Beijing

After a week in which I somehow succeeded in having a luxurious bubblebath in someone's flat at 11 PM followed by a triumphant opening of Costa Coffee at 1 in the morning for a much-coveted muffin (it closes at 12 but I was on a mission), it was time for a trip to Beijing. Before this experience, however, I would like to point out the rather stressful experience of walking around at night in Shanghai, where there are many beggars who are very, very aggressive. They regularly come in groups from different sides, then waggle their cups in your face or knock them against you. They shout "Hallo, nihao!" in a very urgent and threatening manner and are superbly persistant. I once witnessed a man actually opening the door of a stationary taxi and getting in as the other man was paying to try and get money off him.
BEIJING
I fear that my string of unfortunate experiences in Beijing may leave me biased and blind to what I am sure are some wonderful aspects of it. However, I did not enjoy it. It was vast, cold and grey. Dad actually referred to it as "the cesspit of humanity", which although a little harsh is not altogether unbelievable in certain parts of it. The metro is a thing of beauty, as it is but 2 RMB to go wherever you want, an infinite amount of transfers included. That's just under 25 cents.
As I have been for much of this gap year so far, I was your perfect cliche tourist. On the first day I visited the Temple of Heaven and ate Pekin Duck (yum), then proceeded to go on a tour of the Great Wall the next day. This was a day of massive awkwardness, as it was just me and a very obese Texan named Scott, who was nice but very awkward and clearly very uncomfortable. This was made worse by the several occasions in which the tour guide left us on our own, facing each other, eating a meal. The tour guide himself was a man of stupendous campness, who skipped instead of walking and always had his hand bent. He would say "and" every few seconds even when completely irrelevant. After being taken to the Ming Tombs and a jade factory, we went to Badaling, a section of the wall that he had promised not to take us to. Here he left us on our own again and I was left to feel very loved for the next hour or so, as many of the Chinese tourists on the Wall had never seen someone with my hair colour or height before. I therefore was constantly taking pictures with people and felt a little bit like Jackie Chan (Rory McChan / M.C. Jack?).
We then went to a place named Dr Tea, where the 2 of us were, again, dumped and left, face to face, to taste tea. After a half hour presentation and tasting of fantastic teas, the shop expected us to buy tea. After refusing, we got to the van and ran into a hissyfit from the tour guide. He clearly had a deal with all these places which was that we would buy things from them, and us not buying anything had embarrassed him, so he cancelled the final step, the silk market, and left us in the street to find our own way home.
I also visited the Forbidden City, which was vast. It was also pretty un-forbidden as it's a massive tourist spot (just saying). I then had the intention of visiting Tian'anmen Square, but the Square being so huge and me being a bit dim, I couldn't find it on the public map (it was actually right across the street). Upon looking at this map, I was greeted by a 20-year old student from Xi'an University who was visiting and whose parents were not with her because it was raining(it WAS raining!). My immediate alertness to some sort of scam eventually faded after walking around with her for a good hour and a half or so. She explained that she was studying music in Xi'an. Except she wasn't. In the following half hour, I fell victim to the Beijing Tea House Scam, a popular trap in that treacherous town. She wanted to have a "drink" so we went to a tea house. The menu did offer fairly expensive tea, so I chose to have a bowl of rice, which, it should be said, is always fabulously cheap in China. The lady at the tea house brought in a small bowl of orange slices and a bowl of disgusting, crackly and salty cereal things. She insisted several times, due to my suspicions, that they were free snacks. When she brought the bill I was charged: 100 for the girl's teas, 12 for my rice(1.5euro which is actually more than usual), 100 for the room we were sitting in, 100 for the pathetic bowl of oranges and 100 for the bowl of disgusting crackly things! I refused to pay for the crackly things but still had to pay 312 RMB, with my credit card as I didn't have enough cash. I therefore was cheated out of just under 40 euros and they had my card number. I went back to the hotel as quickly as possible (1 hour on the subway) and blocked all further operations in China with my card thanks to the brilliance and speed of Mum. I would have simply texted her but, in a nightmare situation, my phone's battery died just as I was writing her a message.