With the help of the Beijing Bus website I have listed the following bus routes on my iPhone so the next time I’m stood on the street at Tuanjiehu and can’t find a taxi, I can hop on a bus.

Or the times when I’ve been playing football, it pours down with rain and suddenly every taxi driver in Beijing either hides indoors, is scared to drive in the rain, or doesn’t want to pick up a dripping wet foreigner, then I can take the bus instead.

Bus #682 travels from Chaoyang Park West gate (just outside Jenny Lou’s) north to Nuren Jie, then along Xiaoyun Lu, stopping at Xiaoyun Qiao, then stops just past Side Gongyuan, before continuing on it’s journey to Wangjing or wherever.

Bus #416 travels in a small circle around Sanlitun, stopping at Xing Fu San Cun (opposite the German Embassy on Dongzhimenwai Dajie), on to the 3rd ring road and then along Xiaoyun Lu across Xiaoyun Qiao and onwards. On the way back, it stays on the same route to the 3rd ring road, but then travels down to Changhong Qiao, along Gongti, past Sanlitun Village, onto the 2nd ring road at Dongsishitiao and back onto Dongzhimenwai.

There are a number of buses I can take from Tuanjiehu to Pingfang on Yaojiayuan to get me to the Chaoyang Sports Stadium: #686 (5 stops)/ #214 (7)/ #758 (7)/ #350 (9)/ #406 (8)/ #672 (7)/ #673 (8)/ #750 (8).

Bus #302 from somewhere behind Goose and Duck and the east gate of Chaoyang Park, across the 4th ring road to Tuanjiehu then north on the 3rd ring road to Zhongguancun, then up to the 4th ring road through Haidian ending up at Bagou Cun.

Bus #31 from Tian Shui Yuan Bei Kou (which is just by the south gate of Chaoyang Park), the bus turns right, past the big Jingkelong, travels south to Dawang Lu and to Baiziwan Qiao Dong (Tesco) and next stop is Baiziwan, ideal for the Ole Football and Climbing Gym.

Bus #31 comes back from Baiziwan to Dawang Lu, Yaojiayuan Lu and to Tuanjiehu Lu Bei Kou.

Bus #43 starts at Tuanjiehu, passes Landao and then down Dongdaqiao to the Friendship Store on Jiangoumen, along to Chongwen Men, then down to Fa Hua Si (Tiantan East Gate) and finishes up at Wu Jian Lou (end of line 5 area).

Bus #43 comes back almost along the same route, but needs to do a big u-turn on Jiangoumen and on the 3rd Ring Road. A bus route definitely to avoid during rush-hour.

Bus #115 is my regular bus for the 5 minutes trip to work. From Kangjiakou it travels along Chaoyang Lu, through Tuanjiehu and along Tuanjiehu Lu and across Changhong Qiao to Sanlitun. It continues over Dongsishitiao and turns round just past the south end of Jiaodaokou Nan Lu and heads back same way.

Bus #675 passes Tuanjiehu and heads along the 3rd ring road as far as Yansha Qiao before going past Xinyuan Li and to Xinding Lu (just by SOS clinic and Tori Tei) and stopping at Zuojiazhuang by the airport expressway. It comes back the same way.

Bus #635 travels from Kangjiakou (somewhere past the east 5th ring road) to Tuanjiehu, along Dongzhimen Wai as far as Gulou, then up along Deshengmen, over the 2nd ring road, over the 3rd ring road and all the way north to Erlizhuang which is close to the north 4th ring road. So useful for Guijie or for Dongzhimenwai Daijie.

Bus #673 travels past Ping Fang (Chaoyang Sports Stadium) to Tuanjiehu and through the south of the City on congested roads to Beijing Xi Zhan (Beijing West Station). It comes back mostly the same way spends some time on the East 3rd ring road before turning at Changhong Qiao back east.

Bus #758 from GuanZhuangHuiHeJianCaiShiChang (east 5th ring road) to Ping Fang, past Tuanjiehu to Dongsishitiao towards the centre of the city then heads North past Jiaodaokou, straight over Andingmen at the 2nd ring road and up to the Olympic Park and beyond the 5th ring road to TianTongBeiYuan. Back the same way.

Bus #731 from south east between the 5th/6th ring roads and close to Jingshen Gousu over to Tuanjiehu and then heads north around the 3rd ring road to Haidian and Xiang Bai Qi Qiao (which is at the north east corner of Yuan Ming Yuan and the Old Summer Palace. It comes back same way.

Bus #984 is a long distance bus that starts off around the north 6th ring road, just south of Huairou. It heads South on a minor and busy road to 3rd ring road, the cuts across Tuanjiehu down to Dawang Lu and at Sihui Qiao on the 4th ring road it passes Baiziwan Qiao (Tesco’s) it continues South and ends up south-east of 4th ring road at Xiao Hong Men Pai Fang Cun. It comes back the same way.

So, there’s my crib sheet, I wonder if I’ll ever use any of them apart from maybe #115 (to Sanlitun), #635 (to Dongzhimen) and possibly #682 (to Xiaoyun Qiao).

And they are just the buses that pass my house at Tuanjiehu, there must be 100′s of others criss-crossing the city and going to crazy old places here and there .. maybe I should do some random bus hopping and see where I end up in this beautiful city – if it wasn’t for the traffic congestion. hmm.

We managed a short visit before closing and managed to see most of the main temples and courtyards, bustling among the tour groups, few devotees and monks going about their daily chores. It was certainly much busier than the solitude at Mutianyu!

Here is a small gallery showing the photos I took with my Minolta camera. There are three galleries, all with the same photos as I am testing the various photo display galleries and slideshows available on WordPress linked to Flickr.

The first is called SimpleFlickr and uses SimpleViewer adjusted for WordPress by Josh Gerdes. It shows up fine in Mozilla and although this has worked in IE’s browser previously, it needs some adjusting to the code which I can’t find anymore and there is no longer any support.

The second slideshow is called flickrSLIDR and is easy to set up, but has very few extra options, hence the photo missing a border at the top and the black background. It is a solid product though.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Lastly, there is the Pictobrowser Photo Gallery, another Flash gallery but working better than SimpleFlickr. It also needs no plugin to work with WordPress. Quite nice looking and customisable. Those two points are pros and cons. If you have the settings in WordPress, you only need to set them once to propagate across your whole site, however you can’t change individual settings for one gallery. However, using this version, you have to change the settings for each Gallery (or paste and copy from code and change the set), so you may end up with a less fluid website, but can change the settings depending on the photo size and particular use each time..

So, which do you prefer? And I mean the various galleries, not the photos. Well them too!
Lot’s more photos to come on the next posts, or you can always look at my Flickr account – where you can leave individual comments too.

Mùtiányù (???) is around 70kms outside Beijing and as such is one of the closer parts of the Great Wall to the Northern Capital. It is for that reason that I wouldn’t normally advise travelling there, as, like my Aunt and Uncle, everyone else seems to be on a tight schedule and wants to fit in as much as possible. If you make the effort to travel just that little bit further away, you can be rewarded with fewer crowds and parts of the Wall which are in better (read worse) shape, relatively untouched and certainly with less hawkers, postcard vendors, cable cars, adverts for ‘One World, One Dream’, and the rest of the paraphernalia which goes with Chinese tour groups.

Having said that, I was hoping a wintry day in February wouldn’t attract quite so many people on a sightseeing mission to the Great Wall and I was right. It took around one hour to drive from their downtown hotel (Lusongyuan Hotel in Jiadaokou) to Mutianyu. We stopped in the souvenir stalls, were welcomed by the staff who were still waking up, drank some Chinese tea with them and then took the cable car up to the top. It was a bright, sunshiny day, but it was cooold and I was immediately glad I had bought my sheepskin coat, woollen gloves and hat. A lovely view. Although most of the surrounding hills were brown and dry, the wall and it’s shadow still had layers of snow brushed up against it’s side and along it’s turrets, while the bright sun reflected off the well worn steps.

We had the Wall practically to ourselves, save for a few brave and determined souvenir sellers and we wandered along far further than we may have done had we been following other tourists. We came back to the toboggan and ummed and arred, my Aunt trying to persuade us both to slide down – I think we all would have done it with a little more persuading. However, it was another, older cable car ride back down to the carpark.

Here is a Photo Gallery of the photos I took with my Minolta SLR.

-- SimpleFlickr Content --
(Please visit the original post page to view the details.)

(I have been a bit slack on the writing up and so may have forgotten some of the nuances I would have liked to report.)

Took forever to change my ticket from Shenyang to Xi’an (after the Danish guy confirmed it was the wrong one – my understanding of Chinese script wasn’t so bad after all.) How could they misunderstand my pronunciation anyway!? But I even had the place written down. Eventually got it sorted and took my bag to lockers at the West Station and paid 20Y for the deposit – the commission the porter charged for wheeling my bag 100 yards was massive and I only wanted him to point me in the right direction! I hadn’t eaten yet and so before going into the Lama Temple I stopped at the first restaurant around the corner which was a bit of a hole in the wall. I saw and ordered what the rest of the place was eating – unsure what it was exactly but found it to be VERY hot noodles. I was brave and hungry so ate them all amid constant onlookers without daring to ask for water! Thai Noodles and 16 hours on the train aren’t going to mix I feel! The Yonghegong Lama Temple has nice Buddha’s but the buildings are not so different from other Chinese Styles. It used not to be a Temple anyway, but an Emperors Home. The Lama Temple looked more authentic because it was a working Temple – they input door receipts back into renovation and there were monks reciting in each room, or are they there just to regulate the no photo rule?! The Summer Palace was impressive though, very Grandiose and had a Tibetan Priest wandering around the grounds. The lake was very photogenic but unfortunately the sky was a bit dull as usual and very smoggy. I found out this was the norm and I was just very lucky when I went out to the Great Wall because the Government has shut down all the factories around and about for the 1st October celebrations.

I guess the trip to the Great Wall, or at least the early start yesterday was why I woke up quite late today. The Danish guy who is apparently sick left without saying much. Cindy and Lars were also leaving today. I went to the Forbidden City and walked around the huge complex along with loads of other Chinese and Foreign Tourists. Some of the buildings, architecture and stone carvings are amazing but it soon becomes a bit ‘samey’. I found a garden inside which is totally different from all around it and has a more natural look with natural rocks and trees. Chilled out here away from the crowds for an hour or so in the sun and tried to decide where my next destination should be. Not really any further forward than before. Then finished off the tour of the Forbidden City and went to the two parks behind it. Jingshan Park which is on top of a small manmade hill and has nice views over the vast Palace as well as Chinese singers practicing their chords. Beihei Park is basically a huge manmade lake with an interesting temple on an island. I imagine it is quite nice in the winter when the lake is frozen and has locals ice skating around it. Continued North along Beihei to the other lakes and the Drum Tower, but somehow got massively lost and never found the Drum or Bell Tower. I walked miles in one direction (not really sure which one!) before I found a subway. I went in completely the wrong direction and nowhere near where I thought I was going. Beijing is so big you can’t walk it easily – not that I was trying to, but the map and straight roads make it confusing and misleadingly small. Once on the subway it was easy and I went to the main train station and eventually, after many attempts at various windows and counters bought a ticket for tomorrow night. Then realised it was for the wrong place .. not Xi’an but Cheang (Shenyang?) and not Xi’an pronounced see-anne? I will hopefully be able to exchange it as I have no wish to travel further North to Shenyang. By this time it was 9pm and hard to find somewhere to eat so ended up having a KFC at Qianmen. There was an elderly woman in there struggling to eat with two spoons as chopsticks. I gave her some hashi and she was quite grateful. Shows how China is changing slowly, but is becoming separated at the same time as if they can not keep up with the speed of change. They have the Western KFC but still will not eat food with their hands. Would have made a good photo but too embarrassed to embarrass her.

Cindy offered me to go to the Great Wall with them (must be thinking in the Dutch Style!) We left at 7am by bus to get to Huanghuakou. The wall was very impressive with beautiful autumnal colours and immense brickwork so high up a mountain. There was also some quite interesting hiking to do at some points. The views were amazing, but unfortunately the trip was a little spoiled by the crafty Chinese extortionists hanging around at some towers and gates charging to walk past their tower, and for damaging and eroding the soil around the wall on the trek back to the main road. Admittedly, there was evidence of soil erosion but they took the wrong attitude trying to be forceful to get a RMB5 toll. The woman then ripped up the money after the Dutch finally gave in as if to show the money was of no consequence but the principle of the erosion damage was of importance. It is true how environmentally damaging individual tourism can be. The walk back through the apple orchards was also nice. Ate in a Jiouzo restaurant in the main town and then bussed it back. I bought a reversible Nike/Reebok jacket in Dazhalanxi market then ate near the hotel with Cindy and Lars. When we returned to the hotel there was a Danish guy, also called Lars, in the dorm who was quiet and found it difficult or just uninterested to join into our conversation with a group who already ‘bonded’. Looking back, it was probably because he was a Chinese Language student (taking Danish tour groups around Beijing on his holiday) and thought he was above the likes of us backpackers, although at the time we were completely unbiased towards his attitude.

The train pulled into the station at 9am, but which station? Beijing has so many it seems. Eventually worked out it must be the main station. Sorted myself out and after a number of bus journeys arrived at the Lihua Fandian in south of the City at 11am. Shocked at the City prices – only RMB30 a night. I was in a dorm with a Dutch couple – Cindy and Lars who are very nice. Looked at me strangely as I stared at them as if they were the first Western people I had met for days – but infact I was just absorbed by their conversation, or at least the sound of it. They were surprised that I liked their growling guttural language, and we brook the ice. I went back into town by bus 66 to Qianmen. Walked around the shopping areas, found an ATM and then dropped by little Russia (Yabalou), quite by accident, which is the Chinese equivalent of Novgorod according to the Ludlum Spy book I have just finished reading. It is in the East side of town [Ritan] near the International Post office. Still looking for a camera, a pair of trousers and a warm top. The days are sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny in the afternoon but can get quite chilly in the evening. Walked too far, as is the tendency in unfamiliar Capitals, which was a little frustrating but also wandered around some interesting little local streets. [I’m sure the streets are no longer there these days!] Eventually bought a pair of Jeans that fit well back in Qianmen for RMB40 and a Samsung camera for RMB825. Phil had told me to buy a local Seagull brand which use the same lenses and design as Motorola, but I went for the simple option in the end after getting confused by the choice of decent ones. Immediately wished I had paid an extra RMB100 for the next model with English instructions and more zoom, shift focus and red-eye. Oh well, that’s what happens when there is so much choice and you get frustrated. Cindy and Lars had suggested eating together but by the time I returned to the hotel at around 8:45 (admittedly quite late), they had given up on me and already eaten. So I basically starved myself today.