Beijing 2 - The Great Wall, a Birds Nest and other stories

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This was the last full day of our Trans-Siberian Odyssey and ‘full’ it certainly was. On the way down to breakfast I spotted something in the lift that I had noticed before; there was no fourth floor! Apparently, the number four is unlucky in Chinese culture as it has the same pronunciation in Cantonese as the word ‘death’.

This was our earliest start yet. We met at 08:00 in the hotel lobby where we boarded the mini bus for the start of the day’s activities. The 60km journey to the Huanghua section of the Great Wall took 1 hour 20 minutes. Despite being Sunday morning, the traffic in Beijing was as busy and as crazy as any other time or day of the week with the same rule applying: See a gap in the traffic (no matter how small!) then change lane, no reaction time to use indicators!! To give you an indication as to the size of Beijing after an hour’s drive, we were still cruising through built up areas albeit residential rather than commercial.

We turned in to the car park. I expected a strenuous walk just to get to the wall but in reality a short 50m up a slight incline and we were standing on the ramparts of the wall. The Great Wall of China -although not too sure why we have to qualify the name of this man-made phenomenon with the country in which it sits as I don’t know of any other Great Walls in the world!! The wall, end to end is 5,500 miles but this is the linear (straight line) distance. There are many branches of the wall (of which the section at Huanghua is one) and all sections of the wall actually measure a distance of over 13,000 miles. Th first sections of the wall were started more than 2,500 years ago to prevent invasion by other states. Other Chinese dynasties added to the wall for such reasons as protecting China’s Northern borders and protecting silk road trade. Most of the wall as we know it was built during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) to stop those nasty Mongols from invading!!

From the ramparts we could either walk to the right or to the left. Both sections were fairly steep and rose up in a sort of ‘V’ shape. We were advised by Ping to walk up the right-hand side as this is an easier climb. To the left, the path was pretty clear with only a few tourists choosing this route but to the right it was less so. The first 20 or so metres of the rampart were flagged but the incline had already increased to the extent of having to slightly lean in to the slope in order to gain momentum. The ramparts were about seven or eight metres wide. It was when I approached the steps that the fun began.

The narrow steps that lead up to the first tower were steep. There was a hand rail but due to the number of people stopping on the steps against the hand rail to take a selfie or two it made this aide useless as an apparatus for stability or support. Many of today’s tourists wore orange sweatshirts. Some of these inconsiderate people were climbing the steps in groups of three or four then stopping, whilst they posed for yet another photo, causing a bottleneck on the steps. Half way to the first tower I stopped at a rampart to admire the view and proceeded to engage one of the ‘orange jerseys’ in conversation. He was a local volunteer and today our visit clashed with a group of three hundred people, part of an Afro-Asian Youth festival. As I ascended further, past the first tower, the crowds seemed to dwindle and the climb became more pleasant and less crowded…or would have done if my legs hadn’t started to feel the burn!! At the third tower, my heart was beating so rapidly, it was not registering on my heart monitor. Whilst resting I spotted antisocial behaviour from a couple who had made it this far. They seemed to be with the Afro-Asian group but weren’t wearing the orange sweatshirt. One of the perpetrators, a female, has the most magnificent platinum blond tresses that reached passed her waist and were so tightly plaited they form, what could pass for a tribal head dress. The bitch in me thought that they are probably extensions anyway!! She and her accomplice were scratching something in to the stonework of the Wall. During this mindless display of graffiti a Canadian tourist passed them and without stopping he turned over his shoulder, looking in the direction of the vandals and screamed ‘Bull s**t. That’s f**kin’ bull s**t, man’. Now whether it was the message in the graffiti, that riled him or the actual act that he didn’t agree with, I will never know as I was unsighted at this stage. I was also going to give them a piece of my mind but realised I was struggling to string two words together to due to my recent exertion and didn’t want to sound like a babbling idiot!! (or I should say more so than usual!!) Later I asked Ping what is the Penalty for causing such an offence: ‘They tell you to stop doing it as it is not allowed!!’

‘and….?’

‘No ‘and’. No penalty. Just stop doing it!!’

I didn’t want to push the issue or make any flippant remark because a Party official may be listening and intervene by asking me to ‘stop doing it!!’

After ten minutes resting and taking a few photos I checked the heart monitor again and it registered 140 bpm!! Looking up, past the workers who were perched on the ‘wrong’ side of the wall, cutting the grass, I could see a further two towers. So far, this section of the Wall had taken me fifty minutes. I had left some of our group way down below but Godfrey and Les were somewhere up there; at least at the fourth tower, possibly they made it to five. For this intrepid explorer, the ascent was over as I started the climb back down to the bottom. The steps of this particular section of the Great Wall are surprisingly well maintained but the issue remained to be the height of each step. The steps were not evenly spaced so while three or four steps may have a six inch drop the next step could drop ten inches then down to five. This made for a very uneven descent. As the bottom of the Wall came in to sight I started to pass some remarkable people. I passed at least three people who were climbing the wall with the aid of the hand rail (the Afro-Asian Youth Festival had long since dispersed!) and walking stick. These stalwarts obviously had mobility difficulties but the look of determination in their faces prevailed. For these folk I had no issue with giving way as I moved out in to the centre of the steps in order to let them continue with their holding on to the hand rail to aide their slow but sure ascent. I was recovering in the seating area near the entrance to the wall in the shadow of a cafeteria and large souvenir shop, in the company of most of our group when Annamie, who had become my camera consultant during this trip due to her affiliation to the Photographic Society of South Africa, reappeared. Having managed, and proud of the fact that I ascended to the third tower, I now learned that there were eight towers to the top of that particular section of the wall!!

An hour’s drive back from Huanghua, we stopped at the Olympic Park situated in the far north of Beijing. Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympic Games which made a huge impact on the world stage showing China in a whole new light. The production and delivery of the Games were both sleek and lavish and the legacy from this era is the 90,000 all-seater National Stadium affectionately known as the ‘Bird Nest’ due to its unique design.

Before Ping let us all loose on the Olympic Park, she gave us an introduction to the site. Opposite the National Stadium is the IBM tower next to which are two identical apartment dwellings followed by a slightly taller apartment block. The design is such that the tower represents the neck and head of a dragon serpent, the two smaller blocks signifies the body with the third block, the tail. Very ingenious but an explanation was necessary as on our approach, Les shouted out ‘Hey, look at that building shaped like a bottle opener!!’ During our ‘brief’ brief, I was becoming conscious of several passer-bys taking candid photos with their mobile phones of our group. One blazon onlooker decided to take a closer look at this diverse collection of Western Tourists and almost joined the ‘huddle’. In fact, she took time to pose for me as I lifted my camera to capture the moment!!

To advance on to the 1.5km wide strip of sterile concrete known as the Olympic Park we had to pass through a security gate with scanner and x-ray machine for back packs and other bulky bags. I noticed an array of prohibited goods signs above the entrance into the Park. These were displayed in a red bordered circle with a red diagonal line struck through a silhouette of the offensive item. The usual suspects of ‘guns’, ‘knives’, fireworks’ were displayed but I can’t for the life of me understand why saxophones are forbidden (see photo!!) I then noticed that ‘pick axes’ and ‘shovels’ were also a ‘no, no’. That probably explains why you’d never see the seven dwarves roaming around these parts!!!

There are mini trains shunting visitors the length and breadth of the Olympic Park from the entrance in the south to the entrance to the Forest Park, north of the Olympic Green. The aquatic Centre lies next to the national Stadium but due to time constraints (lunch time was almost upon us!!) I never made it that far. One final word about the Olympic park; the wide esplanade runs from North to South. This is so it is aligned with the Forbidden City. Feng Shui is evident everywhere in China, not least incorporated into architecture and City Planning which is ironic because the name of the Chief Planning Officer in the Beijing Council is Mr Feng Shui!!

Lunch time was upon us. Ping had boxed clever for this meal time. She killed two birds with one stone…and that stone was Jade. The restaurant was above a Jade Factory. We spent twenty minutes being told then shown how jade is cut, shaped and polished, what colours it comes in (yes, I thought Jade was only Green as well. Apparently you can buy White, Red or Black Jade!) As expected, we finally ended up in a very large outlet!! A quick wander around, trying to look interested, a chat with the assistants then Ping, like a little oriental sheepdog, rounded us all up and shepherded us upstairs for the, what by now was expected, Chinese banquet.

Back on the bus knowing that we leave our final Chinese Banquet behind us we head for a local Hutong to seek out the notorious Beijing Rickshaw drivers. Hutongs are a type of narrow streets or labyrinth maze of stone alleyways. In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining these residences to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is now used to refer to such neighbourhoods.

Our bus pulled up alongside one lone rickshaw. We all disembarked excited at the prospect of this centuries old traditional style of transport. Either they were not expecting us or the rest of the rickshaws for hire’ were having a late lunch!! The sole rickshaw attended and Ping engaged in a short conversation. He then pulled out his mobile phone, dialed a number and spoke. Within thirty seconds, an army of rickshaw cycles came hurtling from all directions and all congregated at the very spot where we were waiting. The Chinese rickshaw is a tricycle with a two-seater canopied carriage bolted on the rear behind the cyclist. Manual rickshaws (known as pulled rickshaws), where the operative would pull the fare behind whilst running was considered to be a symbol of oppression of the working class. These were all eliminated in China after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Once we were all comfortably seated, the driver jumped in to the saddle, turned to us, said something in Cantonese (probably a loose translation: ‘Hold on to your coolies’!!) and we were off. Eight Rickshaws jostled for position as we tore down the narrow street. We were witnessing a bunch of frustrated Formula One drivers as one rikshaw cut us up, missing our front wheel by mere millimetres. We were all following the same route as the squeaking of eight sets of rusty brakes filled the air as the parade turned left down another narrow alley. No sooner had we caught our breath than suddenly the lead rikshaw ground to a halt. A comedy pile up ensued with all rickshaw drivers showing their slow reaction time. I left out a guffaw of laughter which could have been nervous energy as two rickshaws tried to swerve out of the way of the lead rickshaw but swerved in to the road rather than away thus colliding with each other. In reality the impact was practically non-existent for the passengers (myself included) who when beckoned to alight may have been stirred but certainly weren’t shaken by this experience!!

We had arrived at a courtyard residence all expecting this to be a similar experience to the Ger in Mongolia where we met a local family. The entrance to the courtyard was through a double door. Ping mentioned that this dwelling once belonged to a high-ranking official as there are five steps leading up to the door. The number of steps dictates the importance of the resident. Almost immediately, Carol, Godfrey and I, who had all done the obvious thing, said in unison: ‘but there are six steps!!'

As if Ping was expecting this question to arise (as I’m sure it wasn’t the first time someone had pointed this out), replied: ‘Ah, so you spotted the extra step. As you can see, the first step is much shallower than the others. This was added on later!!’ Good comeback!! That lady has an answer for everything!!

We spent ten minutes or so walking around the courtyard and were free to wander into any of the four buildings that flanked it on each side. The families that occupied these buildings were long since gone and we were now meandering in and out of a museum.

Time to board our rickshaw for the rest of our ‘race’ through the Hutong. I couldn’t remember who my driver was but there was no need. The driver remembered me!! The rest of the ride was pretty much like the first part. The Cannonball run meets stock cars meets Whacky races. What I never understood about Dick dastardly is that he would rush ahead and hide waiting to ambush the rest of the field. Why didn’t he just carry on instead of lying in wait? He would have won the race every week!! After pushing his way to the front of the pack, our cyclist driver just ran out of puff and practically the whole field sped past us. ‘Drat, drat and double drat!!!’

After an invigorating trip through the hutong, everybody was now ready for a nice cup of ‘Rosie Lee’. Ping could do better than that. She took us to a tea shop called Ten Fu (I thought she said Ty-phoo which would have been more apt!!) where we were actually greeted by Rosie Li, one of the many tea experts, who ushered us all into a small ante room where we took part in the world-famous tea ceremony.

We all sat around a large wooden bench with the tea meister facing her audience. Jars of a variety of ‘weed’ from a deep green through to very light brown were lined up alongside a dozen or so small wooden trays that contained a cylindrical porcelain vessel no taller than three inches with a two inch diameter which was referred to as a ‘sniffer tea cup’, together with a regular tea cup although there is nothing regular about a cup that wouldn’t look out of place in a dolls house!! The tea pot that was used in the ceremony was of brown clay. With the kettle boiled, the tea pot was heated up. This was done, not by pouring the boiling water into the empty tea pot but by pouring the water over the outside of the tea pot. There were five teas we sampled during the ceremony; a green tea, a black tea, a tea with red bits in, a tea that looked more like tobacco and tea that was neither black nor green. I was told this was oolong. I didn’t know oolong was a colour!! From my descriptions so far, you can see that I’m not exactly a tea connoisseur!! Different teas require water at different temperatures. The oolong water has to be between 85-100 degrees Celsius whilst the water suitable for the perfect green tea should be between 77-86 degrees. Even black tea should only be brewed in water ‘off the boil’ at 98.88 degrees Celsius. Now I knew she was taking the piss!! We took her word that the water was at the correct temperature. We all had a smell of the various teas before Rosie scooped an amount of tea into a fancy tea strainer then, holding the tea pot at shoulder height, proceeded to pour the water on to the tea leaves. The size and quality of the leaves determine the brewing time (otherwise known as the ‘steep’) Our tea was finally poured in to the sniffer cup where we were given the opportunity to smell the tea. And right enough, the drink I had before me did indeed smell like tea!! We then inverted the regular tea cup and rested it on top of the sniffer cup then in one fell swoop tipped the tea from the sniffer cup in to the regular tea cup. This process was repeated for all five teas. I was pleasantly surprised that each tea had its own distinct taste and aroma. At the end of the tea ceremony, we were each handed a card, in the shape of a leaf, with how to make a cup of tea. For someone whose repertoire of premium teas ranges from Tetley’s to PG Tips I didn’t think I needed a card to tell me to: add teabag to cup, pour boiling water, stir around with tea spoon, add milk, drink tea (remembering to remove teabag!!)

So, that is pretty much the end of our odyssey. Our 6,000 mile adventure has seen us traverse the vast plains of Siberia; slept in a Ger and quaffed bowls of fermented horse milk, had our bogie changed right under our noses (so to speak!!) We even climbed a wall (it was great!!) It was hard work (the overall trip, not the wall!!). It was even exhausting at times but this was a never to be forgotten experience, something I would fully recommend to anyone, given half the chance.

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Photos

A selection of tour guides
The team that made the whole thing real!

Comments

[Luismi Vetere]

Beijing trip
Chris - great blog and very inspirational. I will never sip tea in the same way again and if I ever go to Chine I will definitely not bring a saxaphone with me!