[delayed] Beijing Trip 2008
Delayed because on the morning I touchdown on KL (12am) was the morning I'm back at work (10am) [nobody crosses Benze's Iron Lady @ Hogzilla's GF @ the Head Designer here - if she says she wants you back at work, you gotta be back at work.]
Delayed because of a few family tiffs here and there - especially on the fight for my freedom @ to further my studies@UK. With various reasons. [I've made up my mind, no matter what, I'm definitely going to the UK - the Land is calling me!~]
Delayed because of the load of work the Iron Lady dishes out - everyday she asks all the designers in this to draw/build-3D/render at least 1 kitchen. I think I've drawn much (and subsequently got rejected much) when I didn't even as to so much peek into the Product Guide to check the dimensions - proving that I AM indeed starting to get sick of drawing kitchens...
Delayed because Uncle Desmond comes by once in while to give me a freelance oddjob (kinda living up to my billing as the "art mercenary", no?), but a single project of his never seems to end.
Delayed because at the end of the day, I go home with tired eyes and a fatigued-mind. And never got the time to do anything else *sighs*
BUT today seems a miracle - no one's in the office save me and a Dad playing sentinel to this person. So here I am, surfing online and blogging away like nobody's business. Mwahaha. NOBODY'S STOPPING ME!
And without much further ado.
I'll keep this little journey bit short, since anyway, we all want the see the photos, yes? And there's a few picturesque ones fit to blow it big and hang as an ornament ;)
Day 01 - Into Ol' Beijing
The time we touched down there, it's already evening, so after dinner, we went to watch an acrobatics show. IMHO, not as dazzling as the one back at Shanghai last year, but nonetheless an entertaining performance. Here's some highlights of the show.
Left: 3 jumping lions...
Middle: ...Too many plates...
Right: ...and a boy stuck inside a giant pot. Boy being blur volunteer who didn't know what's in it for him until he's inside the spinning pot...
Day 02 - Visiting the Legendary Places
First stop, THE Forbidden City. I have parents rambling about how big the place is and how we're gonna walk till our legs suih ki liao but our tour leader (unaffectionately known as David) only had us visiting about 1/20 the place (no complaints, because that morning was freezing cold, and there's a million people walking around (it's worse than a crushed pack of sardines) when it starts to hit noon...
Left: This is the Back Gate of the Forbidden City where we started off for the tour into the Forbidden City.
Middle: One of the many long corridors. And there's an infinite number of 'em, that we can't tell each apart, and makes a good warning to noisy kids to NOT wander or be lost forever. (Which suits me just fine. I can't stand squabbling, LOUD, insensitive brats that jumps everywhere and screams their bloody lungs out for the whole City to hear.)
Right: The supposedly Throne Room, until Dad protested and said he's seen the real one and it's nothing like this - which, to credit him, is true. The REAL Throne Room has a HUGE Audience Hall - but that part of the palace was under RENOVATION. Can you believe it?
But it's TRUE.
Left: The first hall, for scholars taking the imperial examination.
Middle: The second hall, with the REAL Throne Room and Audience Hall. Of all times to do a bloody renovation, they'd have to do it the year their Olympics are being held, and when the tourists are visiting China in the thousands. Can't they do it earlier?
Right: Back of the second hall. Those billboards fencing the hall showed grainy pictures of how it looked like inside. Nope, I can't say I'm impressed until I see the actual thing.
So let's see what this being can do...
Left: Nope, not Photoshop. That's a real Lens Flare in the work while this picture was taken.
Middle: Because the light got too glaring, I had to change the distance and angle slightly to be able to snap the sun together. And now the palace looked like it should be in its ancient, magnificent glory...
Right: Front Gate, with the famous portrait of Mao Zedong. Look at that LONG queue...
Upon stepping out, it's into the infamous blood-soaked-history-of-a Tiananmen Square.
Left: Tiananmen Square with the famous building in the distance housing Mao's body. Though we're not allowed to enter JUST because it's CNY. Talk about strange rules.
Middle: This flag station was manned by four guardwomen who stood there unmoving in the freezing morning - just to guard a flagpole. You got to salute them for taking on such a duty on such days without complaints.
Right: Family groupshot! And no, we're not Russian soldiers despite our identical headgear, thankyouverymuch.
And before we know it, we're off to the Temple of Heaven. And I was looking forward to this place after hearing before Tommy's passionate explanation on the workings of the echo wall...
Left: This shot was taken when I'm atop the giant platform where the past emperors would stand and shout to his ministers/soldiers from the centre. The second wall is the curved wall (or rather, a wall built as one circle surrounding this platform) is the echo wall.
Middle: The very spot in the center where the emperors take stand. But looking at how many people pijak-ing that spot, I highly doubt it's got any value any longer, historically or royally.
Right: This is NOT the echo wall, despite being curved. It's a circle of a wall surrounding the lesser temples inside, where gods of the following are worshipped: The Lighting and Wind Gods (Raijin, Fujin), the God of Rain, and the somewhat scary Night God who had its own altar not shared with the other gods. Hmm...
And we went in deeper. And my Dad thought we've found THE Temple of Heaven, but I told him, "NO WAY! The REAL Temple of Heaven has 3 floors! This ain't it!" (And I was right, in the end.)
Left: The Mini Temple of Heaven. Mom said the last time they visited, they could go and look inside, but now it's barred from the public due to too many tourists vandalising this heritage site with "John has been here in 19xx" on the walls, columns, and floors.
Middle: A close-up of the stone carving on the steps leading to the mini TOH. It's insanely intricately detailed, and they're all CARVED out of STONE.
Right: The entrance into the mini TOH, now (and probably, forever) forbidden to be entered by the public.
But hey, where's the REAL Temple of Heaven then ? you ask. Well, it's located on the OTHER side of this place - we got to walk through a park and a loooong road down to the REAL Temple of Heaven.
This is the one, set upon a fair morning sky. It looked so surreal, I was momentarily taken back by its splendid architecture - splendid because being an ancient building, it had never looked this well preserved (compared to other heritage buildings), and well, it's the only round Chinese temple in existence - unlike your typical rectangular/octagonal ones.
After that, it's lunch, and then we're dropped off at some shopping district in Beijing for some light shopping. And here, they have PLENTY of ripoff spinoff brands from their real counterparts. Take the one below for an instance.
Where the legendary tick has been slightly modified into a more curvy and thicker tick, and their motto subsequently rewritten even though they (pardon me) BLOODY HELL MEANS THE SAME GODDAMN THING. There, I've said it.
And then the original Nike store was opened, like, opposite, and just a few shops down the street. Are the companies just plain blind as to the pirates, or anything goes in China?
Other such "spinoffs" include: Gugci [Gucci], Cloake [Clarke], Ammani [Armani], Anna Sun [Anna Sui], Dara [Zara], Vero Moda [Vera Modo], Emergineldo Zegna [Emmer Zecna], fake Crocodiles with plentiful other names BUT with the same croc logo, and so much more but too lazy to list. If it weren't for the mispelling, they all had the same typeface and colours, and well, what can the original companies do when these brands seems to be everywhere in China?
Day 03 - Climbing the Great Wall
To tell the truth, I didn't. My Dad did, and successfully reached the top. I climbed like 1/4 upwards before I started to lose my breath - and to avoid the same incident that almost took my life just a year ago, I'd backed down and waited with Mom for Dad to finish his great climb.
But hey, at least I still get to pijak the Great Wall - planted my foot on those steps, walked a bit around the lower fortresses, and subsequently let loose a string of colourful phrases while burning off some rage when too many streetsellers force you to buy their stuff even when you told it to their face umpteenth times that you don't want to buy their pirated stuff. Some people don't even understand their OWN language. Sheeesh.
Left: Part of the Great Wall where we're allowed to climb up. Those bloody steps are not only uneven in height (some are at least 1.5 foot high!), they're pretty steep and the amount of people pushing you left, right, up and down makes this climb not only arduous but dangerous.
Middle: There's my Dad there making the climb down...
Right: ...and there's me showing the V for having planted my foot there at the Great Wall, even though I don't have the capacity to scale it as of then.
Because some others did not come back down as of yet, we went to the other side of the Great Wall - another one which is TOO steep to be scaled. They even put up the signboard saying "Not for the faint-hearted", but I don't care - I still have the proof showing that I'd have successfully pijak-ed the Great Wall.
After David finally gotten everyone in the tour group back in one piece, we went to visit some dead kings and pay them some respects at the Ming Tombs.
Left: Road leading to the Ming Tombs.
Right: The marker gravestone of a dead emperor called Emperor Wan Li. They'd burned the place around this marker down, when some sod discovered this marker that prompted him to search for lost tombs, and after finding the Diamond Wall, the treasure-seekers'd bore a giant hole through to unearth the poor Emperor's lost tomb buried deep into the earth. And I say poor Emperor because not only are all his riches be looted away, his OWN coffin was covered over by a giant UGLY plain steel box with only a miserable plaque stating that this is his coffin. C'mon, China, be sensible - people don't travel all the way here just to see a bloody red giant shoe-box.
So yes, amidst grumbles of "We've been cheated", well, seeing we're too far from Malaysia, might as well go through this tour, and be done with.
Day 04 - Into the Land of Ice
But before that, we get to go up close with China's pride and joy at the Panda Zoo.
The left pix's of the inside enclosure, and the rest were outside. They could eat kgs of bamboos, and they kunyah 'em like carrots.
And then, it's off to the Cold Palace Summer Palace belonging to the craziest, MOST sadistic empress dowager in human history, Empress Dowager Cixi. Said so because according to David, the emperor (son of hers though not related by blood) was physically and mentally abused when he's young - especially when it involves caging him in a lonely hut in the middle of a giant frozen lake where to prevent him from leaving, she had servants breaking the ice everytime they freeze up so that he stays there for as long as she sees fit. I pity that emperor, really.
Left & Mid: View of the frozen lake. It's vast, and despite warnings about not letting children strode upon those ice, there's some who blatantly ignores those rules. There's been many cases of children falling through thin ice and never appearing again.
Right: The raised hut on this island in this giant lake where the emperor was once imprisoned by his stepmom empress.
Left: One of the many pavilions inside the Summer Palace, with literally no end in sight...
Middle (1): A resting place that sits between two adjoining pavilions. Talk about the complexity of beams, and they were all handpainted.
Middle (2): After the Summer Palace, we went on this side trip to Yongle Bell Tower, said to be the biggest bell found in China. And according to some crazy folklore, the giant bell was successfully hung up onto those giant beams by some "son of a god" merely using his bare hands. Which, IMHO, I could not believe because I doubt legendary people like Liu Bo Wen and Jiang Ziya have enough magic prowess to raise some few-hundred-tonnes bell like they're made of feathers or something.
Right: The giant bell inside the temple NOT tower for it's only a bloody single-storey establishment. Has some 3000+ ancient inscriptions of it, that eerily reminds me of those inscriptions thought to be carved by Sparda when he imprisoned the 7 Deadly Sins-Demons on Earth (DMC Manga Vol.2).
While on the way to lunch, we made a short stop somewhere near the Bird's Nest, a strange-but-true nickname for Beijing's new Olympic Stadium.
Left: The Bird Nest. Though I can't help but not admit that it's some great Chinese achievement for it MAY be built in China, but it's NOT built by their own people - but by two renowned European architects. Probably the same case as our own KLCC being built not by a Malaysian...
Right: Another new stadium, for watersports. I've seen a documentary of it, and it uses really-new technology to construct those bee-hive-ish windows that's supposed to represent the linkage of the water molecule H20.
And after a strange lunch of tribal food, we went on another side tour to see ice sculptures at the Chinese version of IceWorld@Genting.
Sad to say, I wasn't impressed. When I hear Ice World, I think of a world of ice filled with spectacular ice carvings that defy conventions, but I see more Chinese-tecture-based sculptures than whatnots. But then again, we're in China.
Left: Pagodas of ice and light...
Middle: A dragonboat ferrying the 8 immortals...
Right: ...and me up at the front. It's definitely hardcore ice when I touched it, but it's wet and slippery too.
Left: The entrance to a giant slide where people who'd like to freeze their butt off while sliding down the ice is welcomed to try it out...with some fee, 'course.
Middle: Even the trees weren't spare...
Right: ...as I stand beneath and touched one of the mini-icicles. And they're coldly sharp.
But this cold place is considered to be of comfortable temperature compared to the place the next day we're going to - now if there's an equivalent of Harbin, Chengde is the nearest destination to Beijing with about the same climate as Alaska.
Day 06 - To an Even Bigger Land of Ice
But before heading there though, we head to one last attraction in Beijing @ Zhongyuan Tower.
Left: Apparently, this is the spot where the last emperor of some dynasty called Emperor Zhongyuan took his life by hanging himself (and his loyal manservant followed suit later) after he'd watched the entire Forbidden City be surrounded by the rebels/soldiers and killed his wife and daughter (to avoid them be enslaved by the new rulers)...with reason that he'd die on his own rather than be captured and be severely tortured later.
Middle & Right: An overview of the Forbidden City from the highest point of this Zhongyuan Hill, at its highest pavilions.
Left: Just east of the Forbidden City is this city view of a more modernized Beijing...
Middle: ...and opposite the Forbidden City, the bustling city of New Beijing.
Right: When going down from the top, there's this little pavilion where it'd housed a bronze Buddha statue centuries ago before it was looted by the Allied Forces. Nonetheless, ya can't get this picturesque scenery anywhere else in Beijing.
One last stop before going to Chengde, we finally visited the Zhongyangmen Tower (left pic, below)...where my strange and eventual fate was foretold by the resident fortuneteller there. (Resident because according to David, he's been there for AGES...and that his predictions are highly accurate, earning him his label of Grandmaster in the China FengShui World.)
Strange because initially, I don't believe fortunetellers, especially the Chinese ones, for they'd bulled their way through most of the time, and I'd have seen 4 outta 5 made a few "predictions" mistakes @ they're either not true in the first place, or they never took place at all.
BUT this dude not only knew the existence of Hogzilla back at Malaysia (he'd told my Dad square in the face, "There's one more of yours (children). He's not here."), he'd knew Hogzilla is a smart-ass deep down (which is true, 'coz he'd trumped so many local chess champions in the past), and that I have an unusually high IQ (bingo that).
And...he'd said I'll go to a "very faraway place", but when Mom asked him (all their conversations were in Mandarin but at least I knew half of what they're saying) whether I'll come back, the teller says, "Time will tell" and quietly trails off when he saw me watching him with intent/(or rather, unusually intelligent?) eyes.
(Har...somemore say I Chinese Banana lah. Take that, you old man *sticks out tongue* Ya can't hide anything from me!!!)
Despite all that strange talk had me slightly shaken on the evening trip to Chengde, I can't help...but got to admit that that old man sure know his stuff. BUT it remains to be seen whether it's gonna come true, especially that last bit.
And though I don't have shots of the night sky, I can see a million twinkling stars (and complete constellations too!) that we back at Malaysia will never have the chance to see. Upon seeing them, I hear echoes of the Stardust song in my mind...
Day 07 - To Chengde and Back
The right pic is the unassuming entrance to the Summer Villa...
...whose sights and scenery beats dusty ol' Beijing anyday. Despite the chilling temperature.
Where in the world can we go near the wild deers in the free open forest?
They're scattered throughout this giant Summer Villa belonging to past emperors (and they have so many of these getaways around China), but the highest concentration is at this Deer-Viewing Pavilion.
When we progressed further down towards the giant frozen lake, we saw more deers...together with a peddlar walking around selling frozen honey-covered strawberries-on-a-stick to be either fed to the deers or consumed by humans (though the latter is unadvisable for this person). I bought one and fed this young deer (middle pic) who'd not only PULLED the entire stick outta my hand, the fella with his prize in his mouth strutted to some spot beneath the tree to slowly kunyah 'em like makan jagung only.
And thus lost the only chance to pet a live wild deer while they're feeding. Ah well.
But there's that female doe (right pic) who loves to be near humans...and always tries to "steal" a strawberry stick and two from the ever-wary peddlar.
There's many more good sights, but I shall only post the best of 'em.
It's not only scenic, but thankfully devoid of too many people, Summer Villa being such a vast space. The main lake was frozen, but there's a few calm rivers around. Crystal clear water beneath the endless blue sky...
...tell me, where else in the world can I find a blue heaven equal if not greater than this?...
And the next and last attraction of the day at Chengde turned out to be at the Little Pulata Temple, built to a smaller scale but nonetheless to detail as the original Pulata Temple at Lhasa, Tibet.
Left: Some giant strange marker with ancient Sanskrit inscribed upon it, found at the entrance leading up to the Little Pulata Temple that sits on the hill. (I swear, there's many of these "strange" markers with funny squigglies carved on 'em scattered everywher in China.)
Right: Little Pulata Temple, standing in its little glory.
And in the 'noon, we went back to Beijing...to go to Tianjin the next day for a one-day tour before spending the last night at China's old capital.
Day 07 - One (Last) Night in Beijing
Sad to say, Tianjin's not that exciting due to lack of good sights around (and then the tour people started to blame David for his lack of commitment), NOT to mention bad toilet experiences (this place have the WORST toilets in China, SERIOUSLY! And then China boasted that they're doing something about it - riiiiiiiiight).
For instance, this one stop at Anxi - though a lot of tourists mistook it by thinking it to be Xian (when read from left to right).
Left: The Anxi...building. I can't call it tower nor fortress for it's too short to be a tower and it stands alone in the middle of the market square - like a giant stone island.
Middle: The market square that sold much antiques and local handicrafts. They called it the Cultural Street but...I have nothing else to say.
Right: After eating crap tour food practically everyday while on this tour, my family along with a few newly-made-tour-friends went for a splurge to seek "a restaurant that serves the REAL Peking Duck and hopefully, decent food", and we found ourselves at Quanjude Duck Restaurant @ Yashiow once we returned from Tianjin (on the same day). NOW we've finally tasted the REAL Peking Duck - crispy and succulent to the last morsel. No regrets for the splurge, after all.
Day 08 - HOME SWEET HOME, BABY
We practically went shopping for the last few days at Beijing - and the tour people'd grumbled when David put us down at the same Yashiow Market for 3 times in 3 days in a row. On this last day, we went to Petaling-Stree-esque bazaars and look at more plentiful imitations before we're sent to the airport for our departure at 2pm...
...and the plane ride back was horrible (though not as bad as last year).
Especially when you're seated just in front of this entire family of 9 jack-ass-headed monkeys, aged between 3-15. They not only kicked your backrest many times throughout the whole journey, they'd
SQUABBLE, SCREAM, YODEL, and even
LAUGH OUT LOUD UNCONTROLLABLY AND CONSISTENTLY
giving everyone else in that part of the plane the lack of peace of mind.
...I dunno where they're from, or where they're PARENTS are from, but if the parents themselves can SIT there and DO NOTHING to STOP those NOISY IDIOTS...
...and they're Malaysians. Good lord, those people just simply SPOIL our "good Malaysian" image. Graaaah.
Eventually, Mom and I gave up trying to stay put in our seat (Dad didn't go and baham them and he didn't want ME to go baham them instead but just said to stay patient for they'll eventually shut up when they're tired. But Dad was OH so wrong for those sods was still jumping around for the next 5 hours) and we went up front to look for empty seats juuust so to be as faraway as possible from the source of noise - and I eventually slept in the seat next to an equally active but much more quiet/decent/MORALLED European kid and his good father.
(According to Dad, those monkeys eventually got shut up when the cabin captain came and told them off, citing complaints from other passengers AND that they'd failed to keep quiet even after giving them hot Milo EVEN WHEN THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO GET IT to shut em up. HAH!)
Upon hitting home at the stroke of midnight (or about 1/2 hour before it), Bobby gave us the heroes' welcome and I'd continually slept till late morning for the next few days after waking up waaaaay too early back at Beijing.
And upon completion of this entry, the Iron Lady had just finished "fighting" with the Hogzilla, who eventually "lost the battle" and went away.
And now she's watching me typing this...
-Lammy-
Delayed because of a few family tiffs here and there - especially on the fight for my freedom @ to further my studies@UK. With various reasons. [I've made up my mind, no matter what, I'm definitely going to the UK - the Land is calling me!~]
Delayed because of the load of work the Iron Lady dishes out - everyday she asks all the designers in this to draw/build-3D/render at least 1 kitchen. I think I've drawn much (and subsequently got rejected much) when I didn't even as to so much peek into the Product Guide to check the dimensions - proving that I AM indeed starting to get sick of drawing kitchens...
Delayed because Uncle Desmond comes by once in while to give me a freelance oddjob (kinda living up to my billing as the "art mercenary", no?), but a single project of his never seems to end.
Delayed because at the end of the day, I go home with tired eyes and a fatigued-mind. And never got the time to do anything else *sighs*
BUT today seems a miracle - no one's in the office save me and a Dad playing sentinel to this person. So here I am, surfing online and blogging away like nobody's business. Mwahaha. NOBODY'S STOPPING ME!
And without much further ado.
I'll keep this little journey bit short, since anyway, we all want the see the photos, yes? And there's a few picturesque ones fit to blow it big and hang as an ornament ;)
Day 01 - Into Ol' Beijing
The time we touched down there, it's already evening, so after dinner, we went to watch an acrobatics show. IMHO, not as dazzling as the one back at Shanghai last year, but nonetheless an entertaining performance. Here's some highlights of the show.
Left: 3 jumping lions...
Middle: ...Too many plates...
Right: ...and a boy stuck inside a giant pot. Boy being blur volunteer who didn't know what's in it for him until he's inside the spinning pot...
Day 02 - Visiting the Legendary Places
First stop, THE Forbidden City. I have parents rambling about how big the place is and how we're gonna walk till our legs suih ki liao but our tour leader (unaffectionately known as David) only had us visiting about 1/20 the place (no complaints, because that morning was freezing cold, and there's a million people walking around (it's worse than a crushed pack of sardines) when it starts to hit noon...
Left: This is the Back Gate of the Forbidden City where we started off for the tour into the Forbidden City.
Middle: One of the many long corridors. And there's an infinite number of 'em, that we can't tell each apart, and makes a good warning to noisy kids to NOT wander or be lost forever. (Which suits me just fine. I can't stand squabbling, LOUD, insensitive brats that jumps everywhere and screams their bloody lungs out for the whole City to hear.)
Right: The supposedly Throne Room, until Dad protested and said he's seen the real one and it's nothing like this - which, to credit him, is true. The REAL Throne Room has a HUGE Audience Hall - but that part of the palace was under RENOVATION. Can you believe it?
But it's TRUE.
Left: The first hall, for scholars taking the imperial examination.
Middle: The second hall, with the REAL Throne Room and Audience Hall. Of all times to do a bloody renovation, they'd have to do it the year their Olympics are being held, and when the tourists are visiting China in the thousands. Can't they do it earlier?
Right: Back of the second hall. Those billboards fencing the hall showed grainy pictures of how it looked like inside. Nope, I can't say I'm impressed until I see the actual thing.
So let's see what this being can do...
Left: Nope, not Photoshop. That's a real Lens Flare in the work while this picture was taken.
Middle: Because the light got too glaring, I had to change the distance and angle slightly to be able to snap the sun together. And now the palace looked like it should be in its ancient, magnificent glory...
Right: Front Gate, with the famous portrait of Mao Zedong. Look at that LONG queue...
Upon stepping out, it's into the infamous blood-soaked-history-of-a Tiananmen Square.
Left: Tiananmen Square with the famous building in the distance housing Mao's body. Though we're not allowed to enter JUST because it's CNY. Talk about strange rules.
Middle: This flag station was manned by four guardwomen who stood there unmoving in the freezing morning - just to guard a flagpole. You got to salute them for taking on such a duty on such days without complaints.
Right: Family groupshot! And no, we're not Russian soldiers despite our identical headgear, thankyouverymuch.
And before we know it, we're off to the Temple of Heaven. And I was looking forward to this place after hearing before Tommy's passionate explanation on the workings of the echo wall...
Left: This shot was taken when I'm atop the giant platform where the past emperors would stand and shout to his ministers/soldiers from the centre. The second wall is the curved wall (or rather, a wall built as one circle surrounding this platform) is the echo wall.
Middle: The very spot in the center where the emperors take stand. But looking at how many people pijak-ing that spot, I highly doubt it's got any value any longer, historically or royally.
Right: This is NOT the echo wall, despite being curved. It's a circle of a wall surrounding the lesser temples inside, where gods of the following are worshipped: The Lighting and Wind Gods (Raijin, Fujin), the God of Rain, and the somewhat scary Night God who had its own altar not shared with the other gods. Hmm...
And we went in deeper. And my Dad thought we've found THE Temple of Heaven, but I told him, "NO WAY! The REAL Temple of Heaven has 3 floors! This ain't it!" (And I was right, in the end.)
Left: The Mini Temple of Heaven. Mom said the last time they visited, they could go and look inside, but now it's barred from the public due to too many tourists vandalising this heritage site with "John has been here in 19xx" on the walls, columns, and floors.
Middle: A close-up of the stone carving on the steps leading to the mini TOH. It's insanely intricately detailed, and they're all CARVED out of STONE.
Right: The entrance into the mini TOH, now (and probably, forever) forbidden to be entered by the public.
But hey, where's the REAL Temple of Heaven then ? you ask. Well, it's located on the OTHER side of this place - we got to walk through a park and a loooong road down to the REAL Temple of Heaven.
This is the one, set upon a fair morning sky. It looked so surreal, I was momentarily taken back by its splendid architecture - splendid because being an ancient building, it had never looked this well preserved (compared to other heritage buildings), and well, it's the only round Chinese temple in existence - unlike your typical rectangular/octagonal ones.
After that, it's lunch, and then we're dropped off at some shopping district in Beijing for some light shopping. And here, they have PLENTY of ripoff spinoff brands from their real counterparts. Take the one below for an instance.
Where the legendary tick has been slightly modified into a more curvy and thicker tick, and their motto subsequently rewritten even though they (pardon me) BLOODY HELL MEANS THE SAME GODDAMN THING. There, I've said it.
And then the original Nike store was opened, like, opposite, and just a few shops down the street. Are the companies just plain blind as to the pirates, or anything goes in China?
Other such "spinoffs" include: Gugci [Gucci], Cloake [Clarke], Ammani [Armani], Anna Sun [Anna Sui], Dara [Zara], Vero Moda [Vera Modo], Emergineldo Zegna [Emmer Zecna], fake Crocodiles with plentiful other names BUT with the same croc logo, and so much more but too lazy to list. If it weren't for the mispelling, they all had the same typeface and colours, and well, what can the original companies do when these brands seems to be everywhere in China?
Day 03 - Climbing the Great Wall
To tell the truth, I didn't. My Dad did, and successfully reached the top. I climbed like 1/4 upwards before I started to lose my breath - and to avoid the same incident that almost took my life just a year ago, I'd backed down and waited with Mom for Dad to finish his great climb.
But hey, at least I still get to pijak the Great Wall - planted my foot on those steps, walked a bit around the lower fortresses, and subsequently let loose a string of colourful phrases while burning off some rage when too many streetsellers force you to buy their stuff even when you told it to their face umpteenth times that you don't want to buy their pirated stuff. Some people don't even understand their OWN language. Sheeesh.
Left: Part of the Great Wall where we're allowed to climb up. Those bloody steps are not only uneven in height (some are at least 1.5 foot high!), they're pretty steep and the amount of people pushing you left, right, up and down makes this climb not only arduous but dangerous.
Middle: There's my Dad there making the climb down...
Right: ...and there's me showing the V for having planted my foot there at the Great Wall, even though I don't have the capacity to scale it as of then.
Because some others did not come back down as of yet, we went to the other side of the Great Wall - another one which is TOO steep to be scaled. They even put up the signboard saying "Not for the faint-hearted", but I don't care - I still have the proof showing that I'd have successfully pijak-ed the Great Wall.
After David finally gotten everyone in the tour group back in one piece, we went to visit some dead kings and pay them some respects at the Ming Tombs.
Left: Road leading to the Ming Tombs.
Right: The marker gravestone of a dead emperor called Emperor Wan Li. They'd burned the place around this marker down, when some sod discovered this marker that prompted him to search for lost tombs, and after finding the Diamond Wall, the treasure-seekers'd bore a giant hole through to unearth the poor Emperor's lost tomb buried deep into the earth. And I say poor Emperor because not only are all his riches be looted away, his OWN coffin was covered over by a giant UGLY plain steel box with only a miserable plaque stating that this is his coffin. C'mon, China, be sensible - people don't travel all the way here just to see a bloody red giant shoe-box.
So yes, amidst grumbles of "We've been cheated", well, seeing we're too far from Malaysia, might as well go through this tour, and be done with.
Day 04 - Into the Land of Ice
But before that, we get to go up close with China's pride and joy at the Panda Zoo.
The left pix's of the inside enclosure, and the rest were outside. They could eat kgs of bamboos, and they kunyah 'em like carrots.
And then, it's off to the Cold Palace Summer Palace belonging to the craziest, MOST sadistic empress dowager in human history, Empress Dowager Cixi. Said so because according to David, the emperor (son of hers though not related by blood) was physically and mentally abused when he's young - especially when it involves caging him in a lonely hut in the middle of a giant frozen lake where to prevent him from leaving, she had servants breaking the ice everytime they freeze up so that he stays there for as long as she sees fit. I pity that emperor, really.
Left & Mid: View of the frozen lake. It's vast, and despite warnings about not letting children strode upon those ice, there's some who blatantly ignores those rules. There's been many cases of children falling through thin ice and never appearing again.
Right: The raised hut on this island in this giant lake where the emperor was once imprisoned by his stepmom empress.
Left: One of the many pavilions inside the Summer Palace, with literally no end in sight...
Middle (1): A resting place that sits between two adjoining pavilions. Talk about the complexity of beams, and they were all handpainted.
Middle (2): After the Summer Palace, we went on this side trip to Yongle Bell Tower, said to be the biggest bell found in China. And according to some crazy folklore, the giant bell was successfully hung up onto those giant beams by some "son of a god" merely using his bare hands. Which, IMHO, I could not believe because I doubt legendary people like Liu Bo Wen and Jiang Ziya have enough magic prowess to raise some few-hundred-tonnes bell like they're made of feathers or something.
Right: The giant bell inside the temple NOT tower for it's only a bloody single-storey establishment. Has some 3000+ ancient inscriptions of it, that eerily reminds me of those inscriptions thought to be carved by Sparda when he imprisoned the 7 Deadly Sins-Demons on Earth (DMC Manga Vol.2).
While on the way to lunch, we made a short stop somewhere near the Bird's Nest, a strange-but-true nickname for Beijing's new Olympic Stadium.
Left: The Bird Nest. Though I can't help but not admit that it's some great Chinese achievement for it MAY be built in China, but it's NOT built by their own people - but by two renowned European architects. Probably the same case as our own KLCC being built not by a Malaysian...
Right: Another new stadium, for watersports. I've seen a documentary of it, and it uses really-new technology to construct those bee-hive-ish windows that's supposed to represent the linkage of the water molecule H20.
And after a strange lunch of tribal food, we went on another side tour to see ice sculptures at the Chinese version of IceWorld@Genting.
Sad to say, I wasn't impressed. When I hear Ice World, I think of a world of ice filled with spectacular ice carvings that defy conventions, but I see more Chinese-tecture-based sculptures than whatnots. But then again, we're in China.
Left: Pagodas of ice and light...
Middle: A dragonboat ferrying the 8 immortals...
Right: ...and me up at the front. It's definitely hardcore ice when I touched it, but it's wet and slippery too.
Left: The entrance to a giant slide where people who'd like to freeze their butt off while sliding down the ice is welcomed to try it out...with some fee, 'course.
Middle: Even the trees weren't spare...
Right: ...as I stand beneath and touched one of the mini-icicles. And they're coldly sharp.
But this cold place is considered to be of comfortable temperature compared to the place the next day we're going to - now if there's an equivalent of Harbin, Chengde is the nearest destination to Beijing with about the same climate as Alaska.
Day 06 - To an Even Bigger Land of Ice
But before heading there though, we head to one last attraction in Beijing @ Zhongyuan Tower.
Left: Apparently, this is the spot where the last emperor of some dynasty called Emperor Zhongyuan took his life by hanging himself (and his loyal manservant followed suit later) after he'd watched the entire Forbidden City be surrounded by the rebels/soldiers and killed his wife and daughter (to avoid them be enslaved by the new rulers)...with reason that he'd die on his own rather than be captured and be severely tortured later.
Middle & Right: An overview of the Forbidden City from the highest point of this Zhongyuan Hill, at its highest pavilions.
Left: Just east of the Forbidden City is this city view of a more modernized Beijing...
Middle: ...and opposite the Forbidden City, the bustling city of New Beijing.
Right: When going down from the top, there's this little pavilion where it'd housed a bronze Buddha statue centuries ago before it was looted by the Allied Forces. Nonetheless, ya can't get this picturesque scenery anywhere else in Beijing.
One last stop before going to Chengde, we finally visited the Zhongyangmen Tower (left pic, below)...where my strange and eventual fate was foretold by the resident fortuneteller there. (Resident because according to David, he's been there for AGES...and that his predictions are highly accurate, earning him his label of Grandmaster in the China FengShui World.)
Strange because initially, I don't believe fortunetellers, especially the Chinese ones, for they'd bulled their way through most of the time, and I'd have seen 4 outta 5 made a few "predictions" mistakes @ they're either not true in the first place, or they never took place at all.
BUT this dude not only knew the existence of Hogzilla back at Malaysia (he'd told my Dad square in the face, "There's one more of yours (children). He's not here."), he'd knew Hogzilla is a smart-ass deep down (which is true, 'coz he'd trumped so many local chess champions in the past), and that I have an unusually high IQ (bingo that).
And...he'd said I'll go to a "very faraway place", but when Mom asked him (all their conversations were in Mandarin but at least I knew half of what they're saying) whether I'll come back, the teller says, "Time will tell" and quietly trails off when he saw me watching him with intent/(or rather, unusually intelligent?) eyes.
(Har...somemore say I Chinese Banana lah. Take that, you old man *sticks out tongue* Ya can't hide anything from me!!!)
Despite all that strange talk had me slightly shaken on the evening trip to Chengde, I can't help...but got to admit that that old man sure know his stuff. BUT it remains to be seen whether it's gonna come true, especially that last bit.
And though I don't have shots of the night sky, I can see a million twinkling stars (and complete constellations too!) that we back at Malaysia will never have the chance to see. Upon seeing them, I hear echoes of the Stardust song in my mind...
Day 07 - To Chengde and Back
The right pic is the unassuming entrance to the Summer Villa...
...whose sights and scenery beats dusty ol' Beijing anyday. Despite the chilling temperature.
Where in the world can we go near the wild deers in the free open forest?
They're scattered throughout this giant Summer Villa belonging to past emperors (and they have so many of these getaways around China), but the highest concentration is at this Deer-Viewing Pavilion.
When we progressed further down towards the giant frozen lake, we saw more deers...together with a peddlar walking around selling frozen honey-covered strawberries-on-a-stick to be either fed to the deers or consumed by humans (though the latter is unadvisable for this person). I bought one and fed this young deer (middle pic) who'd not only PULLED the entire stick outta my hand, the fella with his prize in his mouth strutted to some spot beneath the tree to slowly kunyah 'em like makan jagung only.
And thus lost the only chance to pet a live wild deer while they're feeding. Ah well.
But there's that female doe (right pic) who loves to be near humans...and always tries to "steal" a strawberry stick and two from the ever-wary peddlar.
There's many more good sights, but I shall only post the best of 'em.
It's not only scenic, but thankfully devoid of too many people, Summer Villa being such a vast space. The main lake was frozen, but there's a few calm rivers around. Crystal clear water beneath the endless blue sky...
...tell me, where else in the world can I find a blue heaven equal if not greater than this?...
And the next and last attraction of the day at Chengde turned out to be at the Little Pulata Temple, built to a smaller scale but nonetheless to detail as the original Pulata Temple at Lhasa, Tibet.
Left: Some giant strange marker with ancient Sanskrit inscribed upon it, found at the entrance leading up to the Little Pulata Temple that sits on the hill. (I swear, there's many of these "strange" markers with funny squigglies carved on 'em scattered everywher in China.)
Right: Little Pulata Temple, standing in its little glory.
And in the 'noon, we went back to Beijing...to go to Tianjin the next day for a one-day tour before spending the last night at China's old capital.
Day 07 - One (Last) Night in Beijing
Sad to say, Tianjin's not that exciting due to lack of good sights around (and then the tour people started to blame David for his lack of commitment), NOT to mention bad toilet experiences (this place have the WORST toilets in China, SERIOUSLY! And then China boasted that they're doing something about it - riiiiiiiiight).
For instance, this one stop at Anxi - though a lot of tourists mistook it by thinking it to be Xian (when read from left to right).
Left: The Anxi...building. I can't call it tower nor fortress for it's too short to be a tower and it stands alone in the middle of the market square - like a giant stone island.
Middle: The market square that sold much antiques and local handicrafts. They called it the Cultural Street but...I have nothing else to say.
Right: After eating crap tour food practically everyday while on this tour, my family along with a few newly-made-tour-friends went for a splurge to seek "a restaurant that serves the REAL Peking Duck and hopefully, decent food", and we found ourselves at Quanjude Duck Restaurant @ Yashiow once we returned from Tianjin (on the same day). NOW we've finally tasted the REAL Peking Duck - crispy and succulent to the last morsel. No regrets for the splurge, after all.
Day 08 - HOME SWEET HOME, BABY
We practically went shopping for the last few days at Beijing - and the tour people'd grumbled when David put us down at the same Yashiow Market for 3 times in 3 days in a row. On this last day, we went to Petaling-Stree-esque bazaars and look at more plentiful imitations before we're sent to the airport for our departure at 2pm...
...and the plane ride back was horrible (though not as bad as last year).
Especially when you're seated just in front of this entire family of 9 jack-ass-headed monkeys, aged between 3-15. They not only kicked your backrest many times throughout the whole journey, they'd
SQUABBLE, SCREAM, YODEL, and even
LAUGH OUT LOUD UNCONTROLLABLY AND CONSISTENTLY
giving everyone else in that part of the plane the lack of peace of mind.
...I dunno where they're from, or where they're PARENTS are from, but if the parents themselves can SIT there and DO NOTHING to STOP those NOISY IDIOTS...
...and they're Malaysians. Good lord, those people just simply SPOIL our "good Malaysian" image. Graaaah.
Eventually, Mom and I gave up trying to stay put in our seat (Dad didn't go and baham them and he didn't want ME to go baham them instead but just said to stay patient for they'll eventually shut up when they're tired. But Dad was OH so wrong for those sods was still jumping around for the next 5 hours) and we went up front to look for empty seats juuust so to be as faraway as possible from the source of noise - and I eventually slept in the seat next to an equally active but much more quiet/decent/MORALLED European kid and his good father.
(According to Dad, those monkeys eventually got shut up when the cabin captain came and told them off, citing complaints from other passengers AND that they'd failed to keep quiet even after giving them hot Milo EVEN WHEN THEY'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO GET IT to shut em up. HAH!)
Upon hitting home at the stroke of midnight (or about 1/2 hour before it), Bobby gave us the heroes' welcome and I'd continually slept till late morning for the next few days after waking up waaaaay too early back at Beijing.
And upon completion of this entry, the Iron Lady had just finished "fighting" with the Hogzilla, who eventually "lost the battle" and went away.
And now she's watching me typing this...
-Lammy-