Seven amazing days in the Land of the Red Dragon

Traveling on business always has its ups and downs. The purpose of the trip will always be on top of your mind, the never ending meetings and sessions will keep you on your toes. But it does present the chances to go around and visit places. April 2018 extended to me one such opportunity to visit one of our big neighbors, world's most populous and one of the most powerful countries in the world, China.

What do Indians generally think when they hear anything about China - I bet it would be about insects/snake-eating people, cheap plastic products, a lot of hate for Indians, overcrowded places, traffic etc, at least this is a glimpse of what I had in my mind. Honestly I was expecting to see a country like our own with chaotic traffic, people honking at red signals, crowded cities, lousy infrastructure. Was I in for a surprise! Comparing our country to China would be next to impossible. It's in a different league, simply put.

Just out of airport

We landed in Beijing airport on April 8th. Taxiing to the terminal took about 40 minutes, that should give you an idea on the size of this humongous airport. Beijing alone is approximately 22 times the area of Bangalore or 11 times that of Delhi.

There was someone with a placard to pick us up from the airport and take us to hotel Crowne Plaza at Wangfujing. The travel from airport to the hotel was about 1 hour 30 minutes and that alone was sufficient to get rid of all the presumption mentioned in the above section. I've been to the US twice and I'm sure China is at par in terms of infrastructure, if not better than them. The traffic was really bad for a Sunday evening, but it was very organized, people follow lanes, no unnecessary honking, no road rage etc.

Crowne Plaza at Wangfujing was an amazing choice of stay as it was located at a place that bustled with activity. There were shopping malls nearby and very good restaurants to choose from. Weekdays were quite crazy at work but every evening we made sure to walk and explore streets and malls in the Wangfujing area. Most of the population don't speak English but that doesn't impede them or the tourists from communicating to each other. It is amazing to see how effortlessly everyone irrespective of their ages handles smart phones and translation apps to communicate to anyone who couldn't speak Chinese. Tiananmen square was just 3 kilometers from the hotel. In one of the evening walks we visited this famous location. You can read about Tiananmen square here - wiki
Here's my review on the hotel Crowne Plaza - Tripadvisor

Illuminated Tienanmen Square 

Wangfujing food street is an amazing place to visit, it was just 10 minutes walk from the hotel. You can see many kinds of insects and reptiles being grilled here. If you do have the 'guts' you should go for tasting some of it. I used to consider myself a foodie until I visited this place. I couldn't even stand the stench of some "food" being offered. We did a quick tour of the place to take pictures and made sure to escape before the smell forced us to throw up. We tried the steamed chestnuts from this street and they were amazing. The next day I talked to people in office who mentioned that the street showcases food habits of people in some remote parts of China but it does not represent Chinese food culture in general. They also mentioned that the food street totally focuses on attracting tourists. We saw a lot of tourists munching on these exotic meats. Majority of Chinese don't eat insects and reptiles, I'll have a separate section to detail my food experience.

Grilled insects at Wangfujing food street

Scorpions on skewers

Weekdays passed by quite quickly. On Saturday we took a conducted bus tour to a nearby city - Tianjin. It is famous for the industries and for its snacks. The bus stopped at one point for snack shopping. I picked up a lot of stuff without even checking what they were, the whole idea was to carry home some traditional Chinese snacks with me. It was not disappointing I should say but I should also mention that it was not everyone's cup of tea. The guide of the conducted tour  passionately explained about everything en route, but it was all in Mandarin, so couldn't make head or tail out of it. We were the only two foreign guys in the bus and that really was funny. The first stop at Tianjin was to visit Italian style street. It was a really nice experience to see two different worlds in one place.

Tianjin City view

The highlight of the day was the journey from Tianjin back to Beijing by bullet train. If you are in Beijing on a short trip and you want to experience bullet train, Tianjin is the best option to visit. A distance of approximately 120 kilometers that took 2 hours 30 minutes by bus was done in just 30 minutes by bullet train. It accelerated to a max of 297 km/h during the trip as was displayed on an led screen.

The Pu Xing Train

After the bullet train experience, we took a subway back to Wangfujing. I've seen metros in the US and the UK and I should admit Beijing subway is easily 2-3 times bigger in size and number of lines in operation. It is the second largest subway system in the world. 

Here is my review  - Tripadvisor

Sunday the 15th of April was our last day to visit places and we took a cab from the hotel to visit the Great wall at Mutianyu. It was around 75 kilometers from the hotel, well past the city limits. This journey made it clear that the excellent infrastructure was not just a feat of the city but extends well outside too. We passed through a couple of remote village occupied by farmers. Even in those remote places the road condition was good, though there were some bad patches, almost disregardable. We could see they are progressing with an extension of subway to Tianjin. It is really amazing to see that they are expanding the subway to Tianjin even though they already have other modes like normal trains, bus services and bullet trains plying between these cities. There are different tourist spots that one can visit and Mutianyu is one of the places close to Beijing. They have made the visit to the wall more fun by providing a cable car and a toboggan. The term 'Great Wall' would need a bunch of superlative adjectives in front of the 'Great' to emphasize its greatness. It is massive and you need to really be physically there to comprehend the size of the wall. The total length of the wall is an unbelievable 21,196 kilometers. I don't really know how obsessive and paranoid should someone be to build such an enormous structure in the fear of invasion by enemies. Maybe things were unimaginably bad during those times, still the way it resulted in this amazing structure exhibits their unparalleled skills and unrelenting dedication. If you are visiting the wall, be prepared for a tiring walk. It does require a good amount of climbing steps. If you have asthma, make sure you have access to your inhaler. You can find my review here - Tripadvisor

Steep climb

Cable car ride to the Wall

Toboggan ride from the top of the wall

Almost near one of the several towers

Well, that pretty much sums up whatever little adventure I could include in a business trip. Next section is going to be dedicated for food. I've had Chinese food from India, where it is unnecessarily too spicy and from the US, where it is totally bland. Honestly they shouldn't be called as Chinese food, they don't have any relationship with the original Chinese cuisine. I loved most of the food I tried in China. They have a nice combination of spices, very balanced and enjoyable. Some of the dishes were really hot and the spiciness came from either green chilly or from black pepper. All three meals and any snack you may run into will be strictly non-vegetarian. So if you are a vegetarian, you need to be careful what you are munching on. Most of the restaurants won't even have an English menu, so my warning is not unwarranted.

Peking duck roast - This is a must eat dish at Beijing (or probably many other places in China). They serve the roasted duck along with thin pancakes. You need to scrape the duck pieces and wrap it with the pancake to eat. Fried duck skin will be served along, you need to dip it in powdered sugar and eat. In fact, you can't eat it, it just melts in your mouth.

Fried duck skin

Roasted duck

The casserole in the center has the wraps (pancakes)

Fried pig's ears

I did give a try but honestly I didn't like them. It is tasteless and resembles a tender cartilage. It is a famous dish there. Here's a pic

Pig's ears

Donkey burgers and dumplings are very famous. I didn't get a chance to find the burger, but ran into the dumpling once. Again, nothing fancy there (avoidable). If you don't like turkey meat, there's every chance that you wouldn't like donkey too. 

Donkey dumplings

As most of the meals were in a hurry or with a crowd, I missed out on lot of pics. Especially the crazy vegetarian food. I had lotus stems, wood ear mushrooms and some other vegetables that I couldn't even identify. Their culinary skills are top notch. So if you  have a plan to visit China do a homework and make a list of items that you want to try there. I had a couple of visits to KFC and Subway there and I thoroughly loved the Chinese twist on all the dishes I got the chance to try from these places. 

I believe all the above topics covered the positives about China. I couldn't find many negatives, but yes there were some points worth mentioning. Most of these points have a common cause - China is not a democratic nation. For example, the government owns all the land. So if someone purchases an apartment, it is basically like leasing a house for 100 years after which the government can do whatever they wish to do with it. Media - In most of the countries media would be biased, like we have left supporters, right supporters, saffron supporters etc. But in China the media is run by the government itself. In essence, you will not be able to read / watch any negatives or a different perspective of issues at hand. Most of the websites like google/facebook won't work in China in public networks like wi-fi of the hotel - but they have equivalent or better websites and technology to handle their needs. People tend to waste a lot of food, that's something I couldn't digest. It burns more to think that their not-so-fortunate counterparts outside cities may be starving.

That was pretty much what I wanted to jot down. It has already been more than a month and I hope I did cover all the topics I wanted to.