How not to get to Beihai Park during the National Day Holiday

We had our one-week National Day holiday at the beginning of the month and I once again stayed in Beijing. Traveling during this so-called "Golden Week" is a real hassle. Train tickets are practically impossible to get, unless you buy them at wildly inflated prices from scalpers (for some reason, the Chinese call these folks "Yellow Cows", or huang (rising tone) niu (rising tone) (黄牛). Plane fares are also more expensive than usual. And Beijing's weather at this time of the year is very nice and there's plenty to see and do in the city.

Unfortunately, most places here are pretty crowded, due to the large numbers of out-of-town Chinese tourists. As the Chinese would say, they're ren (rising tone) shan (flat tone) ren (rising tone) hai (falling rising tone) (人山人海), or "people mountain/people sea." I had enough sense not to visit the Forbidden City. Indeed, when I met a trio of German tourists at the Summer Palace and spent several hours practicing my German with them, one remarked that going to the Forbidden City "war eine Katastrophe" (was a catastrophe).

At Beihai Park, which is located between the Forbidden City and Houhai, the problem was not the crowds in the location but rather their impact on my getting there. Since I live in Dongzhimen, the best way to go to Beihai Park is by the 107 bus. On a normal day, it takes about a half an hour to get there by bus. On this day, however, it took the bus nearly 15 minutes to do the final, very short last leg of the trip down the Dianmen Dajie to the bus stop at the north end of the park. The problem was that scores of tourist buses were parked around the bus stop. This, in turn, caused the traffic to be even more congested than normal. And matters weren't helped by the fact that the 107 bus is a tram bus, which made it even harder for it to maneuver around the parked tour buses.

Luckily, I was able to get a seat as we literally inched toward the bus stop. I could at least sit as the bus moved a few yards at 5 mph and then stopped before moving another few yards. I had got on the bus at 2:30 or at Dongzhimen and expected to be in the park by 3:00. As it was, I didn't get there until at least 3:30 and then had to fight my way through the tour groups to the ticket windows and through the narrow north entrances.

The bus ride back home was no picnic either. I literally had to jam my way in through the door and then spent the better part of the journey being literally cheek to cheek and toe to toe with my fellow passengers. So the moral story: if you want to go to Behai Park during this holiday, it's better to take the Nr. 1 subway line--even though it will be jammed as well, it won't get stuck in the city's ever-worsening traffic--get off at the Tian'anmen West station and walk to the park from there. It's about a twenty minute trip up the Nanchang Jie, and this route makes for a very pleasant stroll along the west side of lovely Zhongshan Park and the Forbidden City's northwest corner.

In spite of all of that, the time spent inside Beihai Park was, as usual, very pleasant and rewarding. More on that in a another blog entry.