More Beijing Sights and Experiences

Day two in Beijing took in a few more random sights. First up was a trip to the Lama Temple, the most famous Tibetan temple outside of Tibet. The way my itinerary was looking, I figured this was about as close to Tibet as I was going to get this summer. It was quite a cool place, and had a huge carved wood standing Buddha inside the rearmost hall. Quite impressive, and apparently carved out of a single piece of sandalwood. Apparently anyway. Every fact was off-set with the get-out clause 'It could be said that...', which I reckon is code for couldn't-be-arsed-to-find-out.

It was interesting to see all the signs in dual languages though. I'd never seen written Tibetan before, and it surprised me how obvious its affinity to Indian script is than to anything more typically Chinese. Very interesting.
Following the Lama Temple we wandered the Hutongs, the little alleyways of grey brick single-storey buildings that used to dominate Beijing and now fill in the remaining gaps between the construction projects and new-builds. It seemed strange that people would be living right in the centre of the capital in much the same conditions as they did in Lanshan, even worse in many cases - with public toilet blocks being the rule. It was however encouraging that real people still live in this area, and that it's not some lifeless mass of business and commerce. Guide books rave about the Hutongs and men in rickshaws shout 'Hello Hutong!' at you on every corner, trying to entice you to take a tour, but I really didn't see the attraction. Seemingly each and every one is signposted off the main roads but walking down some of them, all that remained was the streetplan, the buildings themselves long ago having been swept away for development or replaced with cheap mock-ups. It's like advertising your losses.

We found our way out of the maze to discover Beijing's Drum and Bell Towers. Many towns used to possess these and they were used in quite a complicated way to tell the time. The Drum Tower was the oldest, about 700 years old, and contained some reproduction drums, the originals all having been smashed in a rebellion some hundred years ago or so. It also had an ancient water clock with a little man that banged his cymbals together every 15 minutes. I'd imagined it'd be all manic like the duracell bunny, but was much less amusing in reality...

The Bell Tower was rebuilt a few hundred years ago, and had a big bell in it. It was about as exciting as that last sentence.

There is a little bit of the old city walls still standing in one corner of the city and we decided to finish off the day by taking a look. The taxi driver we tried to get to take us refused because it was 'too far', so dropped us off at the subway station back up by the Lama Temple, in the opposite direction. I worry for this city, I really do.
The wall was quite good really and had a restored corner defence tower with an art exhibtion inside. If we hadn't been charged an unbelievable 40 yuan for two cokes at a crap cafe in the nearby park I'd have said it was a pretty good.

We didn't try to do anything exciting that evening. Our experience the night before was enough to convince us we really shouldn't try anymore. We'd tried to find some kind of entertainment and came across a 'club' that had a song and dance show on. Whatever, we walked in and sat down. The song and dance show was absolutely hilarious. Two of the dancers obviously hadn't taken part before and were trying their best to follow the others and keep up. One was enjoying the ridiculous futility of it as much as we were but the other, bless her, was concentrating as hard as she could, while still being a full two moves behind everyone else. It was great.

To be fair it was a Monday night, so we weren't expecting much, but the place was still reasonably busy, so after the dancers had finished and sat down at the front we still ordered another drink. And so we sat for a while. Something in the back of my mind hadn't quite been right since we'd been there. For a start there were too many doors in the corridor down to the toilets. I thought they may have been KTV rooms, but my worst fears were realised when the boss came out from behind the bar, clapped his hands three times and all of the girls sat around us in the bar stood up and formed an orderly queue beside one of the doors, where a man with a very big smile on his face was waiting patiently. We looked around us and besides the dancers sat in one corner realised to our horror that we were the only people in this bar who were not on the pay-roll!! We finished up our drinks and left quickly. What is it with this country?! I just want a good clean night out. Is that so hard to find?!!