This immense metropolis hosts 13 million people - if you count everyone inside the city limits, which are quite stretched for European standards: 90 km from the center is still considered Beijing, although it seems like driving through rural China already. Probably someone in China's early days has set the borders to where he considered the air still hazy from Beijing's smog; then however, the whole of China should be considered Beijing. I have not seen a single clear day during the whole China trip, even 600 km from the next largest city. It is no wonder that the entire country is layered with smog - 9 out of the 10 world's most polluted cities are to be found in China. 

The Great Wall 

Beijing is the best springboard to visit the largest man-made monument ever made: The Chinese wall. We took a local guide from our hotel who took us to Mutianyu (not the "standard" place at Badaling). Reportedly there are fewer people at Mutianyu, although also the latter one attracts hordes of buses each day. We had relatively few people - we took the steeper ascent (right-hand side), and could even climb without running constantly into people. The Wall is genuinely impressive: Running in enormously steep ascents and descents all the way to the horizon, the weary climber in the summer heat can easily imagine the strain of the up to 500,000 workers who worked here over a period of more than 500 years - with only one meal per day, as the rice was needed to fill the Wall's foundations. 

Our guide warned us not to get into any kind of interaction with the shop owners  at the Great Wall and told us lots of horror stories that have already happened. From phony art students to counterfeit 100 Y bills you might get back; from "2 T-Shirts for 1 dollar" (which will cost you 20 Dollars in the end) to tap-refilled water bottles (of course with non-drinkable water) - you'll find it all here. 

On the way back, we drove through nice rural areas, and stopped for lunch at a "department store" (which basically was an immense souvenir shop, also with typically tourist prices, 30 times higher than normal). Probably all guides get a huge commission here, as the parking lot is full with buses. 

Summer Temple

The afternoon stop was at the Summer Temple - a series of monumental buildings surrounding a huge man-made lake. You would never think that such a huge surface of water can be carved by hand. It is just another gigantic example showing the sheer mass of people China's regents used to employ in order to set their eternal monuments. People they had enough - over a billion. 

To be honest: One or two days are sufficient for visiting Beijing. The only attractive places are the Great Wall (outside of Beijing) and the Forbidden City (adjacent to Tiananmen-Square, right in the city center). 

The Forbidden City is extremely large. Again there were masses of workers involved: Up to 1 million people worked at it one time. To make sure they never ran out of work, the City also burned down quite frequently, partly due to the fact that the "mortal" fire brigade was not allowed to fight the "majestic" flames.

The central park with it temple in yet just another Chinese temple, nothing special, still with in expensive entrance fee to rip rich foreigners of every money they brought. Not even bikes are allowed in the park, although the laws looks like a stampede of bulls regularly runs it over. 

Make sure you rent a bike in Beijing. First, it is the Chinese transportation of choice, and second, walking is just like walking down the Avenida Castellana in Madrid - after 30 minutes you realize that you have not even covered a third of where you want to go. And it had looked that close on the map! Plus, the traffic rules are very interesting: As cyclists know they have always the right of way, the only way for car drivers to get through the constant stream of bicycles is to drive up very aggressively and try to intimidate them. Turning left is always a try to sneak in before the cars from the opposite lane can start. Most of the time this means stopping in the middle of the opposite lane to let bikes and pedestrians cross the street - so the cars are blocking the entire road. 

Taxi drivers like are quite comparable to their colleagues in Cairo: The same ride can you cost 10 times as much if you don't pay attention. One driver just passed by our hotel on the way back and would have driven us around the block a couple of times if we had not intervened. 

As it was recommended by other tourists, we went to the (very impressive) acrobatics show in the evening (7:15pm). The performing boys and girls (some barely 5 years old) were so flexible you would think they had no spine at all. No wonder the Chinese are famous for their circuses and good at gymnastics. The parents here must already bend their babies backwards to ensure the incredible flexibility every single one of those acrobats has. 

Beijing: Hotels

The Chinese restaurant in our Palace Hotel is not the best you could have found. They even were out of Beijing duck when we wanted to order some! The prices for drinkable water in the hotel are ridiculous, given that the tap water is not recommended. But the gym was nice, and at least they had European espresso in their lounge bar. 

Tunxi (Huang Shan Shi)

Tunxi has recently been renamed to Huang Shan Shi (meaning Huang Shan City) to emphasize its function as the springboard to Huang Shan, the holy mountains. Tunxi is the closest airport to Huang Shan; a very small one indeed, where you walk outdoors straight from the plane to the exit gate. Huang Shan itself, an assortment of rugged mountains piercing through a layer of morning clouds, is next to Guilin/Yangshuo the country's most famous landscape attraction.

With the bad communication experience in the hotel, we preferred to rent a taxi to get to Huang Shan rather than taking a taxi to the bus, then a 1.5 hour bus ride to Huang Shan, and then another minibus to one of the starting points. The hotel indicated a price of 300 Yuan one way, but the driver had inadvertedly put the meter on, which indicated only 120 Y upon arrival. As communication with the driver in any language other than Chinese was impossible, he called our hotel to get someone on the phone that would at least understand English. He proposed a 550 Y round-trip fare which I could negotiate down to 400 Y, given that we paid much more than the meter anyway. One has to get accustomed to paying a special tourist price here. I probably made his day with this one trip, for two hours of work. I do not like those tourist rip-off tactics, reminds me strongly of Egypt or Morocco, only that there everyone speaks at least basic French or English, so that negotiating can actually be fun. Out here, without basic Chinese knowledge, you feel helpless and cannot do much. 

Tried Eastern Steps cableway. 2 hour wait. Ridiculous operation - one large cabin every 15 minutes. If something like this happened in an Austrian ski resort, the waiting people would have lynched the cableway staff. The Chinese seem to be more patient here, obviously waiting is part of a communist regime. They still are sort of rude if it comes to getting first in row, and do not respect queues at all. In that regard, Chinese are very different from the Japanese. Finally at noon at the top, together with about 3,000 other Chinese. Never in my life have I seen so many people one one walking trail. If you think the Blue Mountains behind Sydney are crowded, better not to to Huang Shan. In fact, the best recommendation for this region is NOT to do it. There are simply too many people up there. You are constantly blocked by slow toothless grandmas with foot ailments nontheless stepping the holy steps for a little while. We tried to sneak through the crowds wherever possible, and finally did the walk top of Eastern cableway - base of Western cableway in just 3 hours. The way down is a little better as most footlame Chinese take the cableway. Still, our legs were somewhat "jelly" like upon arrival. 

Although the scenery is very nice, it's not really worth coping with myriads of Chinese up on the hill. Here EVERYTHING is Chinese, most official signs are not even written in English anymore, although this is an official law. We met 3 whites among several thousand Asians. It's good they have birth control now, there are just too many Chinese everywhere. 

Tunxi: Hotels

The taxi from the airport is 25-40 Yuan, depending on your negotiation skills. Try to find a taxi with a meter - an increasingly difficult task out here. 
The Hotel International seems to be the top-of-the line accommodation out here. Unfortunately it was booked. Their staff recommended the newly opened Hong Ta Hotel instead (around the same price, $90), which we tried instead. The atmosphere there was very nice, the staff tried very hard and was very friendly, but getting what you want without speaking Chinese is not always easy. It reminds you that there are virtually no individual western travelers out here. Everyone arrives by the busload, and 99.5% of them are Chinese. I would not want to know how communication in English should work in a cheaper hotel here. 

Shanghai

What a change. In Beijing, you felt the omnipresence of the communist past. Huge concrete blocks at every corner, successfully resisting the attacks of modernism. Unfriendly people, marked by half a century of conformism and lack of incentive. In Huang Shan, some people in the tourism industry were taking advantage of the local attraction's immense popularity, while the normal population still harvested their rice crops from dawn to dusk just to eat enough every day. Here in Shanghai, you feel the embracing of newly arrived opportunity at every corner. New modern high risers continue the city's legacy as China's Wall Street. The old bank buildings at the Bund, Shanghai's waterfront, the remnants of a flourishing 1930s golden age, make you feel like strolling through Manhattan's mix of Art Deco and ultramodern high risers. This city vibes with the new life that has been inhaled in the last decade. The new skyscrapers shooting up at every corner are even more extravagant in design than in Tokyo, Singapore, or New York. This is the place to be for new business in China. I do not see why people would call it "Paris of the East" in the old days - it much rather is "New York of the East". Those people who came up with the Paris allegory obviously have never been to Paris. Paris is enjoying life, zipping coffee in streetside cafes, take it easy; New York is working hard, making a fortune, changing constantly. Shanghai is definitely like New York.  Except for the traffic - the constant jam is rather Paris-style. 

Besides, Shanghai also has much nicer corners for city sightseeing than any other city in the country. The Old Chinese City, an area south-west of the Bund, is China how you cannot imagine it any better: temple-like houses with original Chinese shops in everyone of them, and in its very center an old Chinese garden of the Ming dynasty. Whereas the quaint area around it still feels very Chinese, the garden is where every single bus tour goes to, so you'll pass through between German, Japanese, and American sandal tourists. Weekends are best avoided to see this former oasis of tranquility. 

Shanghai: Hotels

Three hotels are worth looking at in Shanghai: The Garden Hotel, the newly opened Grand Hyatt, and the Peace Hotel. The Pacific Hotel, although in a magnificent 1930s building at the most central location, has reportedly lost the old atmosphere through communist renovations - prices as low as $55 underline that one is not dealing with the standards of a typical western high-end hotel here. The Peace Hotel on the contrary, former luxury residence of opium tycoon Sassoon, has kept the charm of a gone-by era alive. It used to be _the_ place to stay in the 1930s, just like the Peninsula in Hong Kong. It is said however that the management has not achieved to keep facilities and services up to today's 5-star standard - it's only listed as a 4-star hotel in the city's hotel brochure. The Garden Hotel, in Frenchtown, is the only Leading Hotel Of The World in Shanghai; expect impeccable Japanese service at Japanese prices (it is managed by the Japanese Okura group). The Grand Hyatt has the best view in town - starting on the 54th floor of the new business tower. its location across the river provides it with straight views of the Bund. Unfortunately this comes with the disadvantage of not being in walking distance to anything, but Singapore is not too much of a walking city anyway. The Hyatt features an excellent steak house on the 56th floor, with US-imported beef - the best meat I had in all of China. All those high-end hotels provide (partially free) shuttle buses to the airport, but you need to reserve in advance. 

Summary

1. If you want to visit China and see what it's really like, you need to learn Chinese before - which could be a longer venture. Nobody outside of the tourist places speaks any other language, and despite laws to have all signs in Roman characters as well, most often you are still confronted with Chinese-only.
2. Don't spend too much time in Beijing - it's just a huge smoggy place with little else to see than the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Both the latter sights can be covered in a day, rent a bike to go to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City in the morning, and try to get to the Great Wall in the late afternoon, when crowds are less and the afternoon sun mitigates the smoggy haze. 
3. Avoid hikes in places which are too well-known, as you might get run over by millions of Chinese. Rather spend some time in the neighborhoods of those famous places, to catch a glimpse of rural Chinese life in a nice natural setting. In general, because of the billion-Chinese tourist threat, it is advisable to do everything anti-cyclically - avoid the times when tourist groups come to the country's attractions. 
4. Be prepared to pay 10 times more than the real cheap Chinese price for everything if you look like a non-Chinese speaking tourist. The feeling of constant overpricing (by local standards, still a normal western price) can become annoying over time. 

Facts for the traveler

• Taxi fare from Beijing International Airport to city center: 95Y (80Y meter + 15Y toll) = around $12.
• Recommended vaccination: Polio, hepatitis (all forms). Malaria in the south.
• Cellphone: GSM standard
• Time: GMT + 6
• Phone plug: British. A/C plug: British.
• Dresscode: Very relaxed. Even to theaters people go in jeans. Most Chinese simply do not have the money to dress up.