Last Day in Beijing

So, we just got back from our last day in Beijing. The last stop on Western end of Line 1 of the Beijing subway (the one that runs East and West) is a place called Pingguoyuan, which translates to "Apple Park". We thought this might be a good place to explore on our last day, so we headed out there. It is about a half hour subway ride from the Western part of the heart of Beijing to there, so we were somewhat surprised when we stepped out of the subway and still found dense city as far as you could see in all directions. Beijing is ridiculously big.

We also did not find any park. Instead, it was a concrete area with vendors selling a few things while taxi cab drivers waited outside the subway exit and motorcycle cab drivers sat on their motorcycles near the road. We saw a few old men playing cards and asked them where Pingguoyuan was, and they answered that we were there. We tried to tell them we meant the park, not the subway stop, and they said we were there.

So, it was not quite what we expected. But we looked around, and I saw that there were some bare hills perhaps four hundred feet high or so a bit of a distance to the north of us. We agreed to make it our goal to reach them. We headed as straight for them as possible. This took us through a poor Beijing neighborhood in which houses were shacks with tin roofs. The alleys kept getting narrower and narrower, but we had started to go up an incline, so we decided we were getting close and continued.

This turned out to be a very good idea. Just as the paths we were walking on were getting to feel awkwardly like someone's front steps, we turned a corner and found ourselves confronted with a small path that climbed up a rocky slope with some bramble bushes on it. So we climbed.

We got to the top of one slope. On it were three old Chinese men flying a kite that was at least five hundred feet worth of string in flight. With them they had a small pug dog. They conversed a bit with Mike, though he couldn't understand them very well (the Beijing accent was very very strong). We found out that we were on the Three Hills, or something along those lines, and that the dog's name was Bur Bur. It was very very fun. The hills were the foothills of larger mountains that you could see in the distance. We got some good pictures.

On the tallest mountain, there was a PLA uniformed guard sitting in a nook just under the summit under a flag with a old radio.
When we walked the ten more feet to the top, we found the remains of what looked to be an old guard tower. From the top, we could see city in one direction and mountains in the other. To the West was an area of tall apartment buildings surrounding a nice soccer field where some Chinese teenagers were having a competitive game.

We walked around the area for a bit after that; it was a quieter, less affluent part of Beijing. The people there were obviously not used to seeing foreigners. The kids were, as usual, very friendly and curious. A group of them kept about thirty feet away from us as we stood and looked around for a bit. They shouted things like "Hello!" at us (I think one of them even shouted "What is your name?") and kept hiding shyly behind a truck parked on the side of the road.

We also found a food market. We bought some Chinese apples and pears and mandarin oranges (I had an apple, it was good). We also bought a few cookies, and ate them as we walked away, but got only twenty feet when we decided that the cookies were really good so we went back and bought a bunch more to share with friends later.

It was a very fun afternoon, one of the best I'd say. We got to see a lot of the city that you wouldn't normally see, it was very refreshing.

But now, we are trying to find a good Chinese restaurant for our last dinner here.
Later.

-tom