My first day in Beijing

 

Well it seems I can briefly get connected from over here, so here's a report from my first full day in Beijing. The pic at the top is me outside the enormous main station. It is sharp but pretty sunny winter weather and I'm loving my English swim-coat, which keeps the cold out well and fits in ok with the padded winter coats that a lot of people wear here.

Whenever I fly far enough to have jetlag, I always try to get outside, and I walked miles and miles through the old 'hutongs' yesterday. These are the traditional old single storey courtyard houses, usually in narrow, winding streets, that used to dominate the heart if the city. Like us, China demolished huge swathes of its old centre before the process was sensibly and happily halted in about, I think, the 1990s. Which means that there are now many tens of thousands of the old houses left, right in the heart of the city, and in most cases they have not been handed over to new prosperous incomers, as we in the UK have sometimes allowed, so ordinary people live in the very heart. And additionally, within the circuit of where the old city walls were, nothing can be built higher than the old palace of the 'Forbidden City'. So much has been preserved, despite the phenomenal pace of change in the city and the country.

Here are a few pictures to give the flavour of the hutongs:

Homing pigeons have always been a hobby for the ordinary people of Beijing, and you'll see a posse of them wheeling overhead on their daily exercises.

Electric bikes dominate the streets, but in winter most of them have an elaborate duvet-like cover in front. It can get down to minus 20 in a very cold snap. 

A number of cars are all swaddled up against the cold and I'm not sure if they go into undriven hibernation till the Spring.

The food is plentiful, tasty, and ubiquitous. The last pic is my breakfast of a giant bowl of beef noodles.