Falko#weeklyreview 14-15/2026
This is a combined review for the weeks 14 & 15. These two weeks we’ve spend in China – our long awaited vacation in the land of the rising sun.
We flew from Frankfurt/Main to Beijing with Air China. Flight time was about 9,5 hours for roughly 7800 km. 6 hours time difference. A friend and former colleague of mine was so kind to pick us up at the airport and take us to our hotel. He also took a lot of time and effort to guide us around Beijing the next few days.
Beijing
Right on the second day in Beijing he drove us to The Great Wall near Mutianyu up north of Beijing. We climbed the stairs up to the wall and wandered around for a few kilometres on the top. The weather was perfect that day. Not yet too hot and sunny.
It’s as impressive as you’d expect. In this part the wall was in pretty good shape still and is actively maintained. Fortunately it wasn’t the tourist hot spot although there was tourist infrastructure at the bottom of the mountain where we had parked the car.
In the late afternoon, back in the city we enjoyed our first Peking duck in a somewhat fancy restaurant. The whole roasted duck is prepared right next to the table by a chef.
Next day we had booked tickets for the forbidden city and joined masses of tourists to see the old home of the Chinese emperors. I had seen the forbidden city before in the year 2000. Back then it was almost quite as not many tourists were around that time. Now it was pretty crowded.
In the afternoon we visited an art district. That was a former industrial area that has been repurposed to host a whole bunch of galleries and exhibitions as well as small arts & crafts shops.
In the evening our friend had organised a “team dinner” with a bunch of our former team mates in a cosy little restaurant in the Hutong area near the Drum Tower. That was great to see the old colleagues over good feed and drinks. Even my kids enjoyed to the restaurant and conversations. Before the restaurant we roamed through the remaining old Hutongs in that area. Back in 2000 there were much more of these areas. But they have mostly been removed during the rebuilding and expansion of the city for the Olympics in the early 2000s.
On the last full day in Beijing we went out west to the old summer palace. But… with a boat. Starting at the Bamboo Palace was about half an hour ride out to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace itself was also crowded, although it was a really nice day with clear views, sunshine, and everything. It was pretty crowded, and we walked around the lake, saw that famous bridges, all the little boats on the lake, and climbed up the stairs to that famous temple in the back of the lake, and wandered around a bit. Unfortunately, the old stone boat that used to be a teahouse, that was closed back in 2000, I had tea with my wife in that stone boat.
Early the next morning, we took the high-speed train from Beijing to Chongqing. It was pretty early, and we had to get to the train station like two hours ahead of departure because that was recommended by the train booking app, as they have airport-like security at the train stations as well. Eventually, I think that wasn’t necessary, so I think maybe an hour earlier would have been sufficient. They have large waiting halls at the large train station. It feels like an airport; it’s huge. The train ride was interesting. A high-speed train going at 350 kilometers per hour across the countryside took more than seven hours to get to Chongqing, because that’s I think, 1,600 kilometers away or something like that. So it’s definitely a huge country.
Chongqing
Chongqing is, from an area perspective, the largest city in the world. It’s apparently almost as large as Austria, and millions and millions of people live there. It’s in the mountains a bit, so not super high mountains, but it is certainly hilly, and you have to climb stairs all the time in the city. The Yangtze River is going through the city, and you have all these skyscrapers, and they are beautifully lit during the night. Very, very interesting and modern city to some extent, with all the modern skyscrapers and stuff like that. We walked around and explored the old city, some nice little restaurants at the side of a hill where you have a very good view over the city in the evening at sunset. Enjoyed beers and BBQ dinner over there. Whatever else did we do? There was a large restaurant in what feels like an old metro tunnel or something like that, a tunnel going straight 300 meters straight into the mountain, and that was used as a restaurant. You couldn’t see the end of it, and we had dinner with the famous Chongqing hot pot, where you basically get a stove with an iron cast skillet. Then you order a whole bunch of ingredients, like meat and vegetables and stuff like that. And in the skillet you cook, like, a broth or something like that. The skillet is actually divided in two parts, so you can have two different flavors of broth. We went for the traditional chili-based hot, very spicy broth, and the other one I think was chicken or something. Yeah, very fancy, very traditional in that area, and, of course, delicious. I like that stuff.
On two evenings, we saw a large drone show over the city. What was amazing to see is that all these skyscrapers have their individual light show, basically displaying advertisements at the facade. Briefly before the light show starts, the whole city lights are coordinated and blink with the same rhythm, I think, to announce and prepare tourists and people for the drone show that’s coming up. Then you have this huge swarm of apparently 7,000 drones painting a 3D movie in the sky. It’s pretty amazing to see.
Zhangjiajie
After these three nights in Chongqing, we continued our journey again by high-speed train to Zhangjiajie. That’s an area where the Chinese people have their national forests and mountains, and this area is famous for their rock formations. These rock formations have been used in James Cameron’s Avatar movies; that’s why they also have the nickname the Avatar Mountains. We went on to see these mountains over three days, I think, because it’s a large national park, and you have multiple spots that you can go to and start your journey and hike into the mountains. The view also very much depends on the weather. We had a bit of luck on the first day when it slightly cleared up, and we could see some of the landscape. On the second day, it was completely foggy, and you could not see more than five to seven meters apart. Although we had been on the top of the mountain and were supposed to see the impressive stone columns and stone bridges and stuff like that, there was really almost nothing to see; it was just foggy. Still, on the second day, it was very crowded with tourists from all over China, a very small percentage of foreign tourists. Still, amazing to see.
On the third day, again the weather was much better, and we hiked up the mountain and down, which was pretty amazing. I think it was overall a 15-kilometer hike or something like that. Very hot, I think it was 26 degrees Celsius, and super humid as well, so we were sweating like hell, but it was very interesting, very nice, stunning views and all that, very, very well.
Hong Kong
Then again, we took the high-speed train from Zhangjiajie to Hong Kong. That was another seven-hour ride, as that’s also a pretty large distance from the middle of the country all the way south to the coast. Spent another three nights in Hong Kong, which is still kind of a separate country. You have to go through immigration twice, actually leaving China mainland, entering Hong Kong, and stuff like that. Hong Kong, as you expect, it’s a much more western city, a colony city with a large western influence. But China is slowly creeping in there. What was most notable is that the traffic in the streets was much, much louder, noisier, and smellier than in China mainland, because in China mainland I’d say almost 90 percent of the cars are electric cars. So it’s quiet, there’s no exhaust pollution and stuff like that, and that was immediately noticeable in Hong Kong where they still have combustion engines a lot.
In Hong Kong, we also just roamed through the city a bit. On the last full day we spent there, we hiked up Victoria Peak to view the sunset over the city. You see all this nice skyline with the skyscrapers and their colorful lights and stuff over the harbor.
Eventually we took a flight back to Beijing because that’s a huge distance to cover from Hong Kong to Beijing. So we took a flight which almost took four hours to get to Beijing and had one night stay over in Beijing to eventually fly back to Frankfurt.
Summary
Overall, it was a very nice trip. Very, very interesting country. Very friendly people. It was amazing to see how the country has changed in the last 26 years since I’ve been there first from a maybe underdeveloped country with a lot of air pollution problems to a very modern country. Everything is digital. You can use your phone to do everything: you order your food, you order your rides, you pay with the phone. And it works at every occasion just flawlessly, that also solves the “we don’t know how to queue up” problem because every little shop has their own app in WeChat and you just order your food, you get an order number, and you don’t have to build a queue then.
Was amazing to see that in Beijing they also seem to agree on a battery pack standard for the motor scooters, so you have these large charging cabinets where there are multiple compartments, and you just go there and swap out your battery, and then it’s charged. They also have mobile phone charger, like basically power banks charging stations for power banks, all over the city. In every city we saw them at every corner. So you don’t need to worry about running out of juice with your phone because you can just rent these phone power banks everywhere, and they had them obviously also in the National Park, right at every little kiosk. So you have all these charging stations, and thinking about it, I think that’s also a good way to store the excess electrical energy that they get from all their renewable energies, right from the solar panels and the wind turbines and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s amazing to see.
And then again, the electrification of the transport system is amazing in China Mainland. Subjectively, ninety percent of all the cars are electric. That obviously helped with the air pollution. The air quality was really good in all the cities we’ve been, except a little bit from Hong Kong, but Chongqing, Beijing, Zhangjiajie were all like perfect air quality.
So what you need to prepare for your China trip is the WeChat app to communicate within the country and also for payments. You need AliPay for payment and public transport as well as ride hailing with the DidiApp within AliPay. You might want to use Trip.com to book your hotel and trains inside the country.
If you’re going to Hong Kong make sure you’ve got the proper visa if you need one. Also AliPay has a special Hong Kong app. Some shops in Hong Kong didn’t work with the
#Beijing #China #Chongqing #enEN #HongKong #Vacation #weeklyreview #Zhangjiajie
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