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Ah Q
Sanlitun bar boy accepts punishment after failing to drag enough customers into his master's bar.There is one certain prediction that can be made about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing - it will be a bad one for ducks. Roast duck is still the main speciality here and duck restaurants abound. Whole ducks, bagged for takeaway, are sold at almost any kind of outlet as if they were merely cigarettes, phonecards or lottery tickets. Some might feel it fitting if Glen Hoddle, the once manager of England's football team who parted their company after some injudicious remarks as to the behaviour of the disabled in previous lives, should be reincarnated as a Beijing Duck. Others might feel Robert Kilroy-Silk a more worthy candidate.
Arriving in Beijing after travelling more than 5000km by train across Asia is a bit like spending several days climbing a mountain only to find there is a road to the top, restaurants, a big car park and hundreds of German tour coaches. The sense of disappointment is appeased somewhat when you realise all the people on top of the mountain are really friendly, and seem to be having a big party. Our first couple of days in Beijing were hectic and fun-packed, Kim saying she could hardly think of a nicer
city. This isn't down to the city's main tourist attractions, which in many ways disappoint, but to the simple fact that almost everywhere you go, if you smile you will get a smile back. If you turn up at midnight outside a tiny little front room "restaurant" buried deep in the traditional Hutongs (typically Asian local dwelling districts, ramshackle buildings in a complex maze of narrow alleys, poor lighting and people just sat watching the world go by), ask for some beers and to sit outside and they will gladly manhandle their restaurant out onto the street for you, and stay open as long as you keep ordering.
Even when they're trying to be the Chinese don't seem that threatening (although I'm quite sure they can be if you get on the wrong side of the wrong people). When I got myself stick on my rented bike in the middle of the two immense streams of traffic between Tian'anmen Square and The Forbidden City, the policeman stationed in this Chinese traffic equivalent of Baghdad went ballistic. My babel fish was a bit faulty but from his expression and the tone of his voice I think he was saying "Get
Blind musician
Better than the tone deaf ones on Pop Idol your miserable moth-eaten hide out here you maggot-ridden cockroach before I take down your particulars and feed them to my Russian grandmother and her Mah Jong club in a nice Mongolian risotto." As it was I just felt like giving him a hug and telling him to calm down. Had this been a Russian cop I would have been quaking for a week, and no doubt my wallet would have been considerably lighter.
Our train from Ulaan Baatar was largely uneventful, although our cabin was cramped due to a Mongolian family passing off their eight year old future Sumo champion as a baby and hence only paying for two bunks. The staff in the elaborately decorated restaurant car once again proved quality of service is inversely proportional to smartness of uniform and got my back up, along with many others, by regularly turfing people out to make way for block bookings by tour groups. The only upside was they moved us so many times they lost track of the bill and we only paid for a third of what we had eaten. I knew it was going to be bad when I saw that they served "Tourist" as one
of the main dishes on the menu.
At Beijing Zhan station we stepped off the train and were immediately presented with some photos of Leo Hostel, in the hutongs just south of Tian'anmen Square, with an double room at 150 yen (15 yen = 1 gbp) per night, so we were bundled into a minibus and minutes later were installed in a rather tatty but perfectly adequate ensuite room right in the heart of Beijing.
Beijing is a big big big city. Whereas other cities have built in on themselves, erecting taller and taller buildings, the centre of Beijing has kept the spacious layout of the old days, centred on the Forbidden City. Don't worry, Beijing has its fair share of skyscrapers, but they tend to encircle the middle on a radius of 3 - 6 km, rather than dominate it. Getting around, therefore, can be time consuming. The metro system is cheap, clean, fast, efficient and safe. The only drawback is it doesn't cover much of the massive area it needs to. Expect three more lines before the Olympics. The bus network is comprehensive but slow and confusing to non-Chinese. Taxis are very reasonable, and in the
Metro
Beijing's metro is cheap, clean, fast, safe and efficient end we resorted to this method of transport when the metro wasn't sufficient. As you might guess, traffic is a big problem in Beijing.
If you like Chinese food then it seems there is no bad food to be had here. At worst you'll have good food, probably very good food, and quite possibly most excellent food. We've been warned about smaller places but so far we've mostly just gone for places packed full of Chinese, and we haven't been disappointed (well once, see later). The prices are generally very good also, although the more able-bodied fellows you can muster to eat with you the better value it will be, as two dishes for two will actually feed three average troughers, and four if you have some dainty eaters in the group. Prices of dishes vary from 10 yen to 50 yen and higher for the more exotic. Stick to the staples familiar to most in the west and you will be nearer the lower end of the price band. The variation of food prices between restaurants is much less than that off drinks, so choose your place with this in mind. We've paid 2.5 Yen for a 660ml
bottle of Yanjing Beer, and 30 Yen the same bottle up the road. 5 - 10 Yen seems standard for funny foreigners. One evening we met with Brigitte and Nico again, and as Brigitte is has a degree in Chinese ample food and drink four people came to only 63 Yen.
However if you don't care for much for Chinese food and are on a budget then you'll probably struggle. Breakfast has been the worst for us, and again we've had to resort to McMuffins more than once.
Our first full meail in Beijing was in the Sanlitun ex-pat bar area. We passed a swanky looking place full of westerners with a trendy sign saying "The Loft". We thought we'd take a look, fully expecting to be denied access by the bouncers on account of our shabby attire, but of course we were ushered in and swiftly seated. Beer was expensive by normal Beijing standards at 30 yen for a litre jug, but cheap in relation to tourist prices. We started with satay and thai beef salad, and then a spanking red curry plus a fantastic stir fry dish of roast duck with lemongrass, garlic, shallots (I think)
Lotus
Kim played grasshopper to this woman's master, who insisted she should sit in the Lotus position. and a spicy barbeque sauce. The bill came to about 90 Yen and, with the exception of a place in Munich, was the best Thai food I've had outside Thailand. It is worth noting that Northern China is the least renowned area for its cuisine.
Afterwards, whilst looking for the "real expat experience" we stumbled on the main Sanlitun strip and partook of the full Sanlitun tourist experience. Being westerners we
chose which of the many identical bars to sit outside. Once installed we watched the stage show with rapt attention - no, not the three girls crooning coyly on stage, but the young laddie out front whose job it was to ensure a steady stream of customers. He was competing with teams of young maidens dressed in nurses uniforms, knee high boots and Heineken logos but he was more than up to the challenge. Like some two-pistolled hero from John Woo, he would grab two assailants and, with a few choice words, swiftly dispatch them into the bar, then, sensing trouble behind, spin around and grab two more, repeating the process. Only women who adopted the haughty Russian "Don't mess with me Vladi (boyo)" look escaped. All others
succumbed, being ushered in in a state of giggling confusion to where our hero's able wingman awaited to ensure they were immediately seated and sated. No men escaped, at least not whilst the belly dancing act was on stage. To a man they gave in to our hero's suave but firm persuasion, entering with a look of "I don't normally go into this sort of place you know, but he's such a nice chap it would seem rude not too." Had Tom Cruise been younger and Chinese then he would have starred in the lead role of the biopic about our Sanlitun star's life - "Cocktail", or some such.
So we've done food and transport - lets take a look at the sights. Our guidebooks pointed us to four main attractions: Tian'anmen Square, the Forbidden City, The Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. Well, to be honest, we didn't find any of them that impressive - but there are reasons for this. To me the most jaw-dropping place would have been Tian'anmen Square, just for its sheer scale. Trouble is, they built a huge great memorial to Mao in the middle, ruining the vast great expanse that once
held more than a million people listening to Mao's speeches, and again in 1989 a similar number gathered in the now smaller square to be indiscriminately slaughtered by tanks and guns. I shouldn't grumble - it is a Chinese place for the Chinese, not for me, and to visit it and Mao's mausoleum is still a kind of pilgrimage for many Chinese.
The three other main attractions share one thing in common - traditional Chinese pagoda style architecture. There are two problems with this. One is that it is quite common, adorning restaurants, train stations and many public buildings. The other is that it is not jaw-droppingly staggering, like a huge ornate cathedral or mosque. To met it seems Chinese temples are places to get to know and love over time, places to be, places to use. You can't just wander in, go "wow - that's good", take a few piccies and leave, because they weren't built for that. Again, very often, space is used rather than height. If you saw these places from above you would instantly see the impressive layout and adherence to feng shui, but, with the exception of the Forbidden City, you can't really do
this. As well as places to hold court and worship, these are places for rest and repose; the Temple of Heaven is still used by the locals for this, as would be the Summer Palace were it not for the high entry price and thousands of yackety-clacking tourist cameras. Typical of our hectic selves we only gazed wistfully at beautifully positioned pagodas as we rushed past thinking it would be a nice place to chill if we had the time. Only at the Temple of Heaven did the Chinese themselves force this on us; we sat and watched in admiration as they sang, danced (flamenco and ballroom and anything goes) and played hackysack (with a shuttlecock-like device made from brightly coloured feathers and disk-shaped weights - buy one, it's great fun).
It was here that we first understood the "Art of War", one of the few Chinese books available in China in English translation. It seems all the Chinese have read it, as in our photography war they are winning. They have many more pictures of me than I have of them. It's a refreshing change to be asked to pose rather than thrusting a big scary camera in
some reluctant locals face; it also takes a little getting used to having a small crowd peering over your shoulder looking at each new digital image as you take night shots on a tripod. It takes even more getting used to having tramps and down-and-outs come along and advise you on composition (often they're right). It seems photography has taken off in China in a big way. Sure, mostly it is the "loved ones pose outside famous monument" genre made famous by the Japanese, but I have never seen such an array of tripods, top-end lenses and film cameras as I have in Beijing - all owned by Chinese.
So, by all means, visit these attractions, but instead of getting sucked into the Wallace and Gromit wensleydale production line, squirrel yourself away somewhere, take a picnic, buy a hackysack, leave your camera at home. We didn't, but we should have.
Our honeymoon with Beijing lasted precisely two and a half days, and was ended, of course, by those blasted ducks. The distinguished and happily crazed British Journalist James Cameran was a rare westener visiting Red China in 1953 (I think), and he ate Roast Duck in a hutong
just South of Tian'anmen Square, so what better than to emulate him. We chose Lichun Kaoyadian, stuck in the middle of the hutong in a "traditional" courtyard. The surroundings were not exactly celubrious, which of course is the whole point of the place. The problem is that when filled with western tourists it ceases to be a hutong where people live, and just becomes a shabby rundown tourist joint. I'm being harsh here - if we'd been in the room at the back with the eight interesting looking Chinese blokes sat at the big round table I would have loved it. Kim liked it anyway. For me the biggest disappointment was the duck. Don't get me wrong, this was probably the best prepared and cooked duck I've ever eaten - the skin was beautifully crisp and when you bit into the meat the juices and fat rolled into your mouth. But it just didn't seem to taste of much. Maybe it is my heathen palatte, preferring big Aussie Shiraz's to more subtle reds. Or maybe my Glen Hoddle just wasn't free range enough, battery farmed and forced into a life of computer programming before being given the premature chop. I
wonder if Logan's run was written by ducks. I had always though Turkeys.
Anyway, a mediocre night was made worse by Kim contracting mild food poisoning which troubled her for a couple of days, and I also struggled a little the next day. It was probably as much the pace of things as the duck, so we wisely traded a day in the Forbidden City for a day resting in the hostel. By this time we had, mistakenly, moved hostels, to the large modern IYHA place just opposite Beijing Zhan station. We hadn't actually found the "hostel" part of our previous hostel, where you can book tours and stuff, and so we had booked our two days at the Great Wall with the bigger place. This may have been advantageous price-wise but it was a bit of unecessary hassle. We had wanted to sleep out on the Great Wall in a watchtower, but lacking kit we plumped for the Simatai Hostel option, which turned out to be a good one. Apparently if you google you can find some chaps running an overnight camp in one of the Jinshanling watchtowers who provide all you need, but we only found this
out after the fact.
Richard Nixon put it best - "That is a great wall." Not a lot more to say really, but I'll say it anyway. The thing to do if you read Lonely Planet rather than Fodors or Conde Naste Traveller, is to walk the section from Jinshanling to Simatai. This I would highly recommend. The trouble is, with Beijing traffic and several hostel pickups, the 100km to Jinshanling takes four hours. It is a fairly hilly 10km up and down walk along the wall, most likely in hot humid weather, so you need to allow four hours. Add it up and it becomes a long day if you do it return from Beijing. The hostel at Simatai is good, if expensive, and is actually a very picturesque place in its own right with a damned lake and beautiful hilly scenery. It is touristy, which in this case is good, meaning there is a nice lakeside terrace to sit on, sip drinks and take in the rays. But the best bit about staying overnight is you cang et onto the wall and be on your own, which you just cannot do during the day. I'm quite sure
Hutong Henry
This bloke just wouldn't let me go without taking his photo. Sun Tzu was a hawker, not a military strategist, and the "Art of War" is about extracting money from tourists, not defeating armies.
Imagine rolling up at Coniston to go for a run over Coniston Old Man. You set off and a friendly woman of indedeterminate age with a bag on her back joins you. She stays with you as you run up, sometimes running off ahead, sometimes lagging behind, sometimes disappearing and popping up unexpectedly, always smiling and cheery, always talking, saying lots of things that you don't understand. Frustrated you pick up the pace, but you can't shake her or her indefatigable attitude. At the top you choose to rest. At this point it has just been like running with Jo Smith, but suddenly you cross some invisible line, and your new daemon, or "supergranny" as two British lasses named theirs, turns nasty. "You buy book. You buy book, then you (me) go home." Since I was happy (and wanted) to stay on the wall until sunset I decided to sit out the negotiation and see what happened - the pressure of time was on our side for once. Kim carried on to avoid the imminent conflagration,
Awwww, Oz mun!
Chinese brickies start behaving oddly after watching to many re-runs of Auf Wiedersehen Pet. and so I sat and watched as our until now pleasant but unwanted guide turned herself from Smeagol into Gollum, from a cheery soul into the possessed hell-child from the Exorcist, in an attempt to shame me into buying. She was joined by three males, one not disimilar to Jackie Chan, who, as we toiled over hill and down dale along the wall, neatly contoured around avoiding all the climb, reappearing suddenly like the shopkeeper in Mr Ben. I had figured that given the effort she had made she, and they, were genuinelly poor. I, and they, knew I was going to pay - the question was simply how much? We had some laughs, but the general mood was of agression and disgust. How can this westerner with his expensive camera be quibbling about paying 3x Beijing prices for two cans of beer and a bottle of water when we carried them all the way up here? I guess like the African troops who fought in the World Wars and saw their colonial masters being sent to die like the dogs they themselves were, these hawkers could do with seeing some of the realities in the West. Had I been
able to speak Chinese they would have got an earful, and I would probably have ended up sounding like Norman Tebbit. As it was I simply frowned and went on my way to rejoing Kim.
A brief diversion - the best straightforward photo of this section of the wall is at the Jinshanling end, but you might miss it. When you join the wall turn right (West) not left (East) to Simatai. Head past the first watchtower and stop just short of the second. Looking back you should be able to see at least the entirety of the Jinshanling section, and if it is not hazy you can see all the way to the Simatai East section.
On rejoining Kim we were at last alone on the wall. All the hawkers had gone, all the ticket sellers had gone and all the tourists had gone. With good reason, as a powerful thunderstorm was approaching. Oddly, this was a fantastic experience, sheltering alone in a watchtower as we were assailed on all sides by the gods of thunder, lightning, wind and rain. It also helped to clear the air - the haze from earlier in the day was swept
away with the deluge. We continued down to Simatai with the lightning flashing around us and, as if the whole purpose of the storm was to expel our mere mortal selves, once we stepped off the wall the storm passed.
We checked into our hostel, which, typically, had not been informed of our booking by the tour agency. Then I went out almost immediately to see what sunset would be like in the clearing light. The wall at Simatai spans a reasonable gorge - perhaps gorge is a bit strong. Looking up from the lake the East and West sections form a V-shape, which is crossed by a 5 yen suspension bridge. As the sun was still high in the sky I started to climb the steep Eastern section, where the wall travels precariously along a series of razorback ridges. I ended up climbing as far as I could before the wall becomes to dangerous to continue along. The view from here was incredibly beautiful, with the Jinshanling section framed by sunset and jagged peaks all around. I grabbed a few sunset shots before racing back down the uneven narrow steps to get back to Simatai before all the
restaurants shut.
Next morning we repeated the climb of the East section, again getting stuck in a thunderstorm with half-centimetre diameter hailstones - how does this happen when it has been 30 degrees plus moments before - and rounding it off with lunch in the sunshine on the hostel terrace overlooking the lake. Bliss.
I'd read somewhere (maybe it was Pearl Buck) that after living in China for fifty years one knows nothing about it. Here are a few random notes with that in mind.
Next to our hostel was a small supermarket. On returning around midnight one night I saw people inside so went to see if I could buy some water. They motioned for me to come in, when I realised they were laying out mattresses and blankets to sleep for the night. Next morning they were all at work, bright and breezy. I wonder if they ever leave the place.
The streets of Beijing are very clean. There is no chewing gum, no litter, and we never saw any street cleaners (we saw plenty in the main tourist attractions). Many of the beautiful public gardens are the same. They are open to be
vandalised but they remain in pristine condition, beautiful and peaceful places to rest and replenish in the midst of the hectic city.
There are plenty of beggars on the streets of Beijing, but fewer than there were in London before the government effectively made begging illegal. There are all kinds, from the elderly down on their luck, to the misformed, damaged or young, forced out by their parents. There seem to be a disproportionate number of burn victims. The chinese people in Beijing seem to respond positively to these unfortunates, both with patronage and donations. I fully understand the range of horrors perpetrated both by the government and people in China (I've written my letters to prison governers at the request of Amnesty), but from watching people on the street it seems the common mass of Chinese in Beijing have not yet entirely abandoned their own.
In Africa there are a limited number of plastic bottles in circulation, which is a good thing. The deposit on glass bottles is steep, enough to ensure that the poor will collect them and return them. In China it seems they have done the same with plastic bottles. Walking through the Hutongs
an old woman came up to me and started pawing me. She wouldn't leave me alone and I exclaimed "get off me you crazed o....h you want my bottle." It is an excellent idea, except that on occasions the bottle collectors can be a little agressive, both to their suppliers and their competitors - we saw one old man chased off by a collector with Downs Syndrome clutching a sharply-pronged stick after we had given the old man our bottle. We saw them later and thankfully they had become friends again.
As you probably know, kite flying is big in China, and they have some cracking kites. The most common are long strings with a sail every metre, that tower hundreds of feet above Tian'anmen Square and all the public parks at night. At the north end of the Forbidden City what I thought were fireworks as I concentrated on taking a photo of the scene turned out to be a kite with LED's flying high enough in the sky to get entangled with a low-flying plane.
China is all about Yin and Yang and there is a lot of sense in this. One of the plaques in
Siamatai East
The wall continues in an unrepaired state along this precipitous jagged ridge. the Forbidden City advised that to be a good ruler you should look at everything and then take the mean and follow that. This seems pretty good advice, but something that often seems to be forgotten in our Western world of right and wrong, black and white, good and evil, us and them.
On the bus to the Summer Palace they show TV programs, and we watched the animated public information films, which we could understand. There seems to be an ongoing campaign to smarten the Chinese people up before the Olympics. One of the cartoons clearly showed that being loud and noisy is not smart and clever, and people should try to be quieter. Another seemed to say that it is bad to pick up bears, whales and tigers with giant chopsticks. Maybe it is working - according to Brigitte and Nico who were here three years ago the level of spitting has decreased dramatically, except if you sleep next to the washroom on the train, where a night long opera of guttural arias still takes place.
So, my money is on the Olympics in Beijing being absolutely cracking. Join Amnesty International, put your morals aside, and
get yourself some tickets.
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Rachel
non-member comment
wow
I read your blog on Mongolia and this one on china- you guys are very brave and talented! Very nice pictures. Good luck with your travels