Skip to main content

Shopping in Beijing 北京

Ni hao!


Now you know a little about where we live when we are in Beijing 北京, and about the nearest area around us. You also know a little bit more about Beijing, if you have been reading my blogs. Right now I feel like I would take you out on a shopping round in this lovely city. Firstly Beijing is a fantastic and wonderful place to go to when you want to shop. You will find all kinds of things to buy, and it´s very cheap. So one good tip is to come here with very little in your bagage. You will fill it here. There are many places to go when you want to shop, and they are spread all over the city. The first place we went to was the area near the Drum Tower. Here we found two department stores. One with clothes, shoes, perfume and so on, plus one with everything from electronics to clothes. In fact this last one had everything. I bought sunglasses, memory cards to my mobile phone, t-shirts, thing to use when sewing, umbrellas you name it! Fill up your bagage before going home! In the first department store we bought clothes and shoes mainly. A few days later we went to Xidan. A very large area with many department stores and smaller stores. Here we looked at mobile phones, but we bought one later nearer our home in Dongzhimen. But we bought winter clothes on sale for the last week, and also other clothes. I also bought a second battery for my Olympus digital camera in Xidan. As I told you Beijng is full of shops all over town, but there is also special areas or streets where you go when you want to buy a special thing. Like a street with music stores or department store with curtains for your windows! It´s really very much a paradise for shopping. Though you have to know that I had my special guide, Liping born in and living in Beijing for 40 years with me. So here is what you can do before you go there. Read and learn a lot from the internet and write down the names of the areas where you want to go and shop. Anyway I went to a special musical instruments street to buy a guitar. And found an accustic in green and black for only 380 yuan with case, strap and plectrums! I will not tell you about all these areas in this blog spot. It will come later. But there is one that I just have to tell you about right now. It´s the Wangfujing. It has very many department stores, and also many smaller stores on side streets. It is very exclusive and is very popular among young people and the tourists. We didn´t buy many things here, but we did buy t-shirst, Beijing 2008 caps, souvernirs, and some books(a Beijing Guide book and a Mandarin language book). On this street you will find China´s largest book store. It has 6 floors and some 200.000 volumes of books and CDs! You have to read on a sign at the elevator to find out on which floor the books that you are looking for are placed! Anyway the toilets are on the sixth floor! In my mind comes up the one question that I would like to answer about Beijing! I would like to describe Beijing with three words. Very difficult! But I found out that these words are: large, friendly and building! Both the way people are friendly, helpful, understanding and temprament is the same I have only met in Rhodes, Greece!

Zai jian!

Peter
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The China Millenium Monument in Beijing 北京!

Ni hao! The China Millenium Monument in Beijing 北京. All over the world, celebrations and festivities to usher in Year 2000 make up one of the grandest spectacles at the end of the century, as mankind strides towards the new century and millennium. New opportunities, challenges, and hopes are emerging over the horizon of China of the 21st century. The Chinese nation, with its splendid civilization of 5000 years, is on the threshold of an epoch of great renewal, as a future of yet greater splendour is arising in the East of the world. At the turn of the century and millennium, the China Millennium Monument. with its oriental cultural overtones and contemporary architectural art, will promote the national spirit by embodying an original style, displaying a modern aestheticism, and expressing hopes of the future. The China Millennium Monument, as China' s symbolic and commemorative building to welcome the Year 2000, is a gift for the world of the 21st century from the Chines
Post a Comment
Read more

Beijing Hutongs 北京胡同 and Siheyuans 四合院!

Ni hao! Todays blog will tell you a little bit more about the Hutongs in Beijing. We all call it hutong. But when we talk abut them we really mean siheyuan. Siheyuan are the courtyard houses, and hutong are the streets or alleys inbetween them. So we should really talk about the Siheyuans inBeijing! Hutongs 胡同 are narrow streets or alleys, most commonly associated with Beijing, China. The word hutong comes from the Mongolian hottog meaning "water well." During the growth of towns and cities, wells dug by villagers formed the centres of new communities. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of Siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods. In old China, streets and lanes were defined by width. Hutongs were lanes no wider than 9 metres. Many are smaller; Beijing hutongs range in widt
Post a Comment
Read more

Dongzhimen 东直门

Ni hao! This day I will tell you about Dongzhimen 东直门 in the Dongcheng District, Beijing. Dongzhimen is the name of one of the gates in the old city walls of Beijing, it´s now a transportation node in Beijing. The 2nd Ring Road links with Airport Expressway. The Beijing Subway has a station at Dongzhimen, where Lines 2 and 13 connect. Line 13 has its eastern terminus at Dongzhimen. The Dongzhimen bus station is also situated here. For me it feels and seems like the central station in Stockholm! It really is near and we can walk there from home! Talking about minutes! We reach all corners of Beijing very easily from here during our 30 days visit. The subway station is only 8 minutes walk from our own apartment. West of Dongzhimen is Guijie, or "Food vessel street" (Dongzhimen Inner Street), extremely well-known to locals in Beijing as a food street. We go often to the restaurants on this street. There are so many different restaurants there. I think they must be 100 ones!
Post a Comment
Read more