Beijing has Mountains!!

In 2022, Beijing became the first city to have hosted both the Summer & Winter Olympics. For those of us that have been to Beijing, you’ll know that it is big, impressive, busy, loud, but mostly flat. 

However, what you’ll also notice, if or when you visit, is that there are mountains to the west of the city. I noticed these on my first trip to Beijing a few years ago and they didn’t actually look that far away. It turns out, they are just really big mountains and are really far away, at least not easy walking distance as I soon found out.

So let’s step back a little, on my first visit to Beijing it was snowing, so that means clouds and generally not that easy to see all that far away. Then the snow cleared, but the clouds remained. Finally the sun came back out, it was still cold (crazy cold) but the air was clear, the sky was blue, my (now) wife was in work so I was on my own, I decided to head out and start ticking off the sites.

I found myself wandering around near the old CCTV Tower (中央广播电视塔) in Diaoyutaicun (钓鱼台村), when I noticed the mountains in the west. They did not look that far.

I can do it…

I set about walking west and a little north. After around 2.5 hours I’d covered about 12km and the mountains were just as big as when I started, furthermore, I hadn’t even left the city. Beijing is unbelievably huge!

I arrived in Pingguoyuan Residential District (苹果园), the afternoon was ticking away and I realised that at this pace (and based on just how far those mountains must have been), there was no way I was going to get there in daylight, at least not on foot.

I gave up…

As I said, time was ticking away, and from the point about snow and cold, I suspect you realise we’re talking about the winter, the daylight was not going to hold-out.

I decided to jump on the tube at Pingguoyuan (苹果园) and head back to the east where I was supposed to meet my wife later in the day.

Upon meeting my wife for dinner; I told her about my failure to reach the mountains. Of course she laughed. It turns out she knew exactly how far it was and we arranged to take a bus later in the trip.

Another go (this time with a bus)

The ‘later’ turned out to be much later. Perhaps my second or third trip to Beijing before we managed to find good weather and time to allow for a trip out to the mountains. It was worth the wait, but wouldn’t have been worth the walk. However, much to my annoyance, we didn’t actually hike the mountain, we sat on a bus for about an hour, arrived at this amazing place, had a look around, had some food and had to get back on the bus (bad planning on our part).