The morning had been packed with visits to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, and with lunch out of the way too we then had a couple more stops to fill out the day’s excursion in Beijing. The main part of the afternoon’s activities was a pedicab ride to a Hutong, the name given to the traditional courtyard building and alleys of the city or the neighbourhood in which those buildings can be found.
Westerners tend to be larger and heavier than the Chinese people we were encountering and cruise passengers tend to be a little heavier too so there’s plenty of praise to be levelled towards the pedicab drivers whose job it was to take couples of us from near the restaurant to our destination. Our driver was probably happy to see that we weren’t the largest in our group although we certainly weren’t the smallest either.
The video below contains much of the pedicab ride through the streets of Beijing towards the Hutongs and gives you an idea as to how much traffic there was to contend with at the start as well as some sights of the attractive lakeside area close to our destination. I’d like to be able to tell you exactly where in Beijing this was all shot and where we specifically went for this trip but I didn’t think to make a note of that information at the time and it’s not that easy to work out from looking at maps now. My best guess is that this is close to the Qianhai Lake area.
At the conclusion of our pedicab ride to the Hutongs we had some time to wait until all the passengers on this Princess Cruises-arranged excursion arrived so there was a chance for a few snaps of the area. It was very pretty, very peaceful, and probably not what you instantly conjure if imagining what China’s capital city looks like if you’ve not been before.
Once everyone had been accounted for we were then split into groups to each visit a different Hutong and learn a little about everyday life from the people in this part of Beijing. Our hostess was friendly and perfectly charming although she didn’t speak a word of English and all explanations and questions and answers came through our guide’s translations. The house was small, cramped, a little cluttered but homely because of it, and everything you’d expect from the age of the place; the courtyard for which the type of building is famous was surprisingly large and was used to house birds and grow vegetables. With the proximity to the lake and the overall size of the Hutong there was a lot of appeal to it and this visit was a lovely experience that’s to be recommended.
Our visit to the Beijing Hutongs concluded, we returned to our waiting pedicabs which would take us to the final stop for the day. A local man was holding a large grasshopper in his hand which was nice, I suppose.
The last stop on this full day excursion in Beijing was to… somewhere. I know, I know, that’s not terribly specific. In fact, it’s only the fact that I took some photos at all that I know we went somewhere because it isn’t listed on any of the documentation we’ve got for this pre-cruise visit to the city. I can tell from timestamps that it was only ten minutes away from the Hutongs by pedicab but whether this was a religious temple or an imperial palace or a public park or some combination of the three I can’t say. It’s a shame that this holiday was taken before the explosion of use of phone cameras as I would most likely have had one or two snaps at the time that would have encoded the geolocation but as it is all I’ve got are some photos of buildings, ponds, and sculptures to look at. If my guess about Qianhai Lake area for the Hutongs is correct then this might be the Haopujian gardens. Let’s just pretend it is. Wherever it is and whatever it is, it was interesting to see a Taihu stone present, reminding us of the day before’s visit to the Summer Palace.
Our trip to Beijing in 2008 took place in November so the days were short and the sun was starting to set by this time. As we made our way by pedicab for the last time to where our bus would return us to the hotel for the evening we received what I’d like to think was a salute from two workers in the doorway of a building.
The following day would be our last day in Beijing before boarding Diamond Princess in Tianjin and it would start with a fabulous trip to see the Temple of Heaven.