On Friday we took a local public bus up to the Summer Palace, where China's Emperors and their families and staff would go for a respite from the heat of the Beijing summers. We initially thought we might skip visiting the Summer Palace because it was an hour bus ride out of the city, but since I had read The Last Empress, a historical novel about China's Empress Dowager Cixi, who spent a lot of time at the Summer Palace, I was interested to see it in person. After an afternoon walking across the frozen lake and through the woodsy paths of the Summer Palace to marvel at the intricate designs of the many temples and buildings spread throughout the park, both Steven and I were glad we'd made the trip.
We took the subway back to the city center, were we then took a cab to Beijing Downtown Backpackers, where we had arranged to book a Great Wall hiking trip from Jinshanling to Simatai. After booking our trip, we walked back down the picturesque Nan Luo Gu Alley to Mirch Masala, where we had a delicious Indian dinner, rivaled only by the incredible service of the proprietors of the restaurant.
Since we had stayed out past dark, I wasn't looking forward to leaving to cozy atmosphere of the restaurant to brave another long walk in the cold, so I was pleasantly surprised when, on our way back to the subway, we stumbled upon Beijing's Houhai Lake, a picturesque (yet now frozen) lake surrounded by new, trendy bars, cafes and shops, all with some form of heating apparatus inside. Steven and I briefly considered joining the masses of ice skaters and couples 'rowing' across the frozen lake on chairs welded together with blades on their bottom rungs, before deciding that we wouldn't want to miss our Great Wall Hike the following day due to a broken ankle. We walked past one bar after another, many with live music inside, being piped out onto a screen outside the bar to lure passersby - a tactic which had the opposite effect on us, keeping us moving along at a steady pace to put distance between ourselves and the poppy Chinese music blaring from a host of speakers. Finally we decided on a little Rasta-themed bar, with pictures of Bob Marley and Jamaican flags, where we stopped in for a beer and some hot tea. We enjoyed checking out the bars patrons, mostly young, alternative looking Chinese teenagers and young adults, and discussing the globalization of culture and what traditional Chinese parents must think of their Rastafarian children.
Finally, my drooping eye-lids propelled us out of the bar and back onto the street where we made another miserable 20 minute haul in the freezing cold to the subway and finally back to our hotel.
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