9/8/25
Having discovered Jonathan had left our bag of food snacks in the Borrman hotel the night before, we asked the hotel receptionist to contact them. Unbelievably they’d kept our tatty bag. So we hopped back on the metro to grab it.
WeChat was causing us no end of bother. Frankie’s account was compromised and completely irretrievable. Desperately wanting to book tickets for the Shanghai Planetarium, we went to a foreigner friendly phone shop to buy another SIM card. A lot of waiting around, in the meantime we started applying for our e-visa for Tajikistan. Immediately discovering that British citizens can’t easily get one without a tour guide. Bad relations. We’d have to pay to grease the wheels, but it could easily be done in just a few days. Just don’t be poor.
A Hutong is a type of residential accommodation. Forming a famous area of Beijing nearby the Drum and Bell towers in the north of the city. Sounding on the hour, we just heard the drums in the distance before we arrived. Simple to access without hellish WeChat it was a steep set of stairs to the replica set of 24 drums on the top floor. One principal drum, tattered cowhide included, had been preserved in a glass box. Also on display were time keeping devices: a metal ball chronometer, clepsydra and multiple incense burners.
An exhibition in the base of the drum tower wasn’t particularly enthralling. After a movie started that was solely in Chinese we left. The bell tower was opposite and required us to climb an equally steep staircase. Both were on the Beijing north-south axis, along with the forbidden palace and temple of heaven. The modern exhibition in the base of the bell tower was instead examining it from an east-west perspective. If we could decipher it, we were sure it was an interesting take.
Entering the hutongs we were struck by how unprotected their aesthetics were. Rather than pretty narrow lanes, we saw rubbish and untidy frontages. Annoying delivery scooters disrupted our walk. Later on we found some quieter streets. Not quite authentic but as close as we were going to see in this metropolis. Once we ran out of side roads we were back in a major tourist street. Thousands of typical fast food shops and samples shoved in our faces. Troops of people seemingly enjoying it far more than we were.
Eager for some shopping mall respite, and interested in the architecture, we took a ride to the Soho Galaxy shopping mall. Predictably looking like a spaceship, and spanning multiple buildings and levels, it appeared to be a failed enterprise. Empty spaces or cheap pound shops. Our contact in Tajikistan, that we’d found on Caravanistan, wanted perfect digital scans of our passports. As there was a dingy photocopy store we tried our luck. Frustratingly, the woman refused to help us unless we used damned WeChat. Not wanting to jeopardise our working account, we soon left after querying why the line of 6 computers can’t use the internet to send an email.
Amap suggested there was another copy shop in an apartment block opposite. Willing to try anything, we ascended and poked around the dark corridor. A brightly lit room containing photocopiers caught our eye. Inside a joyful man eagerly took our passports and happily copied them, asked for our email addresses, all done. The first place we’d tried was just being dizzy.
Heading back to the dream vegan buffet for one last time we were in good spirits. High hopes were dashed when we noticed curiously closed shop fronts around the metro station. Noticing green uniformed soldiers marching out of restaurants we made our way to the closed buffet and met two other, disappointed, western tourists sitting defeatedly on the stairs.
Local people directed our queries to the police. Too frightened to tell us? Approaching the first military battalion we saw, the leader directed us to the liaison office for talking-to-tourists-phone translation duties. “There’s an activity taking place”, he chirped with a sly smile. We laughed. Soldiers were marching around with ominous briefcases. Qianmen station was now shut down. Our quandary was becoming more than just food related. Escaping was top priority.
We ordered a DiDi, ‘premier’ was barely more expensive and responded first. Traffic was gridlocking. We stomped towards our ride and found our chauffeur before he’d entered the traffic. Another vegan restaurant called Duli 5km out of town was inside a small outside eating parade. Police officers were already guarding the entrance preventing further admittance. Beijing was shutting down. Our driver has told us it was for a practice run of the huge parade on the 3rd September to mark the 80th anniversary of the Japanese war. Even all the way out of the city police officers were everywhere and soliders with briefcases stood randomly around.
The only open shop happened to be a supermarket that also sold freshly made pizza. Vegetables and tomato sauce on dough would do nicely. Some packets of smoked tofu were on offer too. Keeping it simple we took another taxi to Beijing railway station. Even the main entrance there was closed down. In the waiting room of the station we managed to find some seats that weren’t reserved by bags and stayed there for the next couple of hours.
Beijing to Shanghai is an extremely busy line, and one of the fastest high speed lines in the world. 1318km is covered in less than 4.5 hours. Despite the allure of such an exciting journey we opted for the romance of a sleeper train. Grassy green carriages awaited us on the platform. First class for us once again. Another mother and child, and granny. Friendly and welcoming. Moving off at 9:19pm, we hoped for a quiet ride,
Surly They Won't Make It 