GoldenWeek

Finally I have arrived in China! The first few days were not exciting. Being struck with a slight cold and with a lot of rain outside, I only explored the area near my hostel, staying in bed the rest of the time for a faster recovery.

But, as expected, the sky turned perfectly blue right on the 1st of October for the National Day. Of course this has almost certainly been no coincidence with China leading in the field of weather manipulation. Not only were no clouds anywhere, but also the rest of the air pollution – factories around Běijīng had been stopped for some days already – had been washed away by the rain. Even the nearby mountains could be seen, a view which is very uncommon here.

The National Day is one of the two big celebrations in China (the other one is the Chinese New Year) and everyone gets a week of vacation by having some additional free days to connect the National Day with the surrounding weekends. This so called „Golden Week“ has been introduced some time ago to boost the domestic tourism.

One can hardly claim that this measurement has not been successful. In fact, it has been a bit to successful, leading to people with enough money often fleeing to other countries during that time, avoiding the crowds pouring over nearly every site with some touristic value for Chinese tourists. Traffic jams become more common, the public transport system is regularly strechted to its limits and – of course – the prices for hostels and hotels are at their maximum.

So why should one even consider to go to Běijīng at that time – except for just not knowing anything about the Golden Week? Well, Běijīng is big enough so that a million people or less do not make a too big difference anymore, while smaller cities – like Píngyáo – collapse under the arriving masses. And while you should probably avoid going to certain places – Tiān‘ānmén Square, the Summer Palace, … – the city has still a bit to offer. Loosing yourself in the maze of the narrow streets of the Hutongs, hiking the more distant sections of the great wall and just watching the general chaos.

I started the National Day itself together with my room mate Andy – also a German software developer and an artist (check out his great sketchbook - he draws sketches of famous places while travelling to many interesting places all over the world) – somewhat unplanned. We knew we had to avoid the places mentioned above and decided to try the Lama Temple. While the temple is well known to western tourists, no big browds blocked our way and many Chinese visitors were actually praying here instead of just taking photos.

After having some fantastic lunch in a nearby restaurant in the Hutongs, we went to the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, but I decided that viewing them from the outside must suffice – the crowds pushing you around would not have allowed to enjoy the view from the top, anyway. Not wanting to try out other touristic spots anymore, we turned to a more unique way of enjoying Běijīng on such a crowded day: Equipped with our cameras we tried ourselves at some street photography, capturing the crowds in general and specific situations. Take a look on Andy’s Photos as well!