From Beijing to Jinan on the fifht day
- Details
- Written by Jure Štern
We just have some little time to see the Forbidden City before we go to another province. To the biggest complex of palaces in the world we go by foot, and the last part of the way we take a tuk-tuk. The Forbidden City spreads it's walls on 720.000 m2 of land and consists of 980 buildings. In the palace 24 rulers were living there for 500 years and in that time the entrance was strictly forbidden for other citizens. The place is also special because in the year 1949, in front of the entrance, Mao Zedong proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China. To see the whole complex we have to little time so we just pass it quickly. After the sightseeing we go back to the hotel and at 12 PM on our way to the train station. 15 minutes till the train arrives we hear a scream from a woman and than a fall. She was lying on the ground and did not move. In seconds there were 4 policeman at the site and were already holding a man which they thought was guilty of the act. He was innocent so they released him. What happened to the women we do not know, because our train arrived and we were off to Jinan with a speed of 320 km/h.
After arriving to Jinan we were already confused at the train station. There are no signs in English, no map in English to be found. We give up and we buy a map in Chinese and start to look for a hotel from the Lonely planet China. We are joined by two young man who are trying to give us a ride to the hotel. Because we do not trust them a police officer steps in and pushes them away. He says something in English and points us in the direction of the hotel. It was already dark, so we take a taxi to the hotel. It proves to be a mistake, because we are taken about 50 m on the street and we were already at the hotel and the taxi driver earned a lot for that distance :).
At the hotel lobby we are greeted and taken to the reception and again no body can even speak a little English. Finally we communicate with the dictionary and hand. We get a nice room which was also not so expensive.
