Calm Spirit / Ying Yu Jade China Trip 2005

More Sight Seeing in Beijing

The Peninsula Plaza is a five star hotel in the Wangfujing area, the heart of Beijing. A $20 USD breakfast buffet was included in this package. The buffet was very extensive, and offered Chinese, other Asian, European and Western style food choices. It's located in the "Jing" restaurant, which offers regular restaurant service throughout the day. It is the best breakfast buffet I have experienced in all of my trips to China. The staff is overly-attentive, it is very clean, and the quality of the food is very high. I noticed that the manager is non-Chinese, not Asian.

This hotel is located on Goldfish Lane, right off Wangfujing. The Chinese name for Peninsula Palace is "Wang Fu", not be confused with the Wang Fu Jing Grand Hotel right on Wangfujing, which has been recently renovated. And it's just confusing enough for taxi drivers, as we were taken to the Wangfujing Grand in error a couple of times. I would like to stay in the Wang Fu Jing Grand Hotel on a future visit. I don't want to stay at the Peninsula Palace again. It is a very cold and sterile hotel, not typical of China hotels. There is no "character" to the decor. There are no interesting little shops in the hotel, and the lobby is doesn't even have any chairs, is very uninviting. There are two floors of upscale designer stores under the hotel, which didn't seem to have many customers, and were not inviting to visit and shop in. In my opinion, it had bad qi, bad feng shui, and I would prefer to stay in a more comfortable hotel. I sometimes do business in the hotel lobby, and there was no place to do this here.

There are two things you have to do when you go to China: visit the Great Wall and drink Chinese beer. I have been to the Great Wall several times, but this was the first time we took a gondola up. There are other locations if you would like to do more walking and climbing, but there was still plenty of walking and climbing after the gondola ride. It is impossible to capture the huge size of this wall. It is steep, crowded and difficult to walk and climb. But it is an adventure that everyone should do at least once in their lifetime!

Lunch was at a Friendship Store near the Great Wall. It's an approved government stop for tourists, but the food is awful and the prices are high on their Chinese crafts. It houses a "cloisonné factory", which like all other "factory" stops the tour guides make, are fake factories, and kickback stops for the tour guides. The Friendship Store does have a large selection, and good quality, and if you don't mind the high prices, you can get all your souvenirs here.

A lesson in Guanxi. Definition:"connections". Meaning:"relationships based on mutual dependence, with the active element being feelings and emotions-The Chinese Life Line". This is truly what my entire trip to China is about. It's about keeping the relationship with my friends and business partners, and making new connections.

And what does this have to do with getting train tickets? Yesterday my tour guide told me it was impossible to get any seats on the train to Dandong tomorrow. He called several times to see if two were available. At the end of the day, he told me sorry, it was impossible to get any seats on that train. As we pulled into the hotel hot and exhausted from site seeing yesterday, I saw my friend Charles Li waiting for me. We discussed the problem about the train tickets, because he understood that the main purpose of my trip to China was to arrive in Dandong. I asked him to talk in Chinese to my tour guide, which he did. After a few moments of animated discussion, I was told there was a 90% chance of getting two train tickets by this evening. The tour guide has a friend who has a relative who works for the railroad, and if I waited 10 minutes, I could get these tickets. And 10 minutes later, I had two highly coveted soft-sleeper tickets in my hand, with no mention of paying anything more than the face value of the tickets. But an extra $100 crossed the palms of my well-connected tour guide, which was my way of establishing a new guanxi connection. A man who has a long pinkie fingernail often has good guanxi.

Charles has been teaching kung fu, taiji, and giving traditional medical treatments to foreigners for several years. Most of his students are Americans, who work in the Embassy and in big businesses in Beijing, and live in the very exclusive gated communities for foreigners toward the airport. This year, he opened a Kung Fu Academy and Tea House near these communities, and we went there to check it out and have dinner. It was dark when we arrived and my photos didn't turn out, which is unfortunate because it is very traditional and well done. It's an old courtyard style home that he converted part for his studio and tea house, and lives in the other part. So you enter through a traditional gate into a garden, with the building all around it. Charles is amazing, one of the only Kung Fu masters I know that will teach "foreign" students who are 18 months old. And he has students of all ages, but he is most proud of his little kids. He had talked about his new business location in emails, but this was the first time I had seen it, and it is wonderful.

If you would like to travel to China and meet with Dr Charles Li for traditional Chinese medical treatment, and/or to learn kung fu or tai chi, I will be happy to help you set up a trip to China with a reputable travel service that provides airport transportation and sightseeing and hotel reservations, and schedule time with Dr. Li. Use the contact information below for more information.

After returning to our hotel, we decided to walk across the street and try one of the many foot massage practitioners. It was both stimulating and relaxing, and even with all the pressing, slapping and pounding, I nearly fell asleep. It relieved a lot of the fibromyalgia pain I constantly have in my legs and lower body, all for about $12. We will explore more variations on foot massage on other days.

NEXT: Jade Factory