Beijing Tour, two

 

Vocabulary

snack	major (2)	attraction
exhibit	landmark	square (2)
invade	court (2)	forbidden
temple	heaven	chairman (2)
lovely	culinary	attraction
exotic	highlight	observatory
tour	subway	destination
option	conclude	square meters
flag	ceremony	take in (2)
pole	portrait	ceremony
palace	imperial	complex (2)
allow	cool (2)	permission
nest	significant	check it out
dip	scorpion	better part of the day
carve	amazing	bird’s eye view
stroll	location	mahjong
storey	allocate	extensive
cart	cover (2)	challenging
crowd	course (2)	predominant
tasty	centipede	silkworm
crab	massive	destination
pan	free (3)	fry/fried/fried
soy	reward	wash it down
avoid	stick (2)	sweeping (2)
steep	cable car	panoramic
slope	staircase	all to yourself
noodle	courtyard	handrail/guardrail
skin	pretend	watchtower
shoot	dynasty	adventuresome
arrow	command	treacherous
stinky	particular

 
 
 

Video

 
 
 
 

Transcript

This video highlights the major tourist attractions of Beijing. In ten minutes we’re going to cover the following sights: we’ll start by visiting Tiananmen Square, the center of the city and its most important landmark.

We’ll then visit the Forbidden City, home to the Imperial Court during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

We’ll then go to the Temple of Heaven, the symbol of Beijing surrounded by a lovely park.

At Wang Fujing, Beijing’s most famous shopping street, we’ll visit two culinary attractions.

First we’ll visit Quan Jude for Beijing’s best Peking duck. Then we’ll walk over to Dong Huamen, a night market for exotic snacks like scorpion and starfish.

And we’ll conclude with the Great Wall of China . . . which needs no introduction.

But before we begin our tour, I’ll start with a few introductory points on Beijing.

First the air quality. Yes it can be bad: on the left is a good day; and on the right is a bad day.

The best time to visit for clear air is spring and fall: April and May; August and September.

Next up, transportation.

Beijing has a very good subway system that will take you most places that you want to go as a tourist.

Taxis are an option, but the taxi drivers generally don’t speak English, so make sure you have your destination written in Chinese.

If you’re going someplace far away, a guided tour on a tour bus may be a great option.

Okay, now on to our first sight: Tiananmen Square, named after the Tiananmen Gate to the Forbidden City to the north. This is the world’s fourth largest square.

It measures 440,000 square meters, and it’s a great to come to just people watch and take in the humanity here.

The square is also home to several other important attractions, including the National Museum of China, and the daily flag raising and flag lowering ceremony at this flagpole.

If you want to see the flag raising, you’ll have to get up early because it happens before sunrise — some days as early as 4:45 in the morning.

Next up is the Forbidden City. It was home to 24 emperors, it’s the world’s largest palace complex, and has over 8,000 rooms.

The main entrance is just to the north of Tiananmen Square, underneath the portrait of Chairman Mao.

The palace got the name Forbidden City because in the past, no one was allowed to enter or leave without the emperor’s permission.

But today, you can enter for the low, low price of 60 RMB. Just make sure you get here before four o’clock to buy your ticket.

So after passing through three courtyards, standing in life for ten minutes to get my ticket, I’m finally inside the Forbidden City.

Let’s go check it out.

With 8,886 rooms to explore, a visitor can be in here for a long time.

If you are just visiting the main squares and significant buildings, you could probably walk through it in two to three hours. But if you want to visit the other museums and exhibits, then allocate the better part of a day.

Once you exit, you can head up to this observatory at Jingshan Park and get a bird’s eye view of the massiveness of the palace.

It’s really, quite amazing.

The Temple of Heaven is a popular attraction for both locals and tourists alike. It’s a park and a temple, and you have to buy a ticket to go in.

At the ticket office, there are two different tickets available, one for park entrance, and the other one, the through ticket, for 35 RMB, that’s the one you want to get that brings you to the park and the Temple of Heavenly Heavens.

The surrounding park is also a lovely place to go for a stroll, a sit or to play mahjong with some of your closest Beijing friends.

Quanjude is China’s most famous Peking duck restaurants. One of their main locations is located on Wangfujing, the main street in Beijing. It is a five-storey restaurant that seats a ton of people.

The menu is quite extensive.

But the main attraction of course, if the Beijing kaoya or the Peking duck. Like any good duck restaurant, when you order your Beijing kaoya, the chef comes out with a cart in front of your table and carves it right in front of you.

Presenter: “Peking duck is served in a few different ways. The skin here is served with sugar; you dip the skin in the sugar. The rest of the meat with the skin here is served with the pancakes. And the green onions and hoysin sauce, the first one being made for you by the waitress.

The final course is a bowl of duck soup, which tasted kind of like chicken soup, only more duck-like.

The Donghuamen Night Market is in Wangfujing, the main street. Here is a collection of over a hundred specialty snacks from all over China, though the predominant food seems to be meat on a stick.

But you can get special things like scorpion on a stick or snake on a stick.

Some of the other tasty specialties here include starfish, centipede, silkworm, stinky tofu, crabs, bird’s nest, noodles, dim sum, pot stickers, pan fried dumplings, ice-tea in soy milk to wash it all down.

And for dessert, deep-fried ice-cream.

And now our final destination, The Great Wall of China.

And the first thing you need to know about visiting The Great Wall of China is because it is several thousand kilometers long, there are multiple different locations that you can visit on the Great Wall.

In fact from Beijing, there are eight different locations. One of the most popular is Badaling.

But I think the best one to avoid the crowds is Mutianyu. The Mutainyu section of the Great Wall is located about 45 miles northeast of Beijing and is known for its sweeping and panoramic views.

So the best way to get up to the Mutianyu part of the Great Wall is take the cable car or ropeway. There’s two; this one takes you up to the highest part. Sixty-five Yuan for the round-trip.

Looks to be pretty steep. Here we go.

The rather nice thing about visiting this part of the wall is because it’s lesser visited than Badaling, it’s relatively tourist-free. So you really feel like you have the wall — almost all to yourself.

Though to walk the Great Wall, you do have to be able to take some challenging sections. There’s some steep slopes and also some steep staircases.

This is one of the nicer ones. But make sure you watch out, because there are some guardrails. But if you’re not careful, you might fall off.

So this is an example of one of the staircases. As you can see, it’s pretty steep. And the handrails — pretty low. I don’t know about you. I don’t know anyone who is that short.

A pretty cool thing about this part of the Great Wall are the watchtowers. I’m inside one of them now. You can see another little one down there. You can pretend you are a person here in China, shooting an arrow at the Mongolians invading.

This particular tower, Number Fourteen, was actually used as a command center. Pretty high-tech.

Of the staircases up the watchtowers, those are the most treacherous and only for the most adventuresome. But I’m pretty adventuresome.

It’s like the top of the world.

And from the top of the watchtowers, you’ll get some of the most rewarding views. You might even catch someone getting married. On the Great Wall of China.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Questions

1. In the introduction, the host briefly described the tour. True or false?

2. When should tourists visit Beijing? What does he recommend?

3. Tiananmen Square very big. Yes or no? What can visitors see in Tiananmen Square?

4. Are Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City next to each other? Can you just walk into the Forbidden City for free?

5. Why is it called the Forbidden City? Are there museums there?

6. Is Jingshan Park flat or is there a tall hill?

7. What dishes and snacks can visitors and locals eat in Beijing?

8. Tourists can only visit the Great Wall at one place, Badaling. Is this right or wrong? Does he recommend Badaling or Mutianyu?

9. Why was the Great Wall built?

 
 

A. Are you from Beijing? Have you visited Beijing?

B. How would it take to properly visit all the museums and main buildings in the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Inner City and Outer City?

C. People can live their whole lives in Beijing and not see or visit all the attractions. Yes or no?

D. Where do the visitors come from? Do people from many nations live in Beijing?

E. Is tourism an important industry in Beijing?