is the ancient city, surrounded on all sides by modern chinese buildings. It’s very hard to describe the feeling of being there, but it is very imposing.
On our way back north, we swung through another park after dark, famous for it’s white tower.
The Great Wall at Badaling
The next day we took a bus far north of the city to see the Great Wall.
The nearest place to see it in it’s most iconic state is a small mountain site called Badaling.
Badaling is located at the bottom of a valley, and you can follow the wall up the north side and the south side. We went up the north side first.
Some spots were way steeper than I would have thought. Being early februrary, it was super cold and windy.
Also, being in china, some spots of the wall were unbelievably crowded. We had to be smart and sometimes take detours to avoid the human traffic jams.
 |  |
|---|
After a full day at Badaling, we decided to tack on the olympic village in beijing. I kind of think of beijing the most when I think about the olympics, and wanted to see the iconic stadium there.
Heaven Temple
The next day was spent exploring the south side of beijing, specifically the famous temple of heaven park.
This is an ancient temple preserved for thousands of years. The park was massive, with lots of ancient buildings there.
We also tried to visit Tiananmen Square. But after a very unusal detour through a highly surveilled and police monitored corridor, we found out that we needed to have reservations, as it was closed for some special reason.
CBD - Central Business District
Finally, on our last day, I wanted to go to the main downtown area for the tall modern buildings. Kai surprised me and found a hotel room high up in a building with a view of everything.
 |  |
|---|
Finally, after 6 days spent in beijing, we were ready to go back south towards shanghai.
On our way to the train station, we visited one last place, an ancient canal village in central beijing.
But before we needed to leave, we had one more place to explore: Nanjing.