A capital time in the capitals

We flew through a pretty intense electrical storm which we ogled through the windows on our way to Beijing and headed from the airport to our Air BnB. Nick and I were pretty thrilled with ourselves - it's hard to book Air BnBs in China because many of them aren't authorised to take foreigners. We'd found a couple of great places, but had them cancel on us until we came across the motherload. An amazing place set up for four people in an old hutong (ancient alleyway suburb) in Beijing. We kept it a surprise from Kristen and Grant so they had to keep a straight face when the proprietor (an adult man) met us at the door and let us in to reveal the following:

With that incredible travel HQ, we started our time in Beijing with a food tour, to make sure we understood the most important part of the 3,000 year old city that has been the capital of China (other than a couple of brief interludes) since the 11th century.

First up was one of only two dishes that are really considered 'from' Beijing (the other being Peking duck, on which you'll hear more later): Zha Jiang Mian or, simply, fried sauce noodles. A refreshing, cold dish made of fresh noodles, yellow soybean paste, pork, edamame beans, crunchy cucumber, mung bean sprouts and pickled radish. It's served in separate components that you stir together before eating. Delish.

Next came a dish related to that fateful choice to make Beijing the capital of the middle kingdom, a decision initially made by the Mongol Kublai Khan in 1272 in a continuation of the successes of his illustrious, terrible grandfather Genghis. As an aside, it was in this era, and from Beijing that the Mongols ran the biggest land empire the world has ever seen. So, it was good to try their specialty - a BBQ of lamb, beef and vegetables seasoned with a self-selected powdered spice/chili mix. The BBQ is dome-shaped, modelled after Mongolian helmets, which were originally used over the fire to BBQ meat on the road. Seriously succulent meat eventuated.

Next up, a dish associated with another controversial figure of Chinese history - doornail meat buns. The Empress Dowager Cixi demanded a certain number of dishes be served at a feast in her honour. Scrambling to get enough dishes, a lowly cook invented what is essentially a far richer and more filling beef sausage roll. The Dowager Empress loved it and asked what it was called. Most Chinese dishes have esoteric, poetic names like 'crossing the bridge noodles' or 'Buddha jumping the wall'. This cook panicked and blurted the first thing in his line of sight - door nail buns.

We paired this with a cucumber salad and Baijiu, a Chinese liquor made from sorghum (??) and which is the most commonly drunk liquor in the world. Despite having nothing to do with pineapple it tastes like very alcoholic fake pineapple. Cheers to that.

Next was a courtyard restaurant serving famous Beijing crepes with different meat fillings. We were getting pretty heavily into the baijiu and free beers by that point, so we don't really remember much about this stage. Last was a Beijing brewery, for final pints and waddling home to bed.

After visiting the famous (but underwhelming) Beijing antiques market and a (very overwhelming) glasses emporium, we rested up for a big day of sightseeing. We needed all the energy we could get. We started with chaotic grey Tiananmin Square, home to major queuing infrastructure and a lot of police. We filed past the amazingly creepy Chairman Mao corpse lying in state in a massive mausoleum - no Trump or Kim in town this time to stop us ogling the taxidermy!

Next was the Forbidden City, the world's largest imperial palace (almost double the size of the Vatican) and China's single most visited attraction, hosting 14 million visitors a year. Elspeth and I had visited the Forbidden city on a beautiful clear winter's day a few years earlier and had absolutely loved the architecture and quiet atmosphere of the maze-like palace and gardens. I can't say that the feeling was replicated by a visit on a warm spring weekend one day before a national holiday. We literally fought our way from building to building, peering over thousands of domestic tourists until we finally found ourselves out the other side, glad to have escaped the hordes. It was not a particularly successful visit!!

We finished up our day of queuing by joining a multi hour queue for a famous Peking duck restaurant, heading home for a beer on the terrace in the interim. We returned and feated on succulent fatty meat carved from specially bred ducks roasted over cherry wood.

Next was a journey out of the city to stay two nights in the delightful village of Gubeikou nestled in the shadow of the Great Wall. From there, we could walk out the door of our wonderful hostel and up the wall, walking over the course of a day from the unrestored crumbling sections of the wall to the incredibly impressive restored sections dotted with multi storied watch towers and beacon towers. Parts of it were so steep we were crawling up what felt like cliff faces, and it was beautifully uncrowded after the heaving masses in the Forbidden City. Nick even flushed out a wild boar when scouting an alternative route! We were very smug when the other travellers at our hostel marvelled at how far we'd walked in a day.

Our peaceful wander on one of the wonders of the world was followed by an extremely stressful day of travel, needing to get from Gubeikou, back to Beijing and then on to our fast train to Pingyao, all during one of China's notoriously busy holiday periods. We managed it, though the timing was so tight we didn't get breakfast or lunch - Kristen and I agreed it was the longest we'd gone without food in living memory. Safely settled on the fast train with some fast food, we zoomed to Pingyao, an ancient market town known for its exceptionally well-preserved ancient architecture, massive city walls and creaking wooden temples. Unfortunately we could barely see the ancient architecture - the public holiday had struck again and Pingyao was a laughably crowded wall of humanity, with sweaty heaving streets that we barely dared to venture into.

To make the whole situation more ridiculous, we had also managed to book a 'family room' that slept four, not realising that it was in fact the bed that slept four - a giant padded platform for all of us to share!

We did have some fantastic food in Pingyao though - the province of Shanxi is famous for its many varieties of noodles, as it's a very good place to grow wheat. So we spent our couple of days there weaving through crowds and sucking up noodles!

We were relieved to jump on the train and head to Xi'an, the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, the capital of 13 ancient Chinese dynasties (including the first, stone age Western Zhou Dynasty) and the location of more than 4,000 known archaeological sites. We all loved Xi'an for its lovely, warren-like Muslim Quarter, which felt amazingly authentic after the curated, rebuilt touristic alleys and streets of Pingyao and central Beijing.

And, of course, the food. Xi'an has a totally different cuisine from the more eastern cities of China, incredible cold and hot noodles, mutton casseroles, beef and lamb kebabs, pita-style breads with cumin, Chinese burgers made of spicy fatty pulled pork and big soupy beef dumplings. We did our best to try as much as our bodies could handle.

Xi'an also has very cheap beer but we managed to find a gap between the beers on the hostel terrace, food in the Muslim Quarter and regular thunder storms to take a cycle trip on the 13th century city walls, which stretch in a 14km rectangle around the centre of the city. They are largely rebuilt/restored and must cause absolute chaos for traffic, but it's incredible to get a sense of their breadth and length, especially when you realise they were merely a small part of a larger wall system that enclosed 83 square kilometres!!!

Despite the achievements of its cuisine and monumental architecture, Xi'an is most famous for one of the most important and spectacular archaeological finds in the world. In 1974, some villagers just outside of the city discovered a vault that was eventually found to contain 9,000 soldiers, 670 horses and 130 chariots all made of terracotta and housed in an underground necropolis the size of a city. All the soldiers are totally different, with unique facial features, expressions, hairstyles and clothes. Even the tread on their shoes is entirely individual. They all face east, prepared for battle and fully armed. It's a truly unbelievable site, especially considering it was made as a funerary monument to the first unifier of China in 210 BC.

Suitably awed, we were ready to set off on our separate ways: Kristen and Grant to the delights of van life in Europe and us on our wander along the Silk Road, west through desert, mountains, meadows and mosques!