18th October: Beijing, China
We both woke up in the middle of the night. Perhaps this is jet lag is catching up with us? Regardless, we’d already planned to have a chilled morning today.
In the afternoon, we again popped out on the expansive metro network – the world’s longest at 815km. We’ve found it difficult to get to grips with where the centre of the city is and to get a proper feel for the scale of the place. Yes, the central axis and historic centre is obvious, but what about the ‘real’ Beijing? I think it’s a bit more difficult to put your finger on because it’s basically a giant doughnut of exciting areas all around the old city, rather than any one in particular. This time we headed to Sanlitun – literally, ‘3x 500m village’ denoting the 1.5km distance to the old city – famous for its style, food, shopping, and nightlife.
Firstly, we managed to find a mobile shop which would sell us a Chinese SIM card. This is a massive win, as quite a few of the mini-apps within WeChat and AliPay require a local phone number. We should now be able to register to order food deliveries, buy event tickets, and enter certain pass-only attractions.
Sanlitun itself was full of designer brands, among them a huge number of Western brands which you just didn’t see here 10-15 years ago. The side streets had more hip coffee joints than a city could ever need and various art installations, which when coupled with the tree lined roads, all with wide bike lanes, looked a very impressive cityscape.
After a bit of wandering, we ventured into a supermarket. Two things stood out to be me. Firstly, there must have been 50+ types of tofu for sale! Dozens alone at the deli counter and then seemingly every possible option cold. This includes the local delicacy of stinky tofu, which we’ve not yet worked up the courage to try! The second thing was the incessant use of loudspeakers left on top of products and playing repetitive pre-recorded messages. Sometimes, there will be 4 of these within 5 metres, all shouting different things. It’s a cacophony of chaos and is probably the only thing not to like about the otherwise straightforward shopping experience.
After trying a few places for dinner, we realised how lucky we’d been on the first night to stumble across a place with so many vegan options. Even being very loose with what we’re happy to eat, such as a few times unexpectedly pulling random bits of meat out of supposedly vegetable dishes, it’s not actually been very straightforward. Luckily, people are helpful, even if we’ve already given up on hoping anybody understands the concept of veganism and settling for going straight in with vegetable as a starting point. This evening, when we found a place where you could select your own options to be weighed and then fried for you, we were excited. Luckily, they were happy to negate the beef stock and give us water. This might sound bland, but with the oils, chillis, soy, garlic, and peanut sauces available to add it was anything but. Our portions were enormous as we’d gotten carried away, but we pretty much finished the tofu (4 ways), seaweed (2 ways), noodles (3 ways), and dozens of types of vegetable! It was so tasty, and warming on this cool, damp day, that we couldn’t bring ourselves to stop eating!
Very happy with ourselves, we wandered out through the bright lit streets. Light shows and the occasional neon sign really brought warmth to what was already feeling like late autumn. Back at the hotel, we called the lift and to our amazement a robot came trundling out and took itself towards reception! It seems as if these are used when you order something on one of the ubiquitous phone apps. A scooter driver drops your food, groceries, or anything else (I do mean anything!) at reception and then the robot takes it to the correct room in the hotel. We are living in the future.
