Doing the Tourist Thing in Beijing

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After the initial flush of exploring the hutongs around our hotel and seeing all the cool activities in the Temple of Heaven Park that Karen described to you yesterday, we settled down to more mundane sightseeing activities here in Beijing. We did Tinanamen Square and the Forbidden City yesterday, traveled nearly to the end of one of the new subway lines to the Summer Palace today, and then came back to town for a Peking Duck meal. All of these were repeats for Kathy and me, but we wanted to share these places with Karen and Jim, and we all certainly had a good time.

This week, the city is full of people from all over the country, many of whom travel in conjunction with the October National Day (anniversary of the declaration of the PRC on October 1, 1949). So all the sights were crowded with Chinese tourists, who greatly outnumbered us foreigners. There is an aura of patriotism, with flags everywhere, although the people do not seem as if they are taking the patriotism part all that seriously.

Tiananmen Square has greatly increased security since we last visited it in 2003. There is a loose form of airport screening at every entrance, and a huge presence of both police officers and miltary personnel throughout the square. There are video cameras on manylightpoles as well. The military stand perfectly still and scan 180 degrees by moving their heads in 10 degrees,or so, increments every few seconds. If they need to observe 360 degrees, then two of them stand next to each other facing opposite directions. It is somewhat eerie to observe this, especially given the recent history of this location.

Although it was packed, the tour of the Forbidden City was fascinating, although the new GPS-based, audio guide was not as informative as the manually-operated one in 2003. Also, it didn't seem to know exactly where you were, even though this is supposed to be the point of being GPS-based. Last time we learned a little bit about imperial roof decoration. The ends of the places where the roof peaks join are decorated with a series of figures, starting with a dragon, then a number of mythical beasts, and the a man riding a bird. There are various legends to explain what these figues mean, but what we learned this time was that the number of these figures increases with the importance of the building or of the activities conducted in the building. So, the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City has 11 of these figures on each roof point, which is the maximum number on any building. This is because it was the most important building and woe be unto anyone who tried to put more than this number of figures on their building, I suppose.

The garden at the north end of the Forbidden City was new to all of us, and very interesting. One tree they have there is the lacebark pine, which has scaly, peeling bark, like a Sycamore and unlike any other pine. When we saw these today at the Summer Palace, we thought they made the tree look like it should be called the "cammo pine".

This morning, after a dumpling breakfast in the Hutongs, we took the new number 4 subway line all the way out to the Sumer Palace, about 12 km from the center city. From the 1100s on, the emperors were taken there on a canal from the Forbidden City to escape the summer heat. This wonderful collection of halls, temples, pavillions, pagodas, etc., in a parklike setting on the shore of Kunming Lake, is a great place to absorb some of the history of the emperors and get away from the city, although not from the crowds. The buildings are exquisite, many intricately painted. It's hard to imagine how much work it takes to keep these up. The grounds are full of shops in corners of the old buildings, mainly selling uninteresting souvenirs, although some with calligraphy, paintings, clothing, and the like. Local residents seem to use this park as well, and we ran into a large group in the morning doing what was basically line dancing as a form of exercise, much like the activities in the Temple of Heaven Park we saw the day before. Karen and I joined them for one song.

One of the coolest places in the Summer Palace is the Garden of Virtue and Harmony, built by the doawager enpress Cixi, who lived until 1908, just three years before the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the declaration of the Chinese Republic. She was into drama and opera, among other things, and had a stage built there where Chinese opera, and presumably other plays and concerts, were performed, often with nobility from other countries in attendance. We happend upon this stage this morning in the midst of a performance for the tourists. We got to see a piece of classical Chinese music performed on two lute-like srtringed instruments, something much like a hammer dulcimer, two wind instruments, and bells. We also got to see some kind of a dance, presumably the kind performed for the dowager empress. It was a fascinating addtion to our tour.

Back in town the the afternoion, we sought out a restaurant for Peking duck that we had found in Lonely Planet. This was in an area a bit east of the old town district where we are staying, and that neighborhood is full of upscale stores and big hotels. So we had difficulty finding the place until karen started showing people the characters for the name of the restaurant in the guide book. They kept pointing to the upstairs of a building that looked much like a shopping mall. We finally figured out that the reatuarant was on the third floor of a very upscale shopping mall. We found it, and had a great, and not very expensive, dinner of the local specialty. The duck is roasted really well, crisp on the outside, and you eat it in tortilla-like "pancakes" with chives, cucumber, and a great sauce, the contents of which we do not know.

Afterwards we walked the mile or so back to the hotel through the changing neighborhoods, as the boulevards turned into ramshackle residential hutongs and then to the rennovated hutongs of the historic district we are in. On this walk we learned that the cartoon character that was in front of our restaurant was apparently an indicator of any place that serves Peking duck. I have included a photo in case you are ever walking around Beijing in search of a duck dinner.

Tomorrow morning, if we successfully find our train in the crowded Beijing West Station, we will be riding the soft sleeper car to Chongqing where Jacob and Lynn will meet us Wednesday morning.

Kit

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Photos

The four of us in Tiananmen Square, with the Tiananmen Gate
Karen's head is blocking Mao's, but he's still there