Bei Hai Park is to Beijingers what Central Park is to New Yorkers – it’s a large park in the center of the city where locals go to relax and find respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. Located northwest of the Forbidden City, it’s often missed by foreigners who are rushing around the sites. While it’s not a “must see”, it’s nice to walk through as a follow up to Jingshan Park (just north of Forbidden City) on the way to Shichahai Park where there’s a bar district and the famous hutongs (narrow alleys that offer a glimpse into life in Beijing as it used to be).
The White Dagoba is the landmark at Bei Hai Park (pictured above) and it’s a short climb up to the top where you can get a nice view of the park.
The view from the top:
The Park features many ornate temples and buildings. Here’s the Five Dragons Pavilion. The locals use the pavilions as a way to showcase their dancing or singing. Fun to see people gathered around to watch spontaneous performances. More on this later.
This is the interior of a temple where I snapped a photo. They said no photography, but I wasn’t technically inside the building. 😉 Pretty impressive.
Beijingers Unplugged
Since it was still the Golden Week Holiday, there were tons of domestic tourists lurking about. But this park also had lots of locals. Below are several older folks practicing their Chinese calligraphy with sponge-tipped water brushes.
This lady brought her boombox and started playing Chinese ballroom dance music. She’s a totally stylin’ granny. Look at them shoes! SWEET! She saw I was taking photos so she got up and danced around a bit. Love it!
This guy was belting out the tunes. He wasn’t good, but he was passionate.
And finally, we found this little guy hanging out in the middle of a courtyard, gnawing away on some skinny bamboo. Gotta take pics of cute puppies no?
The Hutongs
Hutongs, are narrow alleyways lined with traditional courtyard residences called siheyuan. They represent what’s left of old Beijing, since much of the city was torn up to build new roads and modern buildings. Locals still live in these hutongs and while some of it is now commercialized, you still see restaurants appear out of nowhere as you walk along the alleys – it’s where the locals eat. Here’s a lady firing up the grill with a hair dryer in preparation for grilling chicken skewers that were being prepared out on the street as we walked by.
We peeked in to a few courtyards – these guys were playing Chinese chess.
Here’s the more commercial hutong called Yandai Xiejie. It’s packed to the gills with tourist souvenir shops and restaurants above, but has a cool vibe nonetheless. I’m not surprised that there’s a bar district near by.
A note to future travelers, we had trouble finding a good online guide for how to get around Shichahai aside from wandering (which we also did). This is the best we found: http://www.travelchinaguide.com/package/beijing/shichahai-bike-tours.htm
You can also just give in and pay 100-200RMB for one of the pedicabs to take you around. But it’s kind of expensive. Easier to just follow them on foot, but if you’re in a rush, just make sure you negotiate.
Finally, here’s the Drum Tower with accompanying Bell Tower (not pictured) built in the late 1200s. It was used up until the end of the last Chinese dynasty (the Qing Dynasty) in 1924 to keep time. We arrived just as it was closing, but it was still neat to see the ornate building rise above the hutongs and picture in our minds what life might have been like.
Here’s the full set of photos:
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We’ll be returning to the hutongs in a couple of weeks to do a cooking class (surprise!) and a “tea safari”. Look out for that post!