Tiananmen Square and China's National Museum, Beijing, China

Tiananmen Square and Entrance to Forbidden city 

It's been three weeks since our exciting Beijing snow day! Every day we wonder when the snow will disappear, we haven't had another cloud in the sky for ages but the snow remains, far too cold for it to melt away. Even though it's no longer the beautiful fluffy white colour anymore it hasn't lost its appeal. 

Yesterday evening we sat at our local noodle house drinking a Tsingtao, picking on sweet peanutty gong bao ji ding and salty green pork beans pondering what we should get up to this weekend. Staying home was an alluring choice but the government had another crackdown on its firewalls and our connection is way too slow to watch or download a movie so we wanted to head out. A little too cold to leave the city, we decided on visiting Tiananmen Square. We had heard a lot of stories about Tiananmen Square of important events that occurred before our time, and our Chinese friends have been asking if we've been yet. 

Sturdy strong guard patrol

So on Tuesday morning, we wrapped up warm. Kara tried cooking a porridge she had found at the supermarket but it turned out more like a thick gross savoury cardboard-flavoured milk so we went across to '85degrees' and bought large sweet hazelnut macchiatos and pizza ham bread. We took the subway, which we later realised takes the same time than walking there if not slower (we found that we live remarkably close by). 

Monument to the Peoples Heros

From the subway we came out and it was very busy, there were people everywhere. The main square was dominated by huge tour groups either inside or just hovering outside. Stumped that the whole area was fenced off we had to walk around a little to find the entrance.

Security was high- stern poker face guards marched around in warm looking green uniforms and when we found an entrance there was even a thorough pat down and bag check. It looked like Chinese citizens even had an ID check!

Fighting for liberation

The square itself wasn't much, surrounded by a line of leafless trees, it was exciting to still see frozen snow but otherwise the sun bounced off the marble and everything was way too big and way too bright. The square, one of the largest in the world is 109 acres in size and is called Tiananmen because of the Tiananmen gate (the gate of heavenly peace) located at its North, separating it from the Forbidden city. For Chinese people, coming to Tiananmen is an extremely important pastime and it's the history that makes the square one of the most visited attractions not only in Beijing but China. Tiananmen is and has always been considered a gathering place and over the last century has been the location of numerous famous political events and student protests. To many the square is representation of freedom and liberation.

Infamous TV screen broadcasting the rising sun

Perhaps the most famous of all was the protest of 1989, known as the 4th of June movement or pro-democracy movement. A student led protest begun after the death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang who was an advocate of change, particularly in reducing inflation, career prospects and corruption. During the seven week stand in, protester numbers exceeded one million and hunger strikes instigated further protests across 400 cities in the country. The protests called for government accountability, freedom of speech and freedom of press. 

Ultimately the communist government cracked down using brute force and arrests, massacring hundreds if not thousands of civilians. At the time foreign journalists were expelled and national papers are still condemned to discuss or reflect on the event; there still remains large knowledge gaps of information and facts.

Dragon carving on stone

Today, as we stood by the large monument dedicated to the People's Heroes, children raced around and professional photographers were calling out for business. We saw several old men softly wiping tears and older bereaved couples holding hands just standing around. Maybe they were remembering the protests of 1989, or maybe the Tiananmen Square protests of 1976, the People's Republic of China protests of 1949 or the May 4th movement of 1919. All which played pivotal roles in China's history.

Wooden statues in the Africa exhibit

Across the square, the Chinese National Museum, dedicated to Chinese history pre-dating 1919 is separated from Tiananmen by Chang'an Ave and opposite the Great Hall of the People. 

Finished at the same time, both were among the ten great constructions celebrating the tenth birthday of the People's republic of China.

Advertised as the largest museum in the world and offering free entry for tourists we planned to spend the rest of the morning inside! There was certainly a lot to see! We walked through several rooms dedicated to art and then pottery, Egyptian artefacts and African sculptures. 

There were rooms dedicated to state gifts, collections of ancient Chinese money and even a room for the architectural design of the museum. There was too much to see all in one day! 

Emperor from the Song Dynasty

Terracotta warriors from Xian

Ancient dragon carving

Unearthed stone carving

What we really wanted to check out was the Ancient China section, located on the bottom floor- the ten galleries walk you through China's long history. Starting from prehistoric times and the Yaunmou man from about 1,700,000 million years ago to the late Qing dynasty and its abdication in 1912. The galleries hold a collection of thousands of ancient unearthed relics. When we had made our way through the maze of rooms and had located the bottom floor we started off on our Ancient China adventure!

Rooms of Chinese Art

Starting with homo erectus, the earliest species found in China we admired the elaborate cave man like displays and the creative way they explained history through using ancient fossils. Later on came Lantian man, Peking man, Yanxian man, Hexian man and the Tangshan man who all begun to spread out across China and become more efficient in hunting, gathering and managing fire. 

The start of what is the the Spring and Autumn and warring states period (770BC-221BC) was an era of active thought and ethnic mixing. Small groups fought each other, expanding their territories. Jumping forward, next came the first dynasties and their wars. During the Xia, Shang and western Zhou periods (around 771BC-21st century) China was still just forming and monarchs constantly fought.

Stunning golden Rhino

After centuries, China unified under one empire and the Han and Qin dynasties begun. They ruled from a central location introducing political reforms. In 220 the Han dynasty fell and three Kingdoms rose dominating China; Wei, Shi, and Wu. After 300 years of division they were carefully brought back together under the Sui and Tung dynasties. From the tenth century the Han people established the Song Dynasty.

After all of this mind boggling history, we were famished! Perhaps we will come back and finish the museum on another day!

Tot siens,

John and Kara

Beijing Life Part 1

Celebrating and watching New Year Festivals

The Chinese New Year has only just ended. After two solid weeks of festivities we can relax and finally sleep. As exciting as the New Year is, and boy do the Chinese know how to celebrate, it can be quite overwhelming niegh frustrating for the foreigner who enjoys their precious hours of sleep.  For two weeks any thought of a full night sleep is mercilessly destroyed by the constant thundering booms and bangs of some of the most jaw dropping fireworks. But after two weeks, hay, we couldn't fight it, so like zombies we clambered outside and played!

This just alludes 'Love'

The New Year festival ends with the Lantern festival which also coincides with Valentines day. Although traditionally the Lantern festival was quite a big deal, with the commercialisation of Valentines the New Year festival now ends with red roses and Chinese tongyuan or yuan xiao. The tongyuan and yuan xiao (very similar but called a different name depending on where you live) is a small white rice flour ball filled with a delicious sugary inside often made from sesame seeds. It can be eaten fried, steamed or in a sweet sugar soup. We joined the masses and bought a range of flavours at the supermarket and boiled them... some were delicious! 

Cooking our own Yuan Xiao dumplings! 

Yuan Xiao at the market 

Kara fortunately had the opportunity to recently go snowboarding on a work trip. Little did she know that not long after would it snow everywhere! (At the Beijing ski fields a large majority of snow is made artificially)! So last week it snowed! And it snowed hard!! It snowed for hours and hours and kept snowing some more.

Although in total it only snowed for a day the snow was amazing and our first 'snowing' experience. Yes we made snow angels! Yes we threw snow balls! Yes we put some in the freezer for later! Yes we jumped in the deep stuf!

Drinking hot tea in the snow!

Strangely however, the snow still hasn't melted, we imagined that it would be gone the next morning but with the well below freezing temperatures we have had lately it creates these rather dangerous ice puddles. A lot of the main roads were quickly salted to reduce accidents and the street cleaners made lots of excellent jumping into piles!

YAY!! SNOWING!!

During the last week, we also visited the Tiananmen  Square. Tiananmen Square is China's largest square and symbols the centre of Beijing. The square is a very important part of Chinese history and many significant and historic events that have shaped Chinese history have occurred there. On our day of visit, hundreds of other Chinese and foreign tourists were wandering about, it was a bit cold for us (you can see below there is still snow on the ground!) so we popped into China's National Museum.

The museum is an amazing building and it was quite educational experience. Probably a little overwhelming as the Chinese ha a very long, long history, but we can say with almost 100% confidence that we absorbed a good 0.8% of the Chinese history! Oh dear!


For now we are off to enjoy some noodles and beef at our local....

Tot siens,
John and Kara

Snowing in Beijing, China

At 9am this morning Kara ran down the stairs from our bedroom loft screeching an almost indecipherable 'what's that?' sound followed by a repeating syllable which sounded something like "ohmygod-snow-ohmygod-snow". Beijing's dry spell had finally ended, after 107 days and one of Beijing's longest winter droughts, we finally had the promised snow! 

John look at this! 

So much snow! 

Our balcony wasn't just covered in white powder but the snow had heaped inches high. From the stairs and warm inner haven of our little attic apartment, Kara still in her pink stripy thermal pyjamas threw on her earmuffs and boots, opened the window and jumped outside. John meanwhile grabbed the camera and captured Kara prancing around in her own snowy white world.

View of the neighbouring carpark

Let it snow~

John playing around on the deck

It didn't matter that it was a mere -2degrees celsius, because this was a special occasion and who knew when it would end. We were in a white winter wonderland!

We grabbed the snow, scraping it together and throwing it around on our small deck. We moulded it into piles with our bare hands until they got too cold to bend. Donning our jackets, hats, scarfs and gloves without a second thought towards breakfast we took the rickety smokey elevator downstairs and out of the building to explore our new world. 

On the street, the clean white snow came down heavily making white lines that zig-zagged across the sky. The street was relatively quiet for the time of the day and gave us plenty of room to giddily glide around, our feet slipping on the slick bricks underfoot. 

We crossed East Xinglong Road to the small park opposite our building. The park was covered in beautiful white snow, the shrubs poking out from under a soft white blanket. 

John at the park!

A lone man using a wide barrel shovel uncovered the small stone walking path that traverses the park. It looked like his efforts were fruitless as the snow continued to fall. Standing where the dry muddy ground was yesterday with the snow heavily raining down on us we frolicked through the barren trees, flicking the branches and releasing the accumulating snow. Kara lay on the ground and made a frosty snow angel, spreading the white ice everywhere. Everything was covered, rubbish bins, the small iron fences, cars, bicycles and it looked so beautiful.

East Xinglong Road at 9.30am 

Starting the snow angel

Walking across the park

John's boots falling into the snow

Inside our apartment complex courtyard

Bikes covered in snow

In China there is an old saying, "Good snowfall heralds a prosperous year ahead" and today, the 7th February wasn't any old day but the first day Chinese return to work after the week long Chinese lunar and Spring festival. It was the beginning of the Year of the Horse and quite an auspicious occasion as the 'latest first winter snow' in over sixty years fell down over the city! Surely this meant a wonderful year ahead.

Qinian Ave

Chinese lanterns

Oh the snow! 

From the park, we happily walked around our neighbourhood, Chongwenmen. The red lanterns that had been hung for Spring festival were draped with snow. It was utterly delightful to see everything covered in layers of snow, and we played around like children in a candy shop laughing and touching everything with our wet frozen fingers.

Kara slipping and sliding

Walking 'down stairs'

As the snow melted on our jackets we started to get cold and made a quick stop at our favourite tea shop for a hot sweet bubble tea taking it back out into the snow. 

Taking a moment to drink hot tea

Walking the long way home we watched some small children throw little snow balls at each other. The snow was getting deeper, filling the gutters and smothering the footpaths. 

We nervously wondered "what if it doesn't stop, and worse, what if the power gets cut off?" But with such naivety and excitement of experiencing our first ever real snowfall we knew that we were on board in this snow journey and would go where ever it took us!

All too soon, we too had to get ready for our first day back at work so we made our way back home for a warm shower and canned corn porridge. 

Tot siens,

John and Kara

Frolicking in the park

Walking along Beiwulao Hutong

Trying to make a snow man

and giving up... 

Oh let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! 

Shanghai, China (Spring Festival)

Happy New Year! 

Like no other week of the year, Spring Festival arrived in China with a bang. Followed by more bangs, another bang and then another bang. We couldn't sleep! Beijing, home of 23million people slowly began to shut down until the eve of the Chinese New Year when only an estimated 8million people remained in the capital. All those 8million then let off an array of fireworks, continually! 

Life size, New Year Doll

For us, New Year has been a time to sit back and watch it all happen. Truthfully, we had no real idea what was going on, but we had our dumplings and happily absorbed ourselves in munching through them. 

Strategically placed wish couplets
on our apartment door

Firework aftermath outside

Chinese culture, for thousands of years has developed hundreds of thousands of intricate rules and traditions as to how you should live. Even the more modern younger generation remain tolerant and observe these in fear of bad luck. This includes many that revolve around the New Year.  You should not cut your hair- this will bring bad luck to your uncle. You are strictly forbidden to clean or sweep- by doing this you sweep away your good luck. You should not buy shoes, use knifes, wear white or black or eat anything too spicy (all bad luck). Dumplings are the go to food and you should open your windows to let in the good luck. The more sweets you eat the sweeter your New Year will be, but if you start the year in debt, you will finish it in debt. 

Us and a thousand tourists on the bund, Shanghai

So apprehensively we joined the largest human migration on Earth and jetted down to the more temperate Shanghai for three nights and four days. Although Shanghai is only a stones throw south from Beijing, it's dramatically different and probably it's fair to say more westernised.

Shanghai with a population of 24million is the largest city in China. When we arrived it was very pleasant and a balmy 16 degrees, at nine in the evening! In fact there are trees and flowers and grass! However on our following exploration day the pollution was terrible, beyond hazardous, which is evident in our photos.

The smoggy main street (yes thats pollution!)

Eating beef and lamb hot pot at Xiabu Xiabu

We donned our face masks for the day- quickly whipping them off for a photo opportunity but we were the only people we saw wearing them. It's difficult to describe how bad the pollution was but you couldn't see the tops of buildings, you couldn't see more than 20 metres in front of you and it smells and tastes awful. Needless to say we both ended up quite sick with runny noses, sore throats and raspy voices. The warmth didn't stay either! By our second day the wind picked up and the pollution cleared but the temperature dropped and stayed at -1. FREEZING! By then we were both dead tired and fighting colds, so we had to make many a hot drink stop.

Char (Chwar) stop! Fatty smoked lamb on a stick! 

Shanghai itself, is a real mix of old and new. So what did we do there? We ate! When we stumbled upon the local delicacies, which were surprisingly hard to find, we gave everything a try. Dumplings so large you use a straw to suck out the broth before devouring their meaty goodness. We tried and fell in love with the local hotpot.

A hot pot is a pot of boiling stock which you individually cook an array of meats and vegetables. You often have up to six different stock options (spicy, non spicy etc) and a plentitude of garlicy peanuty sauces to dip your cooked things into. So yum and so entertaining!

Another contrast of old and new in Shanghai

Here is local Char, although you can also find it in Beijing it's delicious! Fatty lamb skewered and cooked over coals. You can go for spicy or not spicy and either way it's divine!


We did a lot of walking. Shanghai is very flat and ideal to walk. We explored Shanghai old city built between 960-1279AD during the Song dynasty. The restored and well maintained old city was.... well... old. A labyrinth of temples turned tourist attraction kept us very busy and very confused.  

We wandered along the city bund and waterfront admiring the multitude of large colonial European buildings and large clocktowers built in the 1930's by the British and French and explored the French colonial area (ok so technically its now a street of bars.. but we had fun!).

The contrast of old and new, Shanghai old town

Then we visited the financial city center built from 1991 after the Chinese economic reforms. This part of Shanghai is across the Huangpu river which is accessible via boat or subway. The last picture below is the financial city skyline at night.

We enjoyed our few days in Shanghai but are glad to be back in Beijing, sleeping off our adventure and building up for the lantern festival next week!

Tot siens,

John and Kara

Lunch time!

Shanghai speciality dumpling!
So big you have to use a straw!

Decorations in old town, Shanghai.

Whoa! There are seats on the subway!?

The beginning of spring, plum blossoms,
Shanghai Sculpture park.

Shanghai's Pearl tower

Fancy purchasing a fish?

The Shanghai financial center skyline

Sightseeing in the more tropical Shanghai