Day 19 Capital Museum

So today we visited the Beijing Capital Museum and managed to stay there until we were kicked out at the end of the business day. Y'see, to my aunt, museums are "serious business". :P

The shape and layout of the museum itself is kinda interesting. It seems to be still a work in progress though, since from the upper floors we could see they were still building something inside the museum that had already been completed on the first two floors or so. There was also a round exhibition hall on the other side of the building from the normal exhibition hall that we couldn't figure out how to get to until we eventually wandered into it by chance.

To start off, we spent about 1.5 hours in the largest exhibit, which was of the history of Beijing on floor 2. I kinda like the setup of the exhibit. The path proceeds from pre-historic times in chronological order all the way to the establishment of the PRC. Along one side of the path are the artifacts on display, of various stuff that have been excavated from around the Beijing area (or replicas and images thereof) of the time period in question. On the other side of the path are listed major events occurring in the rest of the world, including tibits of things related to China that were found or occurred in foreign lands. Occasionally on the artifacts side, there would be a small cranny where you would step in and see a life-size model or a brief movie of some particular time/place/event. Interspersed on the other side, were world maps denoting the major powers in the world during that century.

After that, we took a short lunch break, which just consisted of getting some drinks and cookies at a nearby cafe. We also stopped by the bookstore on the basement floor where the food was. My aunt/uncle bought a children's book version of Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the 36 Strategies for the twins. They were rather cheap, which kinda surprised me. (Of course, the museum admission, sans the special exhibits, was free - so I guess this museum is not looking to be a tourist trap but a serious learning establishment, I guess.

Then came the ceramics exhibit on the fourth floor, where we actually entered through the exit and made our way backwards through time through history. Of course, all the pretty stuff were nearer to the later time periods anyway, and I took some pics of the pretty pieces I saw.

Last on that floor (not counting the round hall we couldn't find the way into yet) was an exhibition about Buddhist statues, which we went through quickly. There were a few pieces there of two figures in...embrace/kissing positions, which made me wonder if they were about the tantric thing. >.>

Eventually, we found our way into the round exhibition hall. The first exhibit we saw there were of bronzes. Nothing too special there. After that, we saw the jades exhibit, which was cool. I tried to take better quality photos there since a lot of the pics I took of jades from the Shanghai museum all came out pretty blurry. It's rather hard to get good focus on the jades for photos since they reflect light so much, which messes with auto-focus.

We had to finish up the jade section because it was near closing time. As it was, we were only able to do a partial glimpse of the exhibition of writing utensils (文房四宝) before we were being shooed out by the museum staff.

We returned the same way we came to the museum - by navigating the subway metro system. It wasn't as hard as my aunt feared, and we were able to get everyone back to the correct exit without any problems. For dinner, the twins insisted on duck again. We tried our luck at the 前门东全聚德 restaurant, but unfortunately there was an hour's wait for service there. In the end, we went back to the other 全聚德 that we'd gone to previously and had peking duck there. The girls were happy and I am of course stuffed. :P

Tomorrow is our last tour day of Beijing before we return home!

Introducing our hotels

Well, even though we technically still have one and a half more days to stay in our current hotel, I think I've gotten a good feel of it to be able to give it an overview/analysis. All of our hotels on this trip have been four star hotels (my aunt didn't want to chance what China would consider a three-star, especially in smaller cities like Pingyao, and five-star would have been much more overkill/expensive).

We begin with the Central Hotel (王宝和大酒店) in Shanghai. This one is my favorite, mostly for two reasons - there was free internet, and they surprised me with a (free) yummy cake for my birthday. Now that's service. :) On other things, the place was pretty clean and sanitary; no complaints about the bedding or the bathroom from my end. Breakfast was great and varied. The only downside we could have about it was that we weren't able to get our assigned rooms together next to each other or even on the same floor; and, at first, the room they'd assigned me (and one of the twins) was on a smoking floor so the hallway was rather smoky. We were able to switch on the second day to a non-smoking floor, but it was still not next to the other room we had. Ah well, I guess that could be partially blamed on the Expo for filling up pretty much all the hotels in the city.

Next, in Xi'an, we had the Grand New World Hotel (古都新世界大酒店). It was ok in regards to sanitation and cleanliness, and the sheets were warm enough for the cooling temperatures even without any central heating turned on (that I noticed). We were able to get adjoining rooms, which was good since I we all had various levels or the beginnings of a cold around the time in Xi'an. I also noted that was also the best decorated of our hotels, with nice paintings on the walls. The downside was that people were smoking even on the supposedly non-smoking rooms, and my aunt/uncle had to complain to the management about their other next door neighbor. Also, the air in general was bad in the city, and the hotel didn't seem to be too much better than the outside air. The breakfast was decent but pretty monotonous and got somewhat tiring after a while. Also, internet had to be paid for here - 200 RMB for a week.

In Pingyao, we were housed in what I think was called International Financier's Club (云锦城) or something to that effect. Since it was a recreation of the Ming style building, we couldn't help the stone floors or the stiff beds/chairs. I was glad to see that we had sanitized modern bathrooms, even though there was no tub and only a shower stall with wood or bamboo flooring. There was heating, though, which was good since the weather was the coldest in Pingyao during our vacation. Internet, on the other hand, was free and available, which was a surprise to me. On the downside, breakfast was kind of mediocre; and the old style doors with the locks and padlocks were a pain to work with, especially in the dark.

Finally, in Beijing, we stayed at the Capital Hotel (首都大酒店). Again, sanitation and cleanliness were not a problem here. My aunt thought the beds were a little too hard and had them add a layer on top of their bed; but I honestly couldn't feel the difference. The breakfast is definitely both varied and good, though I still think the Shanghai hotel had the better porridge/congee (I guess southerners just have a better way with rice than northerners :P). What I don't like here is that there aren't many outlets to let me plug all of my various appliances in at the same time (laptop, battery charger, phone charger, etc.) Also, they're charging me pretty steeply for the internet (20 RMB per hour).

In general I did want to not that I could've left out half the things in my ziplock bag of liquids/gels for airport security, as well as a few other items. All of the hotels had shampoo, conditioner, body foam, body lotion, shower cap, slippers, and ethernet cable for broadband. I should've just brought the facial wash/lotion, sunblock, deodorant, and hand sanitizer without needing to burden myself with anything else. Food for thought in any future travels, I guess.