Monday August 21st, 2006
Asia > China > BeijingAsia > China > Datong
We landed at 8 in the morning, local chinese time. The customs and everything went smooth, clear blue sky and about 30-35 degrees Celsius. Took the shuttle to XiDan (16 Yuan) central in Beijing near Tian An Men Square. We would now try to find a hotel in this area for our two first nights in China.
We knew there should be a low priced hostel in Wang Fu Ying, close to Xi Dan. While searching for this hostel, a chinese girl stopped us. She wanted to help us find it and a couple of minutes later we were there. But.. it was full and we were told that we should come back at 14:00 and maybe there was a room. Ok, the chinese girl that led us here said she was an art student and she asked us that in the meentime, maybe we would like to see her work? The gallery was very close to the hostel, actually more or less wall-to-wall.
[I will cut down on details now I think] Oh, well. The thing was that she wanted to sell as much as possible to us 4 hours young China tourists and to prices that were much higher than the markets. She wanted about 100-150 Yuan for her paintings.. Not really expensive and they were pretty nice but we didn't buy any. We didn't feel like to carry extra weight. This was too early on the trip to buy things.
However, this girl connected us with a guy that had a appartment for rent. Now we are living there for two nights. It's situated in a new area, the area is not quite finnished, but almost :)
![Our home for night 1 and 2 in Beijing - I the house in the middle on the 14th floor in a appartment of the parents[...]](/images/entries/en/china2006_our-home-for-night-1-and-2-in-beijing-(200).jpg "Show fullsize (opens new window)")
