EPISODE 25: BEIJING. IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I BREATHE.

Now begins the travel part of our Winter Break! On the 27th, we were off to spend a few days hanging out in Seoul, chilling and spending time in our favorite spots, and then, to China!

Hannah was grabbed at the JEJU airport.

Oh Trick Art Museum. You're everywhere on this island...

Then we spent our few days in nothing but cat cafes. As you can see, a sheer zen experience. This little fella at our favorite cat cafe, Table A in Sinchon, immediately hopped onto Ben's lap right after he sat down. I think it was the furry hat...

Then we ran into long time friend, Mr. Friskers. The first time we saw Mr. Friskers, he was a tiny, extremely scruffy kitten apparently in time-out in a large, aquarium-like container in the front of the cafe. Our next visit, he was abusing his freedom by constantly stalking a smaller cat and waiting until other cats fell asleep, then pouncing on them when they least suspected it. 

This time, the little nightmare on wheels was all gussied up. I mean, check the rouge! The Yankees jersey seemed somehow appropriate for him.

Fittingly, the last time we saw Mr. Friskers, he was, again, in time out in the aquarium-like box. He may still be there to this day.

Seoul highlights: exploring Samcheon-dong (an area with super-cute cafes and stores in Korean traditional houses, near the Blue House and Gyeongbokjung - how have we missed this before?!), getting breakfast at The Baker's Table and Lebanese food at Petra Palace (where I got my Christmas star anise fix via some tea) in Itaewon, and discovering an amazing mostly veggie fried croquette place in Hongdae.

After those relaxing days, it was off to Beijing! We flew out of Seoul and arrived at our hotel at about 10 pm thanks to our super-speedy driver. We immediately noticed a different approach to pedestrians than in South Korea: rather than  trying to inch around pedestrians who are oblivious that they're in your way, it seemed more like a "honk, rev your engine and drive faster" method.

Welcome to the HUTONG.

(If you're curious, a hutong is a traditional type of narrow alleyway lined with courtyard-style shops and houses, or in our case, our hotel, the Sihe Yuan Courtyard).

It was easy access once we checked in:

the door to our room was behind a tree behind my wife behind a blanket, with a flat disk of a key that you stuck into the top of the door handle.

Tea in our tiny room with fancy traditional furniture. Happily, China also has weird coffee/creamer/sugar mix like South Korea, so we felt right at home.

We woke up the next morning to meet up with our travel companions, Beth and Victor, and awesome guide, Xiaowei, and then we headed outside Beijing. As Xiaowei drove along, one of the things we were most impressed by were the huge, perfectly-spaced forests: trees as far as the eye could see that had been purposefully planted to help prevent sandstorms.

This clearly put Arbor Day in the US to shame.

On our way, we stopped at a little roadside market for a quick street vendor snack called jian bing, a crepe with green onions wrapped around crunchy goodness. Delicious.

Then, it was on to...

THE GREAT WALL OF TWIRLING. Or of China. Something about the Huns, anyway.

Not "hun" like what you get called by a waitress at a diner, but like Genghis. It's all very northern. We go there later.

Xiaowei took us to a very old secluded part of the Great Wall. We walked up a small mountain pass through a village to get there, and then climbed on up.

As I ran the up the stairs, I heard the faint yell of our guide: "Nooooo, your lungs can't handle it!"

My lungs responded, "Challenge accepted."

Ben yet again ran further up the wall to take this Lord of the Rings-esque shot of our meeting to plan our defense against the Orc invasion.

Couples moment: part 1 of a couple-y saga.

The oh-so-rare "Hannah Tunnels" of the Great Wall. If only the Huns had

known about this, China would be very different today.

The remote part of the wall was very crumbly and overgrown.

So yes, super safe. (And yes, of course we climbed this.)

"I'm still alive!"

Couples' moment part 2.

It may have been steep at times.

Really steep. Also, why aren't there stairs? Why is it just a giant slip and slide right here?

...This may go on for awhile.

Couples' moment part... Hey, wait...

That moment you realized that cute picture of Hannah going down the interior stairs of

a guard tower just looked like you, standing at a squatty potty, with Hannah in it.

PEEK-

A-

BOO.

Obligatory celebratory jump. Geddan, anyone?

Now, just time to enjoy the prettiness.

And from then, on they called it "The Great Wall of This Moment." It is a bit cumbersome for every Chinese man, woman, and child to carry this image to point to when referring to the wall formerly know as "the Great Wall Of China," but really they all feel that it's definitely worth it.

What goes up must come down. A long, long way down.

Deer prints in the cement.

I was happy this is the cool thing we saw in the cement, and not the skeletal remains of the workers.

Hey Craig, not only did you make the fridge, but you also made the Great Wall!

Real couples' moment part 3.

Yes, it's that steep. We almost lost Beth.

The Great Butt Race of the Great Wall.

View back up the way we came...

...and down towards the frozen dam.

Yay, I didn't get blown off the Great Wall in my weather balloon of a coat!

Now, time to come out of the wind and cold and get some lunch at a local farmer's place: a family-style smorgasboard of beef stew, chicken with veggies, green beans with delicious spiciness, and other veggie dishes. Arguably the best meal we had in China.

Hmm. We definitely were supposed to be there... 

After lunch, we went back to the hutong and explored San Li Tun, the foreign section of Beijing, where we found a cat cafe(!), an archery bar(?!), and a restaurant called "Satan's Hot Dog." All in all, a memorable New Year's Eve. We were also super-impressed with ourselves when we managed to walk back to our hotel from Sanlitun after having gotten a cab there and only having been in Beijing a day. Navigating the city didn't seem too hard because of the gridding, but we were all the more impressed with ourselves considering both of our concierges at the hotel circled the wrong area for where our hotel was on the map, and upon showing this to our guide, he laughed and said, "Use map in Beijing? Mistake." We finished with our self-congratulations (or Victor-congratulations for his finely-honed navigating skills), wrapped things up at the hotel with some tea and cookies, then headed to bed to rest up for the next day's adventure: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City! 

We walked through the Square, observing the drastic changes that Mao Tse Tung made when he came into power. Before, no commoner would have been allowed in this area. We walked past the mausoleum where his body was housed (closed for New Year's Day), and then

...poof! Tiananmen Square!

We paused for a few pictures outside the Forbidden City before heading inside to see where all the Ming and Qing emperors used to stay at.

Waiting for our guide to get tickets, we noticed The Forbidden City Ballers. Actually a thing. 

Also, the only question I asked the guide. 

And for that, I apologize to all future American tourists.

(I made up for Ben's lack of question-asking.)

The Emperor's wave, perhaps? 

(Although this was one of the bridges on the side, so it wasn't the center bridge that only the Emperor would walk over.)

Ah, the yellow roofs, only allowed on imperial buildings! (See, told you I asked questions. Sashia was really interesting to talk to, super friendly, and an amazingly fast walker.)

Couples' moment part 4.

Ah, the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

Hannah suggested this pose.

The rest of us are all still ashamed we went along with it with ZERO hesitation.

(It was because we found out about the two guardian lions in front of this building meant for official business, and how one is the male lion with an orb under his paw, and this is the female lion with a cub under her paw, so we were being like the female lion...)

Not for the high-heeled.

I'm just soooooo happy about door handles," said the door handle.

9 out of 9 guardian animals agree: don't let this building burn down again. 

(The first time was just too sad...)

The man riding the phoenix, mythical beasts in between, and the dragon do two things, according to our guide. The mythical beasts are supposed to protect the building from fire, and the number of them also signifies how important the ceremonies performed inside the building are. As you can see, this place has 10, so it is #1 most important.

Incense burner crane.

See? Not as important.

Seemed historical till I spotted the cell phone.

A tourist souvenir you can take away with you: a video of you and your loved one flying over the Forbidden City. 

No Words.

The throne. Crazy part is, when the Communists took over, Mao opened this up so anyone could just walk in and sit on the throne anytime they wanted. Obviously that's no longer the case, but that must have been a huge role reversal.

One massive block of carved granite. Supposedly they got it to Beijing by pouring water on the road, having it ice over, and then sliding this along. Cannot imagine how happy the delivery guys were to finish their job.

Now, to what Ben called the nicest part of the Forbidden City: where the courtesans lived.

Another incense burner.

We peered into a few of the quarters, saw the first telephones inside the Forbidden City, and read some about Empress Cixi. Fancy tastes, that one. 

Then, it was on to the gardens behind the living quarters. The  rocks here are coral beds dug up and used in the Emperor's garden.

The inside of the Autumn Pagoda. For, you know, chillin' in your garden.

Coral mountain. Amazeballs.

Now, to climb the hill behind the palace at Jingshan Park. There wasn't originally a hill here, but the royal family decided they wanted one, so... here's where all the dirt from the moat went!

Hello, forbiden City!

Couples moment..I've lost track.

Pagoda at the top.

This is the Bell Tower. We didn't go there because there is a drum tower.

And we are all about that Bass, no Treble.

We climbed the Drum Tower (opposite the Bell Tower) just in time to see these guys perform.

Apparently the drums were used to communicate the time. Kind of like a watch alarm, but more of a workout.

Now, back down to the streets to check out Houhai Park!

Ice skate chairs and ice skate bikes. Why is this not a thing everywhere?

We decided to save this experience for Harbin (although the creepy mouse chair was hard to pass up).

From here, it was on to a coffee shop next to what our guide called Beijing's best roast chestnuts. They were smaller than chestnuts we've had before, but (comparatively) super-easy to peel, and he did not lie. They were so good we went back for more before our train trip to Harbin.

That night, we headed down to Donghuamen Night Market to sample some street food. Probably the most exotic of the markets we've been to.

Squid, beef, and bugs.

Snake/snake/scorpion/bug/bug

/bug/centipede/snake/bug.

Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones.

starfish/snakes/snakes

Mmm, sugar-coated hawthorn berries on pointy sticks. These were like small crab apples with surprisingly large seeds.

beef/beef/squid

Adorable steamed buns... or eggs? Hard to tell.

We know you're wondering, what of this did we actually eat? We definitely tried the hawthorn berries some tofu, and some deep-fried angel-hair dough twisted into a spiral and covered in sugar. To everything else, I say vegetarian.

 It is a nice color...

After the night market, we went back to the hotel. About this time, we should mention that the pollution levels in Beijing while we were there, by residents' accounts, good. As you can see, there were mostly clear skies as opposed to lingering smog. However, even despite using a face mask with a filter, Ben was seriously feeling the difference in air quality, while I... well, let's just say that black boogers are a bit alarming, and that I noticed a steady decline in the whiteness level of my coat. It's sad to think that, even on good days in Beijing, we were having more difficulty breathing, and made us wonder about how long-time residents fared with it.

We each scrubbed up as good as we could and prepared for day three, exploring...

the Summer Palace! 

With these views, it was easy to see why summers would be gorgeous here.

Crazy to see the line of ice following the shadow of the bridge!

More antics on the ice! And, a 5-animal building. Not bad.

We finished up walking around the Summer Palace, then found a delicious lunch thanks to Beth's friend in Beijing who accompanied us for the day. We showed her the wonder of the chestnut place, then returned to the night market and for round 2 of food (this time with added tchochkes).

Sea horse, starfish and scorpions. Andrew Zimmern said starfish weren't for eating...

Souvenir overload. O_o

This concluded day 3. Day 4 was cut a little short by the necessity of catching the overnight train to Harbin, so we planned a pretty simple agenda. First, go get our train tickets, eat at the famed Li Qun Peking Duck restaurant, and then, check out the Lama Temple, former residence of one of the princes before he became emperor. The neighborhood Li Qun was in seemed a little deserted, but we finally found it, as we could tell by the many pictures of ambassadors, actors, and presidential candidates (Al Gore) galore on the walls. I (Hannah) did not partake in the duck, obviously, but they did have nice vegetarian sides and a delicious dessert: sweet potatoes covered in hot sugary syrup that hardened into a crust if you didn't eat it quickly enough. Needless to say, we did our best to polish them all off before that happened.

Then, it was off to the Yonghegong Lama Temple. It was filled with people burning incense (maybe because of it being so soon after the solar new year?) and had some very cool Buddhist treasures there: elaborate sculptures of boddhisatvas and Buddhas, beautiful tapestries, incredible embroidered ceremonial robes, and most especially, a 5-story tall Buddha carved out of a single tree. A-maz-ing.

Couples' moment part 5: incense version!

You can tell it used to be imperial by the golden roof...

Across the street from Lama Temple was one of my favorite neighborhoods in Beijing. We wandered down a street in search of a cafe, and not only did we find cat cafes, all sorts of fun galleries and boutiques, and several vegetarian and vegan places, but we also stumbled across this Tibetan cafe. It had a warm, cozy atmosphere perfect for relaxing after wandering around in the cold. ^^

After a nice afternoon intermission, we picked up some vegetarian food to go and then headed to the train station to take our first overnight train...

But we can't leave Beijing without showing you this truck coming out of our hutong. Intense!

Next up: ice and snow festival adventures in Harbin!