Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!

We have become quite blasé about living in China, to the point where we struggle to see the novelties and marvels that make up this fascinating country. We feel a lot like the slogan “been there, done that, got the T-shirt” – but what have we really done and accomplished and have to prove for the last 5 years in China? Well, I’m glad you asked:

When we say we’ve “been there” we might be exaggerating slightly because we probably haven’t been the best tourists of China these last few years. We started off very ambitious but had a few rather bad experiences early on that deterred us from internal travel within China’s borders (remember Chengde?) We have definitely capitalised on overseas travel though and have notched up some great memories in countries like Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. We haven’t been too bad about domestic travel though, work has taken Kyle to Inner Mongolia, Xian, Sha’anxi, Gebei, and together we visited Jinan with Care for Children about 2 years ago. When we had visitors we used this as an excuse to see new places – with my sister and her husband we went to Harbin (near Russia) by train (in Winter) for the ice festival. With my parents we took the overnight train to Shanghai and then to Hangzhou to see the beautiful Westlake. With our bloody fabulous friends Rhett and Caryl we saw Chongqing, Yichang and the magnificent three gorges that no longer exist thanks to the biggest hydraulics operation in the world, and of course have made several trips to Hong Kong to visit friends there or do the usual visa run.

In and around Beijing we have been great tourists. Again, this happened more often when we first arrived, but just last month Kyle visited the Temple of Heaven with our friends Anna and Donald for the first time, so we still do get out and about on special occasions (despite the now obvious drawback of having to cart a baby and all her crap along with us). We have been fortunate that we have had a car though, because that has certainly made city travel with a kid, and even getting outside of the city, much more possible (and enjoyable I might add). To prove that we’ve “been there and done that” in and around Beijing I checked out the spots that Beijing guidebooks recommend to see how well we’ve measured up and I am properly impressed with all we’ve accomplished. We can honestly tick off some of the major historical sights like The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Drum and Bell Tower, the Hutongs, the summer palace, the Bird’s nest/National Stadium (including the Tennis ‘flower’) quite a few times actually. We’ve experienced one quite appalling night feeling out Beijing’s nightlife, we have shopped in most markets (of which there are no end) and sampled tea, dodgy food, Beijing roast duck, and Chinese massages. We’ve watched early morning Thai Chi and the yelling of grannies at the traffic, the Temple of Heaven, festivals at Chinese New Year, seen acrobatics and Chinese opera, the Fragrant hills, and the Ming tombs. We’ve experienced the building of a city for the Olympics, and then experienced the Olympics with front row seats, we ran both the Beijing Marathon and the Great Wall Marathon, and have ridden every subway on the Beijing underground. I have been to a Chinese painting and calligraphy class, seen Mao’s body preserved and crammed into Tiananmen on National day to celebrate the People’s republic of China, visited numerous pagodas, temples and churches including the dodgy Lugou Bridge at moon cake festival!

The things we have not got around to seeing, for lack of interest or inspiration, are things like the flag-raising on Tiananmen Square at sunrise, the Confucius and Lama Temple (because our theory is ‘seen one temple seen them all’ and many a Buddhist temple we have seen), and most of the museums around the city because we’re not museum people much.

However, as we run out of time before our impending move from China we do have a few things left to tick off on our to do list: we’d still like to see a production of something in the National Theatre (also known as the egg), MAYBE view the Beijing Aquarium but avoid the actual zoo as we’ve heard horrendous things about the condition of the animals, and ideally like to catch a basketball game/football game at either the Worker’s stadium or Olympic Basketball courts. Oh, and have a Chinese photo shoot with a corny wardrobe and even cornier backdrops. Then I suppose you can say we’ve “been there and done it” – “it” being all the things we thought were worth the genuine effort it takes to get anywhere in this city. I have few regrets about our time in China, I think overall we gave it a good go, and of course – the proof is in the T-shirt and ours says “we climbed the Great Wall of China” so what’s really left to say?!