Beijing
Travel Guide for Backpacker:
Beijing Youth Hostel 1
We easily entered the a bus, paid our fare, and were once again
going East on
Chang'an Jie, albeit much more slowly
this time as the bus made constant stops, discharging and picking up
passengers. The buildings were not much different from most large
cities, until we passed Tian'anmen Gate and Square. These renowned
features looked almost out of place, the gate looking as if a
skyscraper was laying sideways with Chairman Mao's picture over the
entrance on the North side, and the square on the South side is a
huge ballfield centered around his memorial hall. As the bus
continued its stop-and-go, the cityscape resumed until we came to an
obvious train station. We couldn't see any trains, but a huge throng
of people scurrying about a large square in front of a squat
two-story structure with taxis and bicycles in front showed it was
an important transit terminal of some kind. At this point, we got
off the bus and went into Jian Guo Men Station to board a subway
train on the line to our hostel.
After paying 9¥($1.09USD)
for the three of us and we showed our tickets to the attendant at a
gated entrance to the station below. Following the crowd was easy
enough, and once on the platform, the trains regularly pulled in for
a minute, then out, with great predictability. We would not have a
long wait. The subway system was a simple two-line setup, as shown
in LP, a blue circle line (#2) that looped around along the second
ring road,
and an East-West Line red line (#1)
parallel to Chang'an Jie. We had been told that a third line was
under construction, but we left from a this station (Jian Guo Men),
close to the ancient observatory that served as a transfer point
between the two lines. Even more pleasing was that we could easily
understand our route—the large route map on the wall was plotted by
stations whose names were written in both Chinese and English. It
was quite easy to find the Northbound train that would take us three
stations before disembarking. It was, though, crowded, but that
didn't stop an old woman from selling tourist maps throughout the
car. For some reason, she knew to approach me
first out of all
the other passengers. I admit, I
felt better giving her some money and
receiving an item that is normally free at upper-end hotels. Better
to have me picking my own pocket than her!
Keeping our eye on the route map over
the doors, the train seemed to move along at an extremely fast clip
for what seemed too long. By the time we stopped at the third
station, Dongzhimen Qiao (we easily recognized the station sign on
the wall, written in English), and pushed out onto the platform.
Again, it was an easy walk up and out into the air, where we
remembered the motorway junction that our express bus had been on
when it came into Beijing. The midday chaos of the streets was
phenomenal, only increasing from what I'd observed an hour before.
With
our new tourist map in hand, we began walking toward the Great
Dragon Hotel. We walked for a long time, and finally had to ask
another woman, who showed us that
we were
too far North, and directed us to walk
South. I didn't figure it was such a distance, but we came to
another major thoroughfare, Giongrentiyuchang Bei Road (Worker's
Stadium Road), and, turning East on it, we passed the Worker's
Stadium, an Outback Steakhouse, several other assorted business and
apartments, the Pacific Center Shopping Complex, and, adjacent to
that, the Great Dragon Hotel, as evidenced by the large marquee just
below the roof.
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