Advertisement
Published: October 16th 2009
Edit Blog Post
About halfway into the fall, the Chinese celebrate two holidays - Mid-Autumn Festival and National Week. The first holiday usually marks a long weekend of eating Moon Cakes (a rich date-filled pastry-ish treat-ish) and family time. The latter holiday marks, for the better part of a week, a mass mobilization of most of China when everyone plays tourist while waving small Chinese flags. This year the two holidays collided and we found ourselves with a solid double holiday of ten days. China’s National Week was of particular interest being that it marked the 60th anniversary of the current government. Of course, the only logical thing for two
lao wai tourists to do is dive deep into the heart of our beloved Red Regime and visit the Capital. Last week we loaded ourselves onto an overnight express train from Yangzhou to Beijing and on the morning of October 1st, at 6:30 am, arrived to the Beijing Central Train Station - only a mile or two from the mayhem of Tien’amen Square.
The heart of Beijing is Tien ‘amen Square… 天安门广场or
Tiānānmén Guǎngchǎng and literally means
Gate of Heavenly Peace. With an area of 440,000 m² (thanks Lonely Planet) the square
Michael Jackson
The explanation to some of the things that we see are left entirely to us. A bar named Michael Jackson in Beijing? One might guess that he is mighty popular over here. The other day I (Elizabeth) walked past one of my classsrooms, and a student of mine screamed, at the top of his lungs, "Michael Jackson", then went back to playing. Why did he do this? We will never know. is the largest of its type in the world. Cliché comparison - ten football fields wide by seven football fields deep… Add a few hundred guards, a big Red flag, loose the grass, surface it all with stone and
voila: Tien ‘amen Square. The scale of the Square, however, feels completely appropriate considering the size of the city which spirals outward from this central gathering point.
An incredibly huge city, Beijing holds an easy 20 million people, all of which call themselves
Beijingers or Beijing Ren (for authenticity, say it like a pirate). The city sweeps across huge swaths of land and is as flat or flatter than the proverbial
Peking Duck Pancake. We found ourselves awestruck by the shear immensity of the metropolis.
Upon our arrival to the Capital, on a holiday similar to our July 4th on steroids, we were welcomed by miles and miles of police tape and perhaps one policeman for every 20 citizens. Our train was one of the last to arrive for the day and shortly thereafter, the international airport closed. Everything within 1 ½ miles of Tien ‘amen was closed off to the general public - busses, subways, roads... This was a
big day for a big parade and definitely not a good day to sport your “Free Tibet” t-shirt.
Our first morning in Beijing felt odd; the streets were empty and quite, and the air quality was immaculate - relative impossibilities for China. Later that day we learned that all Beijingers had been warmly and proactively invited to join in on the celebration by watching the festivities on television. Local chatter indicated that death threats had been offered to any person inside the perimeter who felt interested in opening their window to watch the festivities. This would explain the quiet streets, I guess. The next morning the newspaper proudly announced that the “Bureau of Weather Control” (yikes!) had successfully provided Beijing, China with a cloudless and clear blue sky thanks to seeding the clouds with over 80 silver iodide rockets. Never mind the third arm kids may be soon growing - the parade
will have sunshine cast upon the grounds. Think shallow breathing here folks.
We had the fantastic opportunity to visit and stay with friends of the family - Barb Morrison and Jim Taylor, both Montanans who have been living in Beijing for the past year. They were
parade men
Walking around Beijing near the center of town (although not IN the center of town-that was closed to us) on October 1st, China's July 4th, we met these three men walking home after preforming in the gigantic parade. excellent resources about Beijing and made our stay almost too easy. One night we met them for dinner at a restaurant called “The Blue Frog”, a bar and grill owned by a University of Montana Grad. I took a look on the menu and of course there was a burger called
The Montana. Hot damn. You are never too far away for a bit of Montana culture…
A bit overwhelmed by the crowds and quite excited by the clean air, we made a run for the Great Wall of China. We had not realized this, but the Great Wall near Beijing is not just one continuous wall, but many segmented portions, built at different times, by different dynasties, to defend against different “horrible Mongrel invaders from the north.” After a bit of finagling, we were able to hire a taxi driver to take us to Point A, -金山岭 or JanShangLing, and then four hours later, pick us up at point B, 司马台 or Simatai. The hike totaled around 10 km from point A to point B and covered some pretty intense territory. The wall followed ridge lines and was made to not only defend China but also to move
Quiet Beijing Street
We were shocked, walking on the first of October, at how quiet the streets were. Few shops were open, and we walked in the middle of the street. large masses of troops from one point to the other. The first half of our hike was on a wall that was unrestored and very clearly 600 years old. The views were breathtaking and the walk seemed more like a scramble. As we headed to Simatai however, the wall had been restored to its former glory and felt like a cakewalk compared to the earlier segment. Completely breathtaking.
Later in the week, after visiting all the “must see” tourist sites, we read about a once dilapidated electronics factory turned modern art district. Hundreds of galleries, all of which were free, had on display art ranging from “hotel room quality” stuff to high, high caliber work. While some of the art was simply beautiful design with little dialogue or intent, the majority of the artwork had a subtle tension behind its imagery. While absolutely no one has the right to speak freely about anything political, the paintbrushes here somehow manage to add whispers of true sentiment. Almost tapping into a fifth sense, those artists…
In the end we found that
everything in China is huge. One could compare Beijing to an amazing banquet of hundreds and hundreds of dishes.
Ride? Ride?
There were many men offering rides on their bikes in Beijing. Because we are foreign tourists, we obviously should want a ride! The offers/demands became very obnoxious after 5 minutes of walking around. No, we do not want a ride! Even if we only took one bite of each dish, we still couldn’t finish the meal - In this case, by the end of the week, we were quite full, and quite happy, and were definitely not able to see the end of the banquet table. It seemed that no matter what we went to see or do, we always felt like we had seen more than enough and at the same time merely scratched the surface of an indefinable volume. Perhaps all one really can say is, “Hey, that’s China!”
Advertisement
Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0253s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb