Beijing

For labour day we headed to Beijing for a long weekend. It was supposed to be insanely crowded there, as it was national holiday. Yes, there was a lot of people, I mean, there's simply a lot of people anywhere you go in China, but it was not as bad as I expected it. That's one characteristic I've found in quite many of my chinese acquantaincies; they love to exaggerate.

The ride is barely 5 hours with the bullet train, but considering that Beijing is about 1400 km away from Shanghai, that's actually a short ride.

We stayed in a hostel in a hutong, a traditional neighborhood from Old Beijing. We did an excursion to the Great Wall. We visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven... It is a really interesting and historical city, totally different than Shanghai, which is modern and futuristic. I could have spent much more time there, but duty called us and we had to go back to Suzhou for the last 2 weeks of our program.