Drum Tower & Qianmen

Slow start

I woke a couple of times through the night, thinking that I had slept the whole nights but each time it had only been an hour or two.  Surprisingly, I fell asleep till 0530 when I thought it would be a good time to wake up.  It is 2330 in Poland, so I wouldn’t be in the deep sleep phase.

Doing a bit of admin over breakfast around 0830, I got sleepy and my eyes just couldn’t focus despite my reading glasses.  I had zero motivation.

Once my breakfast and coffee kicked in, I was brave enough to head out around 0915 by to face the 38 degC forecast for the day.

Drum Tower

Reaching the Drum Tower by metro, I was surprised there was no queue at the ticket office.  It was quiet when I got to the actual drum hall in the tower as well.  Perhaps people are put off by the long steep stairs just to see a set of drums.

The tower was built in 1272 for musical purposes but played a time-keeping role later.

Having invested in the effort of climbing up the stairs, I thought it would be worthwhile to wait 40 mins to see the drumming at 1100.  Three people did the short show with most of the beating being on the two smaller drums and the occasional deeper beat on the large one.

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Qianmen

Next, I wanted to explore the Qianmen area.  Qianmen means front gate, but the official name for the actual gate is Zhengyangmen.

Arriving at Qianmen station, I had trouble locating the exit as I was confused by the equipment and police presence, as if it was entering another station.

It turned out to be ID scanners for locals and the police wanted to capture details of who was entering the area since it was near Tiananmen Square.

Similar checkpoints were present at the entrance to the Qianmen Pedestrian mall.  The place was completely unrecognisable as the last time I was here as 14 years go.

Back then, it was a natural ramshackle mix of shops selling souvenirs, food and everything under the sun.

Today, all the buildings looked newish and were taken up by nicer looking businesses.  It was after midday and while there were a few outlets I could have eaten at, I ended up patronising one in the street behind.

With the lunch and a walk along most of the length of the pedestrian mall that came with two tram tracks, I managed to kill about 2h in the area.

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Back at around 1500, I was baffled how I managed to spend about 6h going to just two places.  That’s door-to-door, but I suppose it included long walks to/from the metro, within the metro, a slow lazy lunch and sipping iced coffee to cool down.

My room was now hot from not having the aircon running and it took forever to cool down.

Wangfujing Night Market

A friend told me that the Wangfujing Night Market was a good place to eat at.  Feeling a bit tired and generous, I took a taxi there, getting stuck in traffic.

The taxi driver set me down and pointed me to the pedestrian mall and said that there will be plenty of food there.  But it was the same mall that I had explored yesterday with very little food.

I checked on AMaps and Didi Maps and both also showed the street food venue behind the pedestrian mall in slightly different locations that now look boarded up.  There was no crowd for me to follow, which is often the case when a street market is present.

It was a waste of time and money coming here but I probably would have felt worse if I had invested walking time coming by metro.

I ate a simple noodle meal at a food court before topping up with some McDonald’s fried chicken strips (real chicken) to supplement my otherwise nearly purely carb meal.

I got back to the hotel by metro around 2200.