China - Bejing

China - 2012

It was/is summer. After spending about 10 hours in plane finally my plane landed in the Capital airport of Beijing. The first upfront impression was quite warm air, which made me to breath a little bit heavily in the beginning. The service inside airport is very friendly, especially the passport control inspectors, whom you can put a mark for the level of service after he/she checks your visa and put stamps. I put "satisfaction" :). In comparison with Russia, Germany or Czech republic I was welcomed warmly in airport.

But the real Chinese life for foreigners starts when I came out of the airport and tried to find taxi. Hah ! this was amazing feeling for me, there were lots of people, really lots of ! And almost no one could speak English. Finally I could find a couple from US who luckily were speaking English XD and seems were traveling to China frequently as they were not that much confused like I was. I asked them to show me the place for the taxis, they pointed me to some huge line, where I've stood 40 min in order to get into taxi.

Tip : 
While standing in the line for taxi, lots of people will approach offering their taxi service to you. Usually they offer double price service. So if you dont want to be cheated avoid them ! Also in taxi check that driver switches on the counter inside taxi when taxi moves, otherwise they might try to cheat also. In my case my taxi driver tried to cheat me and get 200 yuans from me to in order to take me to hotel, but the actual price was 93 yuans. So I insisted on switching on the counter and paid 100 yuans, couple of yuans should be paid for some taxes.

The next day I've started my travel in glorious Beijing !

Beijing is extremely big city and is not convenient for walking from place to place, which I've done for the first time as I thought that walking will be more interesting but as a result I got injuries on my feet when walking those long distances

Typical Hutong next to my Hotel building

Hutong is a typical Chinese set of houses where people live together sometimes several families in the same building. Those kind of places are going to be disappear overtime, so if your in China visit a Hutong and feel the atmospere of old Chinese rural areas.
Tips: Grab some map where you can find the bus and subway maps and use them for transportation.

Tiananmen square the largest square int the world

The square is full of Chinese local tourists. Who by the way are eager to be take photos with foreigners and I was really exclusive "monkey" for them. Anyway I didn't rejected anyone who wanted to take photos with me :). The size of the square is really amazing, its very large and is surrounded with government building on the west, national history museum on the east, with some Chinese style gates on the south and with the first gate (with the portrait of Mao) of the "Forbidden City" on the north.

First gate to Forbidden city

In the center of Tiananmen square is located Mao's memorial, where people can see him. It is not allowed to take cameras or bags inside the building.

Mao's Memorial

Between the memorial and the first gate of Forbidden City is the national symbol of China, the national flag, which goes down every evening about 8:45 PM if I'm not wrong and goes up every morning 5:00 AM

National Flag of China

Tip : Be careful of different chicks offering their introduction service to Beijing, they are most likely agent who do some introduction then take you to some karaoke bars or restaurants and make you to pay for ! 
Karaoke's are very popular in China ! Up to now I don't understand and like it ! Usually they are marked as KTV everywhere, in the beginning I though that it was some popular TV channel XD .