Beijing

I decided to write about my trip to China, since there’re a few things I want to say about it. The thing about going to China at Chinese New Year time is quite special compared to going other places at Chinese New Year. Since nearly everyone in China is Chinese, it’s obvious that everyone celebrates Chinese New Year there. In China, they get 8 days public holiday starting from the first day of Chinese New Year. XD XD

But, there’re still people working during those 8 days obviously, like the tour guide, & the restaurants. But even so, a lot of restaurants would close during the New Year. So we expected all the shops to be closed, but thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as that.

Another lovely thing about spending Chinese New Year in China is seeing the fireworks. ^__^ You won’t be able to see that many fireworks in the air anywhere else on Chinese New Year. They just kept going on & on!!! Everyone buys fireworks, because they believe that if they spend all that money on fireworks, money will come in that year. & of course, they also believe that it chases the evil spirits & bad luck away. So I got to see a lot of fireworks & firecrackers, & fireworks exploding directly above my head. It was a beautiful sight. & you also feel the Chinese New Year atmosphere there. ;-D

firecrackers ;-)

& the fireworks, close up XD sorry, but I was taking the video vertically, so the fireworks are coming out from the left of the screen instead of the bottom, looks kinda weird ^^;

Another special thing about China which isn’t in Malaysia is their dumplings *__* But I didn’t like those dumplings very much ^^; well, they don’t have yee sang in China either, so I guess yee sang is a Hong Kong thing…

Anyway, we went to 2 places in China, Beijing & Harbin. We went there before, because we had gone to China at least 4 times already, & our 1^st time was in Beijing, in 1996, & we went Harbin in 2000. Cos I was quite young at that time, I hardly remembered anything from our trips to China, but that could also be caused by the language barrier because last time they didn’t have English speaking tour guides. Now they finally are able to provide, but unfortunately the English speaking tour guide in Harbin wasn’t so good ^^; most of the time it was either him struggling to understand us, or vice versa lol otherwise, he was ok, a young & enthusiastic man hahaha wth that sounds weird. Although I said young, but he’s 26, & he thinks he’s old (all 20+ people seem to feel old, I wonder why), but maybe it’s because he was comparing it to my age, but I didn’t think we were that far apart, well, more than 5 years could be considered quite far apart, but maybe it’s just the feeling I got from him, that he’s still a bit like a child lol.

Sorry, got sidetracked for a while ^^; back to our trip, basically we went to those places ppl should go to in Beijing. Like, the Forbidden City ^__^ & the great wall, of course XD There were other historical places we went to too, but I don’t remember much about them, sorry ^^;

This was at the base, where we just started out... whenever I see lots of stairs like this, I lose the will to walk up lol ^^;

I think this was after the initial flight of stairs, but as you can see, still a long way to go lol it's not so obvious in the picture, but in real life it's really quite steep, you know...

hahaha dunno whether you noticed, but in this picture it's more obvious that there're ppl resting on the stairs along the way ;-D

I wanted to try & capture my fear in the pics, but it's not so easy. While walking up, I'd imagine myself slipping & falling down the stairs... I think it'd definitely be fatal *shudders* or maybe not, if I were to crash into the ppl below me, but injuring them would make me feel bad too ^^; so I was trying to show how steep the stairs are, but it's not very obvious... anyway, I was very careful when walking up, I never let go of the handrails lol ;-)

oh, & we managed to reach the top of the hill in 1 hour & 10-15 mins! *proud* Cos the stupid tour guide gave a time limit of 2 hours, even though this tour is supposed to be more customised *grumblegrumble* but since we went down faster than coming up (obviously lol), we made it in 2 hours ;-D

I forgot where this was... oh well, I just know it's definitely not the forbidden city, so it's not that important lol... the special thing about this picture is its unique design on the wall, if you didn't notice... the top windows above the red lanterns are all different shapes XD

a minisized version of the forbidden city! XD I <3>

another model of the forbidden city ^__^ it'd be nice if I could live in such a splendid place like that, I think I wouldn't even mind going round the whole house everyday! XD lol that's if I had lots of free time, of course...

next post, harbin! ;-)