Feng got sick and I got sad. At least, we’re consistent—this is pretty much how all of our trips have been ending for the past 25 years. We could spend the last four days in Beijing crying and monitoring various symptoms (“Feng, it’s psychological!”) or we could just go out and explore.
Obviously, we picked the second option.
The minute we arrived in Beijing, we picked up three blue bikes and rode from Sanlitun to Chaoyangmen because I had a bāozi emergency. Hey, it’s not my fault that bāozi stands are objectively better around Chaoyangmen (or Guomao). Then at night, Feng and I biked to Nanluo for narrow hútòng, crowded alleys and street food.
There’s a long list of things we skip now after countless stays in Beijing. Museums, for instance. Many are free, provided you manage to get a ticket before millions of Chinese visitors do and successfully convince the booking system that a foreign passport is, in fact, a valid form of ID. I don’t particularly want to go back to the Beijing Zoo either—way too crowded. And after all these years in China, I no longer feel the need to visit every temple we pass or dutifully burn incense in front of every giant Buddha.
This leaves us with… everything else.
Hundreds and hundreds of square kilometers to wander through—shiny modern malls and tiny hútòng, ridiculously wide boulevards, imperial landmarks and Communist-era leftovers, futuristic buildings, and, everywhere, the kind of street life that never stops entertaining me.
Really, just pick a subway stop, head to exit A, B, C, D or F and explore.
On Saturday, Feng and Mark went to the aquarium. I headed to Qianmen, looking for useful souvenirs and possibly a pair of shorts.
I really need new clothes. I have been dragging the same tops and shorts I bought in Brazil from one continent to another for years. I’ve been looking for shorts since Nanjing, but it’s harder than it seems—baggy jeans are the latest must-have in China, and the few suitable pairs of shorts I found turned out to be expensive because they were apparently from some sought-after brand I had never heard of.
Damn.
I didn’t find shorts in Qianmen.
I bought another 100 yuan qípáo instead—not exactly what I’d wear anywhere else in the world, but I felt like a princess trying on dresses with dozens of other girls and being zipped into silk.
I biked to Xidan along Chang’an Jie. I only got stopped by the police three times, which isn’t bad considering I was riding through one of Beijing’s most heavily policed areas.
Still no shorts in Xidan malls.
Feng called me as I was trying to find the escalator out of the damn basement. The day was making less and less sense, but nothing a milk tea couldn’t solve.
I took the subway to Gulou, not for shorts but to meet up with Feng, who wanted to check out the 2008 Olympic Stadium. We thought it’d be a deserted corner of Beijing on a Saturday night, but the subway was so packed that the doors wouldn’t close.
What the hell?
We understood when we got off. The station was plastered with posters of Wāng Sūlóng (汪苏泷, aka Silence Wang), and hundreds of fans were heading to his concert at the Bird’s Nest.
So much for our quiet corner of Beijing.
We escaped on bikes after taking the same pictures we had taken in 2008.
We ended the night in the crowded streets around Houhai. Let’s just face it, there’s nowhere quiet on Saturday night in Beijing, so we may as well embrace the craziness.
We had two goals for Sunday. First, the Panjiayuan flea market, which we had never heard of until I read about it in Lonely Planet China, and then Tiananmen Square.
The flea market was fun. Feng bought me a hammer and sickle pin, Mark found a 1983 USSR coin, but there are only so many beaded bracelets we can buy, so we left after an hour.
Next stop, Tiananmen Square.
It was perfect. The sky was blue, it wasn’t too hot, and we were properly registered for an afternoon Tiananmen Square stroll.
It’s not easy to access Tiananmen Square anymore. You used to be able to just wander around, but in 2024, we discovered that all the entrances are blocked and you have to register on Wēixìn in advance with your passport or ID, then go through a security check.
In fact, the security check starts at the subway exit, where you have to show ID regardless of whether you’re going to Qianmen—no registration required, of course—or Tiananmen Square.
“Where do we go now?” I asked in front of Qianmen.
“Holy shit, that’s the lineup…”
No fucking way.
Even properly registered, the lineup in front of the security check was huge and wasn’t moving.
“… Let’s rent a bike.”
Time for Tiananmen tour plan B. There are many ways to navigate China and even more ways around an obstacle. In Chinese, there’s a useful word for this: hòumén, literally a “back door.”
Our back door was a row of blue rental bikes. You can’t set foot in Tiananmen Square without registering and having your ID checked. But you can totally bike along Chang’an Jie, right between Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. The rules of the game are simple—pictures are okay, but no stopping… except at various police checkpoints along the way.
And off we went on our blue bikes.
I managed to get pretty decent shots considering I was holding the handlebars with one hand and the camera with the other.
And then we were blocked by the police, so we turned around and rode back, taking more pictures of Tiananmen Square.
I think the officials were getting ready for something—the Venezuelan flag was flying alongside the bright red Chinese flags, but I have yet to understand why, despite looking for news on this side of the Great Wall and on the other.
I can say goodbye to Beijing now. I had my Tiananmen experience again.
Four days in Beijing seems like an impossibly short time for such a big city we both love.
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