Visiting Beijing, China — Part 1

Forbidden City photo by Jacob Morgan — © All rights reserved.

This is an edited version of the article originally published by social business consultant Jacob Morgan on his travel blog at Social Media Globetrotter. You can connect directly with Jacob on Twitter at @JacobM.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to spend a month traveling around China (including Tibet) with my good friend Brian.

Getting around Beijing is fairly easy thanks to their great train system which is designed to run around the multiple “rings” of the city. The train can get you pretty much anywhere you need to go.

I highly recommend that you also pick up a copy of “Lonely Planet China” before your trip and perhaps the phrase book as well. Communicating with folks was a bit tough since you needed to be exact with the tones of the words otherwise people looked at you like you were crazy. If you really can’t pronounce the words at all you can always point to words in your book and people will usually understand what you are trying to say.

The first thing we saw in Beijing was Tienanmen Square which was immediately followed up by the Forbidden City (which are right next to each other). Tienanmen Square is interesting to look and it’s usually quite filled with people, You can find Chairman Mao’s tomb near the square but it was closed when I was there. You’ll find plenty of Chinese flags blowing in the wind which makes for quite an interesting photo opportunity. You will also see soldiers standing guard.

To be honest I wasn’t as impressed with everything I had seen, well let me rephrase that; I was impressed but for some reason I was expecting more. It was definitely amazing to see everything though. I’m not really a fan of big cities; I much prefer being out in nature. This doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate everything because I certainly did, I was just expecting something different (not sure what).

Right behind the Square is the Forbidden City which is absolutely massive. Brian and I spent several hours walking around the various courtyards that each have their own interesting names. After checking out a few of the courtyards and squares you start to get the point and you can just briskly walk through the rest of them.

Behind the Forbidden City (after a tiny bit of walking) you will find two parks to visit.  One is Beihai Park and I can’t remember what the second one is called. Either way they are not too far from one another so it’s worth it to check out both.

Don’t bother taking the rickshaws that are going to be offered to you near the parks; you get to explore far more on foot. Both parks should give you plenty of great photo opportunities so be sure to have your camera with you.

Visiting Beijing, China — Part 2

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