The [final] Train Journey
Jo: We left the next morning for Beijing and arrived on Friday evening after a thirty-two hour journey. It was a good trip apart from the food in the dining car (you would have thought that we'd still bear scars from the last time we did this, but we apparently still haven't learnt) where the only thing worth eating was the rice which we soon spiced up with copious amounts of crushed garlic and soy sauce, much to the amusement of the dining staff who all clearly thought we had got an advanced form of train madness when we started using a rice bowl as a mortar and a toothpick holder as a pestle. It did taste good though.

Arrival in Beijing was wicked with both Ed and I moved to produce the `It's just like in Bladerunner' standard comment no. 139.a. We are staying in a particularly nice place near Beijing's main shopping street, Wangfujing, and our RMB120 room is withing easy walking distance of the $250 Beijing Hotel, cue smug grins. We are spending the next two days sightseeing before we fly out on Tuesday morning.

Ed: Beijing is still here. Since our last report, we have done many of the things that we had meant to do when we were here last time, but forgot to do because I was whinging about having a headache form the jet-lag experienced during such transcontinental flights as Helsinki to Beijing. Enough said.

Working backwards in time, we have done things such as visit the Forbidden Palace, and the Temple of Heaven, as well as having gone and bargain hunted in the markets in Beijing for things like MD players and handbags. Beijing s starting to seem more and more like a trip to Covent Garden, except that we are successfully maintaining a haggling rate of reducing things to an amortised 26.14% of their original price. This usual involves a couple of whinges about how lovely the product is but that we have a limit4ed budget and we are going on Tuesday and we have done lots of shopping already. Nice. (this internet cafe is Y20 an hour, hurry up ¨Ced)

We have done many amusing things, most of which involve improvising backgammon boards, a game we are both hooked on, or creating meaningless phrases and cliquey arm movements such as the leprechaun, eagle and adolescent unicorn impressions and attacking street vendors with these apparitions. Almost on a par with Allan¡¯s tactics of shouting `Sieg Hiel!¡¯ at every one, and almost as effective at getting them to piss off.

The weather is perfect, as is to be expected at this time of year, when Beijing is at it¡¯s finest. It is clear, and warm, but not humid, and there is a pleasant breeze. Things to notice about this is that there have appeared some mountains (more sentences like that and you are fired ¨Ced)¡­ Things that are apparent in this clement environment are things like views. There are some things called the fragrant mountains to the north of the city that certainly weren¡¯t there last time we were here, and our visit to the Temple of Heaven was made especially surreal by the presence of a brilliant blue sky, which made the temple look like it had nothing behind it but the ends of the earth. Scary.

Have had a few comedy moments in the big shopping street where we are staying; it had been pointed out to us that people who come and talk to you in English on the street are always art students selling their wares, and so it has become of great amusement to us both to answer anyone greeting us in English with `you sell art don¡¯t you?¡¯. That really shuts them up with great effect.

Jo: I began to feel a little bit guilty about that today when we reduced one of them to vague stutters and mumbles by telling him that we were staying in the Central Institute of Fine Art, rather temperamental when it comes to their work these artists.

Beijing is proving to be a very nice way to round off this trip, of which there is a day and a half left, after we go to see the Great Wall (finally) tomorrow.

Ed: The final day of fun in Beijing was almost the best day of the entire trip. As already mentioned, the weather this time of year is particularly lovely, and our trip to the Great Wall was accompanied by perfectly surreal blue skies.

Having got up at 0630 to catch a bus over to a less Disneyesque part of the wall, we eventually gave up looking for the elusive bus stop the guide book had hinted at, and went over to the place where the tour busses leave for Badaling, the bit of wall that is on the postcards. Little did we know, but Joanna and I had managed to get onto a genuine touristy, noisy, commentary filled journey of doom over to Badaling, although it was amusing to point at things out the window frantically and get all the Taiwanese to try and find what we were looking at, even if it was only me pointing at a rock and going `wow’.

The wall itself has the finest selection of young ladies selling quality Chinese water style liquids. The fact that each bottle contains enough banned substances to ruin the Olympic chances of a small African Nation is of no consequence when it comes to pricing, which is a whole 50p/ping, opposed to 25p everywhere else. This scandal appalled Joanna so much that she refused to let me go up to the top of the mountain on the cable car, so we had to walk it. Great.

In fact, although climbing up was dangerous and difficult (there are steps that resemble a vertical wall rather than a gentle incline, and they tilt backward rather violently), it gave us an opportunity to slide down on the banisters, much to the amusement of no one. They were mostly Dutch of Americans (or Norwegian –ed).

The wall itself was rather Great, but only for about a mile. The rest of it is a sort of pile of rocks, but made a great view for lunch. It was certainly more exciting than the rest of the day, which we spent driving to other little parks and things that were v. expensive but had nice picnic tables for playing back gammon on. Arriving back at town was a relief though, and some hard earned relaxation was imminent.

Except that the sun was setting, we had five minutes to find a tall building and I we were stuck in police patrolled Qianmen. This meant that Taxis were unwilling to flout local traffic laws to pick laowai up, so we had to leg it over to the Beijing Grand Hotel, where we sweated our way up into the five star lift and crawled out onto the top floor (no.12) bar which is on the roof facing east. Should be a nice picture.

Two manhattans (¥110) and a Beijing Duck meal later, I was fast asleep and preparing myself for the Dill fueled nightmare that would be the Finnair flight home the next day.

THE END