Beijing's Top Tourism Sites 'Monumental'
Beyond the Olympics, Beijing boasts some of world's most spectacular tourism.
Aug. 19, 2008, Beijing— -- You don't need a guide book to know four of this city's five "Must Sees" of travel. Just get the boxed set of travel coffee mugs sold at most Starbucks in Beijing. They're all there, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and the Great Wall. The only major tourist site that didn't make the cut was Tiananmen, perhaps for political reasons.
A tour of the sites during the Olympics is its own kind of world travel, with sightseers, athletes and coaches from every corner of the globe jostling with Chinese families to get the perfect photo. They all say one thing: China is big and its tourist sites are monumental. Here's a quick rundown:
Tiananmen
"We don't have anything this big in Spain," says Aurelio Garcia Abellan of La Mancha, Spain.
Forbidden City
Siamone Martin, 31, of Providence, called it "gorgeous" and said it would take "the National Mall and the Smithsonian all rolled in to one to get something of this caliber."
Temple of Heaven
Armin Hilpold of Bolzano, Italy, bought a Chinese version of a hacky sack, which consisted of a metal plate with a rubber cover about the size of a silver dollar, and a two-inch cluster of feathers. Chinese grandmothers stood in a circle nearby kicking it neatly around the group with effortless behind-the-back taps.
"We just saw it and thought it would be a nice gift," Hilpold said, but he was having trouble keeping it in the air with the ease the Chinese showed.
Summer Palace
The theme of the sheer size of China's tourists attractions continued. "Everything here that's beautiful is either really long or really high," says Nico Ursem, a builder in Amsterdam. "You must have strong legs to be a tourist here."