The City

As we've written earlier, Jinshan park and the temple on the hill, is a much for anyone visiting Beijing. From there you can really see Beijing in all it's diversity, and in all directions.
Closest lay the old Hutong areas(The Hutong area we live in at the moment is 600 years old) and the Forbidden City in all it's impressive mightiness. There are green patches (parks, trees along the roads etc) here and there.
Then, the further away you look, the taller the buildings become, until they become huge modern skyscrapers in various forms.
And finally, (you probably only see this on a clear day, we were lucky) blue mountains surrounding Beijing on all sides.

After seeing Moscow in all it's asphalt mightiness. (Even Gorky PARK was mostly just an open asphalt field), Beijing feels small scaled, green and rather cozy.

In Moscow we didn't have any problems finding places, since we can read the Russian alphabet (to most parts) but we figured all of this would change when arriving in Beijing. On the contrary, it got even easier!*
All the big roads here run in north south direction (Bei to Nan, the name of the road often changes halfway) while small alleys and Hutongs run in east west direction, connecting the bigger streets. Finally there are a couple of ring roads around Beijing, which help mark the "center of Beijing".
And of course, the one fact that helps us from not living up to the name of this blog - all the bigger road signs are in English as well. THANK YOU BEIJING.


*Why we still didn't find our Hostel yesterday, if it is so damn easy?
Well, Hutong streets aren't marked on maps. Any maps. Not even taxis find anything in these mazes. But if you want to walk straight through, like we've done in the dark earlier, it's easy.