Beijing and my adventures with transport
Another trip on the fast expensive train on Friday night had me in Beijing on time. The train arrived at a different part of the station and I had to walk past a vast area where probably hundreds of people were bunked down for the night. An increasingly longer wait in a taxi queue, there is no public transport very late at night, and a quick taxi trip on scantly traversed streets had me at a new hostel in northern inner Beijing some time after midnight.
The hostel was new yet built in a traditional courtyard style. My room was more expensive than the previous week’s as it had an ensuite. I was upgraded and it was akin to an Australian motel.
A hostel courtyard
The entrance to the hostel
The immediate laneway looked pretty daggy but the surrounding area had been redeveloped into high rise apartments and institutional buildings. Evening footpath markets and food stalls gave the area some character. An imposing wooden gateway stood at the entrance to the street adjoining the laneway.
These ducks were drying on one of the fences in the street and were part of a food stall. In the morning I had been so intent on photographing the large containers of dumplings beside them that I hadn’t even noticed the ducks. Fortunately I saw them in the afternoon.
Looking up at the entrance way to the suburban street off which the hostels laneway runs.
I arose early on Saturday to catch a 9.30am boat via old canals to the Summer Palace. An unfortunate problem with direction finding had me wasting 15 minutes walking down the right street in the wrong direction. After being rejected by a taxi driver for the quick fix trip I continued on in the hope that there would be another departure which wasn’t listed in my information.
After traversing 2 different subway lines, another bout of directional challenge outside the Beijing Zoo subway, passing the zoo and the Exhibition Building and a long walk down a street I found myself at the wharf in the company of many people. Fortunately my timing was impeccable for ticketing, some photography and getting a spot in the queue guaranteeing me a seat on the boat. Quite a few people had to wait for the next boat.
Entrance to Beijing Zoo. The ticket counters to the right were thronged. Never been there.
Beijing Exhibition Centre. Some sort of home show was occurring.
The wharf and canal boat.
The boat sailed along canals which in times gone by had been important transport links within Beijing and as far south as past Shanghai. They become disused but in recent years were resurrected for tourist traffic. The canal was low so it was hard to see too much from the boat. It reached a park where we transshipped to another boat which travelled through much a wider canal until we reached the Summer Palace in northern Beijing. The entire trip took a bit less than an hour.
The area where we found a replacement boat.
One of the canal boats
The destination, Kunming Lake within the grounds of the Summer Palace.
The return trip was a little more adventurous. We had to wait at the transshipment point for about 20 minutes before the boat appeared. The back of it then banged into the bank quite hard and at an angle. The end of the muffler was quite bent. It was impossible to know if it happened then or was an old issue. After we set off it was obvious that the trip was not to be usual. Eventually the driver got out his gloves and screwdriver and worked on the engine while 2 staff pulled the boat along the canal with ropes. The tinkering wasn’t producing effects. One Chinese couple was rather perturbed and after consultation with staff disappeared. This led to a large scale exodus and a young foreign couple and I followed the others in search of a subway. We were lucky and had disembarked practically on the doorstep of the subway next to the one I needed to use. It was actually much easier for me as it involved much less walking so I was lucky.
An intrepid swimmer in the canal and another on the bank seen while waiting for the boat at the Summer Palace.
The narrower canal in the park where we cooled our heels.
Tinkering
The following day I headed off into the unknown in terms of not knowing exactly where to find a particular bus after leaving a subway having 4 exits. One helpful woman spontaneously asked to help before I had reached the helpless looking stage, the presence of a map in my hand was enough for her. She immediately told me that the required bus was on the opposite side of the road. A trip underground and up again, a good search of the bus listings still had me missing my required bus. At that stage I decided a taxi was the answer. One driver rejected me but the next, a woman, after initially being puzzled accepted the challenge. After stopping several times while she tried to repair her meter receipt machine we finally headed off in search of Art Space 798 and were successful.
I chose a taxi for the return trip to the subway station after my visit to 798 rather than messing around looking for the right bus. I thought an A4 colourful diagram of the subway system and pointing to and saying the name of the subway station would identify my destination. We headed off in agreement. However, after that some unclear discussion occurred which I think must have confused the driver. I saw the subway sign pass me I had to quickly discover and use the Chinese word for subway. Fortunately it did the trick and an about turn soon had me back underground again.
The subways I’ve been in have been clean and organized. It is normal procedure to have all bags scanned before entering subway and railway stations. Subway tickets can be purchased from a ticket counter or from a machine which has an English language option. That’s what I use. Getting on and off trains is not so organized, usually with those getting off mixed up with those getting on. Some stations do have a system of arrows indicating direction of movement and that works but people don’t implement it where there are no arrows. The late afternoon train was full and definitely a sardine can situation.
One of the subway stations. Train tracks to the right and left.
Part of murals at Beijing Zoo subway station.
Mural at the National Library station where I disembarked from the canal boat. It and the zoo station are part of a subway line which opened last year.
When it was time to depart for my train station I was rejected by a taxi driver again. He didn’t even stop to discover where I wanted to go, but shook his head from across the road. The fact that I was foreign with luggage was enough for him. The next one did stop and agreed to take me. He seemed a bit tired. I was rejected by several drivers the previous Sunday and I finally secured my seat by placing myself and luggage in the front seat before the next one could reject me. He seemed so tired and miserable that it was probably too much effort to get me out even if he had wanted. I discovered why Sunday’s first taxi driver was reluctant. Once we got onto the main road the traffic was extremely slow and I was beginning to wonder if I would arrive on time. However, once we reached a different road the traffic thinned and we then travelled well.
The station was busy as usual and I sat on my bag while I waited for boarding. The same train on the previous Sunday had had numerous empty soft seats. The hostel had been unable to get me a soft seat and my efforts to upgrade at boarding were unsuccessful. All seats in the carriage were occupied but fortunately there were no standing passengers which made travel much easier for everyone. I made friends with the passenger beside me who was trying hard to remember English from uni many years ago. She ensured I got a taxi when we arrived at our destination.