Visiting Beijing, China — Part 2

Tienanmen Square 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.

In my previous post I covered quite a bit of Beijing but there’s still a lot more to be said. Beijing is a massive city and there is a lot to do.  Make sure you read part 1 of Visiting Beijing, China as well.

The next day in Beijing was absolutely fantastic. My friends Brian (the guy traveling around China with me), Daniel (the guy that lives in China), and I went on a bike ride through the Hutong alleyways, which was quite an experience. Keep in mind that things are still pretty tame on the trip since Daniel is with us and can handle all of the communication for us.

The Hutong alleyways are a collection of tiny streets and alleys that run through a particular part of town in Beijing and I absolutely recommend that you take a bike and ride through them. Renting the bikes was fairly easy and cost a few dollars for the whole day; of course Daniel set everything up for us.

While biking around we thought it would be a bit fun to have a few drinks while cruising around and we basically made a little agreement with ourselves that we would stop to grab a beer at every little local store we saw (no, there weren’t THAT many) and since a Tsing Tao beer costs around 20 cents it sounded like a darn good idea. So there we were, a bit tipsy cruising around the streets of Beijing!

We also stopped at some little pastry shop and got these three flavors of pudding which I believe were strawberry, honey, and regular (the honey one had a real dead bee in it).

During the course of the bike ride we also drove by a few temples.  The Lama temple in particular stood out and is worth a quick visit. We also rode to a few drum towers which were also interesting. Once you climb the staircase to the top of a drum tower you have a pretty good view over the Hutong alleyways.

After our time in Beijing we took an overnight train to Shanghai. From this point onward we were without Daniel and it was pretty much up to Brian and me to get by and communicate with people.  Our safety net was gone and that’s when the real interesting things started to happen!

We had our Lonely Planet guide book and phrase book to get us around. We had a cell phone that we could use to call Daniel during emergencies, of which we had a lot of.

If you find yourself taking a train in Beijing (or anywhere in China for that matter) then always make sure you buy the “soft sleeper” seats.  These are the most expensive and essentially you get your own little room that fits four people and is safe and secure with your own private entry door. The “hard sleeper” seats are just rows of bunk beds and everything is out in the open.

Next stop, Shanghai!

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