The Summer Palace was a second residence for the emperor of China, it was used to escape the summer heat of the city. The location is  just fifteen kilometers from central Beijing making it  easily accessible by local bus. Unlike the barren flat grounds of the Forbidden City, this site is full of trees and [...]

It was challenging to travel around for three months in China as vegetarians. We do eat fish, but that didn’t seem to make it any easier. We’re not complaining, but just giving our experience. The last thing we want to be are travelers that whine about not being able to get the same food as [...]

Finding Food To Eat We expected there would be more international food selection in Beijing. Every second corner seemed to have a Peking Duck restaurant on it. This was not much use to us as vegetarians. We stayed for a total of 2 weeks in Beijing so we had a lot of meals to try [...]

This would be our second section of the wall that we have gone to. Simatai is located 120 km’s northeast of Beijing. We were told the visibility should be a lot better here than Badaling. This section being a lot further away from Beijing and with less transportation options is much less visited than Badaling. [...]

We decided to see a third section of the Great Wall. We did this through a place called Leo’s Hostel that offers something called the Secret Wall Tour. There are a few outfits that do the same sort of tour. They take you to an unrestored area of the wall that is not part of [...]

A Bit Of Information About The Forbidden City The Forbidden city is located at the exact center of the ancient city of Beijing. To the south of the Imperial Palace grounds is the Tienamen Square. Access to the Forbidden City is through the square via the Tienamen Gate. Today Tienamen Gate is decorated with a [...]

A Bit Of Great Wall History The Great Wall is one of the largest building projects ever completed in the history of man. It is even visible from space. It is constructed of masonry rocks and packed earth. Every possible material available at the time was used from mud and reeds to the finest mortar [...]

Landing In The Smog As we were starting our descent to land at Beijing airport I looked out the window. We were descending down through clouds, or so we thought. We waited as we kept going down and looked forward to when we would break through and get to see the first glimpse of the [...]

Temple Of Heaven The Temple of Heaven is the most holy of Beijing Imperial temples. The emperor came here in the winter to pray to heaven for a good harvest. The Chinese believed this location was the exact center of the universe. The entire area was designed to represent the relationship between heaven and earth. [...]