My Tour To Beijing / Chengde / Tianjin

The Blogger note: My wife and I and a few other friends have enjoyed a 7D6N tour to Beijing / Chengde / Tianjin from September 2 to September 8, 2010. A detailed travelogue in Chinese is posted in my other blog http://lautaionn.blogspot.com.

A group photo of 23 of we tourists and the pretty local tour guide Miss Liu (squatting, a Manchurian) taken at Chengde is shown below.

A glimpse of the places we have visited is produced as follows:

Day 1.

1. A trishaw ride around Beijing Hutong

Hutongs (simplified Chinese: 胡同; traditional Chinese: 衚衕; pinyin: hútòng) are a type of narrow streets or alleys, most commonly associated with Beijing, China. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another.

2. Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven (simplified Chinese: 天坛; traditional Chinese: 天壇; pinyin: Tiāntán; Manchu: Abkai mukdehun) is a complex of Taoist buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest.

3. Chinese Acrobatics at Jinsha Theatre, with such performances as the springboard, rings, and balance skills, graceful silk hangs, jujustu, smart diabolo, water meteor, Chinese traditional face changing, Chinese martial arts, and the most exciting of all, 5 motorbikes driving and shuttling simultaneously inside an an iron ball with six meters in diameter.

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Day 2.

4. Palace Museum or The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in the middle of Beijing, China, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost five hundred years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

5. Tian'anmen Square (simplified Chinese: 天安门广场; traditional Chinese: 天安門廣場; pinyin: Tiān'ānmén Guǎngchǎng) is a large city square in the center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen Gate (literally, Gate of Heavenly Peace) located to its north, separating it from the Forbidden City. Since it was enlarged four times its original size in the 1950s, Tiananmen Square became the largest city square in the world (440,000 m² - 880m by 500m). It has great cultural significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history.

The Great Hall of the People in the background.
6. The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) (Chinese: 国家大剧院; pinyin: guó​jiā​ dà​ jù​yuàn​; literally: National Grand Theatre), and colloquially described as The Egg, is an opera house in Beijing. The Centre, an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass surrounded by an artificial lake, seats 5,452 people in three halls and is almost 12,000 m² in size.

Lunch served with Peking Duck, or Peking Roast Duck (a famous duck dish from Beijing that has been prepared since the imperial era, and now considered one of China's national foods) at the Quanjude, a centuries-old establishment which has become household names.

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7. Beijing National Stadium, also known as the National Stadium (国家体育场), or colloquially as the Bird's Nest (鸟巢), is a stadium in Beijing, China. The stadium was designed for use throughout the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Day 3.

Shopping at a Jade House.

8. The Great Wall of China (simplified Chinese: 长城; traditional Chinese: 長城; pinyin: Chángchéng; literally "long fortress" or simplified Chinese: 万里长城; traditional Chinese: 萬里長城; pinyin: Wànlǐ Chángchéng; literally "The long wall of 10,000 Li (里)") is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups. Several walls have been built since the 5th century BC that are referred to collectively as the Great Wall, which has been rebuilt and maintained from the 5th century BC through the 16th century. One of the most famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains; the majority of the existing wall was built during the Ming Dynasty.
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Day 4
9. The Summer Palace or Yihe Yuan (simplified Chinese: 颐和园; traditional Chinese: 頤和園; pinyin: Yíhé Yuán; literally "Gardens of Nurtured Harmony") is a palace in Beijing. The Summer Palace is mainly dominated by Longevity Hill (60 meters high) and the Kunming Lake. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometers, three quarters of which is water. The central Kunming Lake covering 2.2 square kilometers was entirely man made and the excavated soil was used to build Longevity Hill. In the Summer Palace, one finds a variety of palaces, gardens, and other classical-style architectural structures.














At a restaurant at Chende for dinner (the painting behind shows the Emperor of Ching Dynasty hunting deers and that was the purpose of him visiting the Mountain Resort).

Day 5.

10. The Mountain Resort in Chengde (Chinese: 避暑山庄; pinyin: Bìshǔ Shānzhuāng; literally: Mountain Resort for Avoiding the Heat; Manchu: Halhūn be jailara gurung) or Ligong (Chinese: 离宫; pinyin: Lígōng, the Qing Dynasty's summer palace) situated in the city of Chengde in Hebei Province, China, is the world's largest existing imperial garden.
Built between 1703 and 1792, the Mountain Resort took 89 years to complete. It covers a total area of 5.6 km², almost half of Chengde's urban area. It is a vast complex of palaces and administrative and ceremonial buildings. Temples of various architectural styles and imperial gardens blend harmoniously into a landscape of lakes, pastureland and forests.

11. Beijing Happy Valley "Gold Face Dynasty", 200 million yuan stage show providing gorgeous dancing, mysterious, elegant, passionate and imaginative visual feast.

12. Wang Fu Jing Avenue, or the "walking street", is lined with shops selling everything from women's fashions to eyeglasses and Chinese tea. There are several shopping centres like the Beijing Department Store, Sun Dong An Plaza, and Wang Fu Jing Department Store. Running parallel to Wang Fu Jing Avenue are Dong Dan Bei and Dong Si Nan Avenues, with a high concentration of small restaurants, shops and boutiques.

Day 6.
13. Qianmen Street. Chinese name: 前门大街（qián mén dà jiē） Qianmen Dajie is one of the oldest and most famous commercial streets with a 500 year old history. As an ancient street in Beijing, it is an assembly place of time honored shops, including Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant and Du Yi Chu Shao Mai.

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14. Tianjin Nanshi Food Street is an ancient building complex with more than 100 restaurants and 40,000 square meters in area. It is a food paradise, where you can not only taste thousand kinds of food, but also enjoy the interesting cuisine culture and elegant architecture.

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15. Tianjin Ancient Culture Street is a collection of streets offering traditional Qing-style architecture and décor of a typically Tianjin style. Shops on the streets feature delicately carved bricks and watercolour paintings, fine artworks, handicraft tools, calligraphy brushes and kites.

Other places visited but not shown above included:

16. The Prince Gong's Mansion (Chinese: 恭王府; pinyin: Gōng Wáng Fǔ) or Gong Wang Fu Museum is located in the western part of central Beijing, China, north of the Shichahai Lake. Consisting of large mansions in the typical siheyuan laylout and gardens, Prince Gong's Mansion is known as one of the most ornate and extravagant residence compounds in all of Beijing.

17. The Ming Dynasty Tombs (Chinese: 明朝十三陵; pinyin: Míng cháo shí sān líng; lit. Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty) are located some 50 kilometers due north of urban Beijing at a specially selected site. The site was chosen by the third Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle (1402–1424), who moved the capital of China from Nanjing to the present location of Beijing. He is credited with envisioning the layout of the ancient city of Beijing as well as a number of landmarks and monuments located therein. After the construction of the Imperial Palace (the Forbidden City) in 1420, the Yongle Emperor selected his burial site and created his own mausoleum. The Ming tombs of the 13 emperors of the Ming Dynasty were located on the southern slope of Tianshou Mountain (originally Mount Huangtu).

18. The cultural show of "The Budhisattva on the Holy Water".

19. The Place - Beijing Shopping Mall (Shi Mao Tian Jie, 世贸天阶) is the Beijing's funkiest new mall easy to be spotted thanks to the digital canopy that sweeps over its central outdoor plaza - the biggest LED screen in Asia. The tri-level mall houses Spanish fashion chain Zara and Canadian shoe retailer Aldo’s flagship store. Other outlets include Potato and Co., Folli Follie, French Connection, i.t, Miss Sixty, Adidas, MAC cosmetics, Promod, Patricia, Puma, Rolex, the English-language Chaterhouse bookshop.

20. Silk Street (Chinese: 秀水街; pinyin: Xiùshuǐjiē, aka Silk Market, Silk Street Market) is a shopping center in Beijing that accommodates over 1,700 retail vendors, notorious among international tourists for their wide selection of counterfeit designer brand apparels.

21. Yashow Market is a paradise for bargain hunters in Beijing, a big draw for the tourist with some money to spend and some serious shopping to do too. It is located to the west of Sanlitun bar street in the northeast of Beijing. Yashow is surrounded by the bars, restaurants and cafes of the Sanlitun area, the hotest eating and drinking area for tourists in the city. It's a 4 story building, shopping inside. The general quality of the goods here are competitive to any other similar market in Beijing. The Yashow Market itself provides various articles of clothing a well as a lot of cashmere garments, down jackets, leather goods, shoes, hats, watches and some handicrafts and trinkets.

It is said that there are mainly 5 targets in any tour: FOOD, ACCOMMODATION, TRANSPORT, SIGHT-SEEING, SHOPPING & ENTERTAINMENT (食、住、行、游、购、娱). In a nutshell, the above 5 targets were all achieved in our tour albeit with varying degrees of satisfaction in each category.