Beijing - day 2

After getting caught up with my blog on Wednesday (13 September) morning, I wandered up the long, narrow side street that my hostel is on instead of taking the main road. This narrow alley way was really my first experience with true China. It was packed with strange and exotic shops, restaurants, and people. Once back on main roads, I continued by foot to the main pedestrain shopping street called Wangfujing Dajie. Its completely the opposite of the street that my hostel is on. This street was packed with fancy hotels, restaurants, and department stores. But I needed to find an english language bookstore so that I could by a guidebook for China and this place was my best bet. Unfortunately neither of the bookstores I found carried the guidebook and I was begining to get a bit annoyed about not having a guidbook as I needed to plan the next part of my trip.

Beijing is a huge city so walking takes up a lot of time. It was later in the afternoon and I was a bit tired, so I decided to start heading back to the hostel. But this took longer than expected as I decided to walk though some small back alley neighborhoods, called 'hutongs', near my hostel. What a trip! I can't believe nearly one quarter of Beijingers live in these neighborhoods. When I arrived at the hostel my luck had changed for the better as someone had responded to the flyer I posted about needing a guidebook and I promptly found them and got a guidebook! That was a big relief. Later that evening me and a few other people from the hostel went to a Chinese restaurant down the street. They had a menu in english, but the translations were so bad it may as well have been in Chinese. The Chinese have the funniest english translations on signs, menus, food labels, etc. and you just have to wonder who the translator for these things is.