Beijing! Tiananmen, the Forbidden City, and the GREAT WALL

It's been far too long between posts, but the Daqing blues were only just melted away by a rush of springtime weather, and a much needed holiday trip to China's MASSIVE capital city: Beijing.  If you haven't heard of this metropolis, please read this before going any further...
To be fair, we really only had a few days in the city, but I am sure I'll be back before my adventures are over.

A quick disclaimer: due to poor air quality and my poor-er photography skills, you'll notice many different looking pictures. I've used a few different filters which I suppose is cheating, but it makes the pictures look so coooooool.

i.e.

From left to right: Original, Bright, Dark

So off we were on the night train from Daqing, it's about $50 each way but the beds aren't too bad and in any case it saves a night at the hostel I suppose. We had a big group of 7, but we made it work quite well and despite a few snags here and there, I really can't complain at all! After sorting out some ticket problems when we arrived, we headed straight to get some world famous Peking Duck which was a good way to start off the experience.

Some DELICIOUS Peking Duck was eaten here

Then it was off to the Forbidden City which isn't so "Forbidden" these days...we saw a toddler relieving himself on a tree inside the gates...TIC!

We didn't bother taking a guided tour, maybe next time? I don't know if I'm worn out from my tourist days in Europe, but we were also a bit dazed from the night train.

On the way in I even got a pic with Mao.

Couldn't escape the stares even in Beijing!

It was a HUGE palace, and while much of the exterior is the same, it's amazing to behold.

One of many courtyards in the Forbidden City

Daqing lacks the charm of classic Chinese architecture, but Beijing certainly did not.

Finally some interesting architecture

And this one goes out to Brett, loyal blog follower, fellow ESL teacher, and haxor...I learned the "Crane-style" in the Forbidden city so watch yo self!

Watch out for the Crane

Tiananmen Square is pretty much just a massive, well, square, but given it's infamy it was certainly worthwhile to go through a security check and wander around for a bit.

Tiananmen Square

Here's the actual famous angle of "Tian'anmen or Gate of Heavenly Peace" from the square.

The Chairman himself

That evening we wandered around and got lost, then wandered and got lost, and wandered some more and got lost again...all in search of a good Mexican meal! But not all was lost, we had some good beer and German food, but be warned, Beijing is not for the weary. Fear not, after our Great Wall trip my craving for some fajitas and burritos was satisfied on a better planned excursion.


The next day it was a 5:30am wake up to head 3hrs outside the city to the "Jīnshānlǐng" section of the Great Wall known for it's mountainous features and majestic views.  We hiked for several hours, and it was simply awesome. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

Duuuuuude I'm on the Great Wall

Almost no tourists in this photo...

The wall crawled over mountaintop after mountaintop

Snaking off into the distance

Certain sections were steep and sketchy!

Epic

From a guardtower

Maybe I'll sell this to a postcard printer

While he saw a different section than I did, Richard Nixon once said, "This is a Great Wall and only a great people with a great past could have a great wall and such a great people with such a great wall will surely have a great future." Which is probably the nicest thing he's said about China..but how true.

No time for naps unfortunately

And just like that, checked it off the list, hopefully I'll be able to see a few more sections of the wall this summer

Afterwards Marc and I headed to meet a fellow Daqing local and some of his local friends for a night on the town, we ended up staying up all night watching a big Man U vs. Man City soccer match and the next day we were a bit slow doing much of anything. Unfortunately we headed back in the afternoon, it was far too short but I got my first taste of Beijing and I'll be back for sure!

Random, but our hostel had the chillest cat ever

On the way home we stopped in Harbin and changed trains for the last 2 hours back to Daqing.  This picture might be blurry, but when you don't actually have a seat so you're standing, and you're traveling early in the morning on no sleep, and you get back to your apartment that morning at 5:30 am, and you teach 4 hours of kindergarten at 8:00 am well...you get the picture.

This was my "seat" from 2:30-4:50 am

If I keep doing that I'll end up looking like this for sure!

Ni hao! You want fries with that?

A few notes:
Click pictures to enlarge! They will look much better in a higher resolution.
Please excuse any typos, it's after 11pm and on these school nights that is late for me...!
Also, there will hopefully be more and more pictures from this adventure in a possible part two!
Zaijian!