Beijing: it's nice, but Starbucks is nicer...

So Sara and I are now in Beijing.

We queued for over an hour for a taxi from the train station to our hostel. I was slightly bitter about that. But then the taxi driver surprised me by knowing where to go. Normally when I brightly announce to a taxi driver where I want to go they stare at me blankly and I end up showing them around their own bloody city.

The hostel is in a hutong neighbourhood. Hutong are named after wells that used to be at the end of each alley in Beijing but now the whole thing is called a hutong. They are narrow, one's BMW just about gets through, and old. One of the first places I've been in China that doesn't feel like other places I've been-this is most definitely Beijing.

The government is enthusiasticly bulldozing the hutong neighbourhoods and plonking skyscrapers down, only occasionally interrupted by some dispossesed hutong dweller setting themselves on fire in protest. Progress!

Sara and I have so far touristed the Confucian Temple here along with the Imperial Academy. The Confucian Temple has stele listing the names of the last entrants for the old official exams in 1904. Those exams on Confucian thought were centuries old and had to be passed to be a government official. It was felt in 1905 that students should be tested in things like science and maths and modern stuff. I wonder if those last students thought what they were doing was really a waste of time. The temple looked like every other temple I've been to and was sort of peaceful. We'd passed a buddhist temple (specifically Tibetan buddhist I think) on the way that was teaming with people. This one was down a leafy sidestreet. Round the back some girls were practising a dance while their teacher hit them with an empty water bottle.

Then we went to Tiananmen Square. But not for very long as:

1. It's hot here at the moment. Not as hot as Shanghai but hot enough-30+.
2. It's smoggy smoggy smoggy. No sky, just a dome of brown.
3. I forget, living in Qingdao, how big China is. 1.3 billion people. 20 times the size of old Blighty. This is the capital. Families who can only afford one holiday every decade come here. Therefore the crowds here are gigantic and huge and loud. They move in herds following a tour guide blaring through a loudspeaker.

All this conspired to push two hot and frazzled English girls, used to tea in rose gardens with polite, quiet conversation, out of the Square. We hid in a nearby park filled with sleeping cats and watched the ticket sellers play badminton.

The subway here is never less than packed.
Walking is exhausting and hot and full of obstacles ranging from parked mopeds to slow-moving humans.
Taxis are expensive and Beijing's traffic jam can be seen from Space.
God knows where the buses go.
Not many people cycle any more.

Today we planned to go to the Summer Palace after fetching something but then we walked past a Starbucks and it's cool, and not many people and there's tea. The Summer Palace involves a long subway ride and battling crowds in the heat. So we're in Starbucks and I have no intention of going Out There, except to forage.

I'm not a very good tourist.

I told the taxi driver we were twins. He said we didn't look alike at all, in a rather disgruntled way.