Beijing

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Since there were no sleepers available on any train to Beijing I had the nice cultural experience of spending 15 hours on a ‘hard-seat’ (luckely not that hard though). Still, it wasn’t as bad as for the massive amount of people crowded in the aisle with standing tickets…

The crowds in Beijing for the national holiday were expectedly huge, so I skipped some sights and roamed around town. One good thing about the national holiday was that the Chinese probably turned on the weather generator for it; as a former resident told me the stunning weather was very much unlike Beijing…

There were just a couple of other people on Tianamen square…
The Summer Palace and the surrounding park were a good place to get away from the crowds.

The alley with my hostel in it at night; on our way to the weird food market.
Anything on a stick at the Waifujing food market; scorpion, silkworm, sea horse, grasshopper… even lizard!
I guess this is baby chicken on a stick?
After a careful selection we went for snake and scorpion on a stick. The small ones were actually still alive as they sat on their stick on the counter.

And naturally I had to go for some roast duck in Beijing. We chose a somewhat fancy restaurant for it; the duck was great and came with a commemoration card with the duck’s barcode tag…