World. Life Experience: Transportation in Beijing

Traveling in Beijing is quite convenience because most of the attraction places are well connected by their subway. All you need to know is which interchange station to get off and get in. And it may be a bit complicated cause there have around ten lines for their railway. But if you have a good map, that will be fine.

We didn't prepare a map for our traveling, rather we used a brief map provided in our hotel. Therefore, the experience we got is to walk a very far distance until my leg swollen. My conclusion is prepare a detail map and a good shoe for traveling from a station to your destination. The photo below is the traditional Beijing cloth shoe I brought to substitute my shoe, it looks nice and it is cheap, just cost RMB58.

Old Beijing cloth shoe I brought after my foot become swollen for a long distance walk.

For my experience, the destination seems very nearby in the map, but in really case, I have been walking for almost 1/2 to 1 hour to reach the place I want. It was because we got off the wrong station or we didn't know the short cut, I think. Beijing is very big and their road is wide, for example the road in Chang'an Avenue is the longest and widest street with 10 lanes altogether. And you can have a nice view of Chang'an Avenue street went you visit Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City.

This is one of photo I took on the road near Agriculture Exhibition Center and you can see their road is wide

During our traveling in Beijing, we have difficulty to get a taxi. One of the reason is the taxi stand in the famous city sights are always full of tourists and the number of taxi is less. We have been waiting for half an hour and we decided to walk to the nearest station as possible.

I remember that when we reached Beijing international airport in the mid night, no railway service for that time and the taxi stand is full with people. For our tiredness and lazy to queue, we paid RMB350 for whoever want to drop us to our hotel. I think it is an illegal cab service. It was scared experience too, the driver took us to another building that was very quiet to get his car and he drove very fast on the road.

Another experience, the taxi driver didn't want to fetch us to our hotel. We are quite frustrated until we got a taxi driver that is kind enough. We told him our experience, he mentioned that it might due to the different slang we have. Although we speak well in Mandarin and I even give them the hotel address in mandarin words, I really can't understand why they refused to fetch us. Besides, I also noticed that not all taxi driver known very well of Beijing street, the driver had to ask us to call to the hotel to get the direction by using our own mobile.

These are only my experience, may be others have good and pleasant experience with the transportation. One of the guide told us that it is better not to take a taxi who pull over and wait for tourists, in addition it will be more easier to get a taxi by walking a bit far away from the famous spot.