Beijing Day One- YongHe Lama Temple

If you missed our Forbidden Palace post, read here.

From The Forbidden Palace, we moved to YongHe Lama Temple by Sunway line 4. The entrance ticket is RMB 24 per entry but student can only pay RMB 12 with student ID.
I will strongly recommend this place if you don't like to waste time walking at a huge place like The Forbidden Palace because they have similar building and colors. Different part of China have different color of building. Different dynasty have affected the building structure and color. For example, all buildings at Beijing are red in color, white in Suzhou and Hangzhou, and green in Xi'an I've heard. And the building architecture are different too.
Yonghe Lama Temple is one of the major Tibetan Buddhist Temple in the world. You will notice Lama walking around the temple. You can see words written in Tibet language too.


The front view of Yonghe Lama Temple



A very unique entrance ticket.

 There's a brief introduction and map of the temple.

 Another version of the map. Don't be fooled by the map. The place is not that huge. You can finish the place in half an hour.

 After you pass the entrance, you have to walk through rows of tree before you enter the temple. Meet my travel partner, AL.

Next I will be showing pictures around the place. =)

From YongHeGong, we walk to GuoZiJian and the Confucius temple. The entrance fee is RMB 10 and you can get to visit two places at once. GuoZiJian is the place which is the highest institure of learning back then.They are 4-star tourist spot.

 There's nothing much on Confucius temple. It's like the place people pray to get good grades for exam. I will be showing pictures with captions! So, lets the pictures do the talking ya?

One of the exam hall.

 At the oldest exam hall.

I'm always fascinated by the trees at most tourist spot. I think they are few hundred years old or more than that. Who knows?

Stone tablet engraved with name list of Jin Shi from the last Ke Ju exam in China history.  

It reads 'University'.

Between Confucius Temple and GuoZiJian

 Besides that, you get to see the exhibition held inside GuoZiJian. It's more like a museum and you can get all the information inside.

Name list of 'Zhuang Yuan' from the old dynasty

 Exam is held in cubicles.. Student have to answer the questions, rest, eat, drink and sleep in this small cubicle.Each exam is held for 3 days and students are not allowed to move around and talk to each other. They have to do all their activities in the small cubicle. They actually renovated the place as before so we get to see the actual condition.

Example of student asnwering the exam paper.

Example of student sleeping in the cubicle.

Example of the exam paper. Exam is normally held in April.

Example of exam slip.





The canteen.

Wax maniquin of the olden days.

Meet Confucius !

You need to pay RMB 100 for a small red plate so that you can write your wish behind the red plate. They will give a piece of small jade so that you can keep it with you.

The end.

Next, it will be the last post of Beijing.

Stay tune with us =)

I've been to one of the 7 wonders !

We all knew that Great Wall of China is part of the 7 wonders of the world. I'm glad that I manage to visit of the 7 wonders. Climbing The Great Wall was indeed an amazing experience. Plus, it is a detoxification journey because you will sweat a lot. There's three main great wall of China- Badaling, Mutianyu and JinShanling. We chose Badaling great wall for our first experience as we were told that it suits first timer the best.

We travelled to beijing north station and bought a ticket at the counter. I would advice you to buy the ticket one or two days earlier as the train to badaling is very limited. There's two trips everyday if I'm not mistakne One in the afternoon and one in the evening. You can take a bus there too but I have no idea where to get the bus. But you can take a bus to return to Beijing. You can easily find the bus at the exit. We met a guy from Singapore and he told us that he can only buy the 'standing' ticket because he was late. Standing ticket means you have to stand all the way throughout the journey in China. Yeah..what an odd system but it works for a country with huge population.

The train travelled around 110km/h which is pretty fast. The seats are spacious and they can turn the seats around if the train moves in the opposite direction.

When you reach the station, you will see this sign or you can just follow the crowd. All of them will go to the same place for sure.

The front door of Badaling.

They do sell tickets in the train. They will tell you that the queue is very long and try to persuade you to buy the combo ticket (great wall+museum). We chose to buy the tickets at the counter instead as we don't really trust any ticket agent/tour agent in China after the trip to Lv Shun. The best thing is they offer student price too! (RM 22.50 if I'm not mistaken)There's no queue at all when we were at the counter.

Climbing The Great Wall is never an easy task. But, I'm amazed by the China citizen as old man/woman who is around the age of 60 climbed The Great Wall with us. Besides that, kids were running here and there. haha. I remember a man telling his son 'If you think climbing The Great Wall is difficult, what do you think about the people who built this? Don't you think they are more tired than you?"Very true right? It hit right at our heart. ahha.

There's a few place with stairs and some without stairs. But, the slope are steep. very very steep. It was like 60 or 75 degree. Luckily there's handle all along the way so that we can hold it to support our body so that we can go further. Do wear a pair of good shoes if you do not want to roll down the great wall.
 
If you can't finish TGW, you can look for this sign and go down by cable car. Pretty useful huh? We chose to walk instead of using the cable car though.
 

We finished the great wall in 2 hours plus. It was pretty fast actually. The reason is because our train reached there around 11am and our train back to beijing was 3pm. So, we didn't rest much because we were afraid that we will missed the train.

If you are going to visit Badaling, do walk till the end as the scenery will be different and the sense of achievement is very fullfilling. We met a few people who went there with a tour and they told us that their tour guide asked them to walk back when they reach the first hill. They do not have enough time to finish their journey. They do sell souvenirs and food at the exit.

Let me show you some picture before I end this post :)

The view from top.

 Me and my travel partners at TGW.

 Us at the exit ! There's a bear farm at the exit. Nah..not panda bears. Just the normal brown bear. You can feed the bears too.

There's buses at the exit which will send you to Beijing city. Or you can just walk for 10-20 minutes from the exit to the main entrance and then you can take the train back. The taxi driver there told us that the walk will take us about 50 minutes and he wanted to charge us RMB 100 for that. We didn't take the taxi as we were not rushing for time at all. Luckily the walk was short enough :D

I do think that your stamina must be real good to complete the whole journey. Bring more water and also some snack.It's common to see people enjoying their picnic at TGW. Btw, the toilet is very far from each other and we will need to walk very far to the toilet. I didn't went in and hence I can't tell how's the toilet. :)

If you are planning to get something memorable, you can engrave your name on the keychain. I think it cost around RMB 10 or more for those fancy ones. It's like a small certificate because they will write the date you climb TGW. Don't get them at the souvenirs shops below TGW.  They are so overated. You can get it at the start of The Great Wall. It's cheaper compared to the one at the exit. =) 

That's all from Badaling.

If you are interested in climbing The Great Wall, let me know!

We can do it together someday.

Lots of love,

Iuhnix

The place with red walls- Forbidden City

I've seen Forbidden City many times in the chinese drama but it is totally different when I get to see it myself.

How to get there?
Exit at TianAnMen East station which is located right in front of TianAnMen Square. If you don’t know where to go, just follow the crowd until you see portrait of MaoZeDong.

The front view

Entrance fee for Forbidden City was RMB 40 for student but for adult is RMB 80. By the way, student ID means for degree student only and Master student need to pay full price ticket. They have this digital tour guide thingy which cost RMB 10 for mandarin and RMB 40 for foreign language. You need to pay a deposit of RMB 100 as well.

The first place you will see on your left once you enter the Forbidden City.

I think that Forbidden City is full of tourist all year long.

In my opinion, there's nothing much to see there. All you need is just go to a few palace and you get to see the whole picture. This is because we can only see the interior through the window panel. Yeah..imagine everyone trying to squeeze themselves through it. And almost every room looks the same to us, like the picture below. 

There's a garden inside the Forbidden City and the tree were huge and special. Perhaps it is because that the tree is already few hundred years old and it is actually quite rare in the world right now.

They have a museum which is called the wedding museum inside the Forbidden City.

And they have dolls showing the whole process.

Examples of show held during the wedding.

Other sights of  the Forbidden City.

The chronological order of the Qing dynasty.

The example of clothes wear.

Tips :

1. Bring lots of water to prevent dehydration.

2. Wear comfortable shoes because you need a lot of walking.

3. Get a map before entering because you will 100% get lost in it. Some of them were selling a map at the price of RMB 5 if I'm not mistaken. I didn't get it because I was planning to get the digital tour guide as recommended by some of my friends. The digitial tour guide is very useful for those who wants to know every single detail of the Forbidden City. But, if you just want to do sight seeing, you can skip the digital tour guide thingy.

4. You must visit the few museum recommended by the digital tour guide because you can have better understanding about their lifestyle. They have a good collection of antiques too. :)

So, where to go after the Forbidden City?

Stay tune for the next update =)

Till then,

Your beloved Miqtravellers.