Golden Week

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Departure

Three or four colours paint a wet morning aboard the commuter train, dark green for lush mountains, dark blue for shadows that hang beneath grey clouds and shiny brown slippery clay roof tiles. The rain has let up after nearly two days. In a sky more often ablaze and unnoticed, inexhaustible clouds, graceful, frenzied, fly onward. The streets, cars, bridges, buildings, all is clean and waking to a soft grey morning as though cement could bloom like an hydrangea. We are now travelling at 285 km/h, a steel serpent slipping through the mountains. Salary men seemingly dressed as always for their own funeral, dark suit, white shirt, ordinary, inoffensive ties read the papers. Th landscape takes on a childish appearance. The houses are made of matchboxes, the trees made of moss, telephone poles and rail ties are expensive modeling kits. My childhood reasserts itself, an imagination shaken to the surface when thrown toward the unknown at incredible speed.

First Impressions

Since first travelling to China, almost three years ago, for my Golden Week Holiday, I have grown more and more fascinated with the country. In those three years, apart from the Sudan and the Middle East, China has continued to capture headlines, whether for SARS, the bird flu virus, peasant uprisings, industrial pollution, military spending, corrupt officials, relations with Japan, with Africa, with the 6 party talks or the greater Asian economic community. The Western media paints a discontent people whose government ignores them, destroys the environment, and has seized the reigns of Asia's economy. It might appear to some like a mirror image of the Super Power across the Pacific. Growing up in Vancouver where a quarter of the population claims Chinese ancestry, it seems to me now almost like censorship, that the education system emphasized relations with Britain while altogether ignoring local Asian influences. French was the official second language and taught at a majority of high schools. Wouldn't Mandarin have made more sense though? And not once did the textbooks shed any light on this nation's great history, judging it far less influential than Greece, Rome and Egypt. On my first trip to China, I didn't know what to expect and I was pleasantly surprised.

Aboard the airport shuttle into town, my first discovery was the relatively high number of Pekinese dogs out for their walks in the city streets. I didn't see any other breed in fact. Midday, Beijing was hot, the sky was a brown-blue and traffic appeared to flow rather easily along the many wide boulevards. Everywhere, hard hat crews were busy constructing, cranes stood scattered across the skyline next to half erected mass apartment blocks and high-rises. I booked into a hostel set in a quiet hutong a few blocks north of the train station, a few blocks east of Wangfujing. The rooms were clean, spacious and highly affordable as was the all day kitchen. In the mornings I practised tai-chi on the rooftop, overlooking the old tiled roofs and lush courtyards. Another early riser practised his tai-chi with a sword. I was careful not to disturb him. Most days in the capital, I borrowed a rental bike from the hostel to explore the sights and scenic hutongs, including the Summer Palace. At times, traffic was thick and assertiveness was required. Nonetheless, this tactic got me into one or two accidents with taxicabs. The back-roads, off limit to cars, were a joy to pedal around, especially south of QianmenDaijie and in the lake district. Using my guidebook somewhat like a to do list, each day I took in a new part of the city; wandering Tiananmen Square and the vast Forbidden City, losing myself in Qianmen Daijie Hutong, haggling in Hongquiao Market and touring the Temple of Heaven, sketching fragrant peonies in Beihai Park and Jinshang Park, cycling Shichahai, the lake district and visiting its many mansions or sipping jasmine tea in the lakeside cafes, snapping pics of the Drum Tower, Bell Tower, Baita Si, GuangJi Si, Tianning Si and the country's second largest Confucian Temple.

Most sights were rather crowded, as all of China is on holiday in early May, clogging the trains and tourist sights with their improved incomes. In snail pace traffic headed NE towards the airport, it took over three hours to reach the Great Wall at Jinshanling. Surprisingly though, the crowds did not follow us as far as Jinshanling and I had the time of my life climbing the towers and doing sketches of one of the great wonders of the modern world. In hindsight I would have arranged to stay at the new hostel at the foot of Simitai where our hike concluded, to witness the next day's sunrise. No complaints, however, of my hostel back in the city, central, quiet and come each evening travelers convene on the rooftop patio for drinks. I have met and heard amazing stories from fellow travelers.

Datong: a morning stroll back in time

It was a bit of a struggle to arrange train tickets to Datong. Only eight hours from Beijing, but with all the time and energy needed to arrange the trip, it seemed Datong was still a distant border post against the northern tribes. The station lobby and outdoor courtyard were packed with travellers and their luggage, snacking, sleeping, all killing time in varying unravelled states. Eventually I managed to book a birth on a night train to Datong. After pronouncing it a dozen ways, I finally achieved an understanding head nod. The employee behind the ticket-booth had had no idea what destination I had initially requested, a small town near Wutai Shan where one could catch a bus to the famous Buddhist peak. I settled for Datong, reversing my circle tour, and hoped to make it to the mountains from there.
Early morning, peaking my head out the train, I was introduced to Central China's yellow earth, a loess soil settled by the wind and rivers, where homes are often built into the chasms and low cliff faces. Still early morning, I tried booking in at several hotels around the station in Datong. No luck. My first glimpse of rural China, a scrubby city square fronting a train station was both fascinating and frustrating. I couldn't communicate with the staff of the many nearby hotels. Were they full? Did they forbid foreign guests? I was tired after a near sleepless night on the train's narrow bunk in a car full of strange noises. Travelling China independently without any real language skills, I quickly realized, would require more time and energy than I could afford on this trip. Back inside the station, I spoke with an agent from CITS, the official travel guide for foreigners in China. He recommended I hurry and book a return journey that night to Beijing. One day would be enough to explore the caves, hanging temple and still have time to explore a little of Datong. I forewent my desire to visit Wutaishan, which I was warned was still under freezing temperatures anyway. No, I had packed for a warm spring break. The CITS tour didn't start for a couple hours so after booking my tickets, I hopped a local bus into the Datong's city centre for an unforgettable morning stroll. There was little to no car traffic. The streets were narrow and home to derelict single floored wood buildings, none of which seemed to have any straight lines. Bricks and beams sagged and squeezed precariously. The sky was a crisp blue painted with a few feathery wisps of cloud. Locals gathered to buy their breakfast from little stalls wheeled out onto the curb selling pork buns and other steaming unknown delectable. Along Main street old men pushed their carts, sweepers gathered the piles of rubbish and the old bell tower spoke of earlier times. For the intrepid, Independent travel in rural China, that is, in a town of slightly less than two million, does afford some eye-opening experiences.

The CITS tour group, about a dozen English-speaking foreigners, filling an Econoline-sized van, rode through town and out the west gate. The tour guide pointed out the old rammed earth walls, explained that tourism dollars slowly trickling into Shanxi would soon afford Datong a bit of a face lift. Shanxi is so far spared the giant cranes and high-rises of the East Coast. The tour guide explained a long standing joke comparing Shanxi and neighbouring Shaanxi province that while the former is a museum above ground, the latter is a museum below ground. Unfortunately for Shanxi province, its many temples and old city centres still do not receive the attention lauded on the unearthed terra cotta warriors. About 15km west of Datong, we reached the Yungang Grottoes, famed for their early Chinese Buddhist carvings, many of which still show patches of their original paint. Over sixteen-hundred years ago the Han Chinese were pushed south of the Yellow River by feuding nomadic non-Chinese tribes, including the Xianbei who eventually established the Northern Wei dynasty with its capital at Datong. Since the second century BCE, the courts of successive emperors had adopted Confucianism as official state ideology. This was partnered with Daoism, the native religion of most commoners. Buddhism's foreign influence was just beginning to trickle in across the towering peaks of Tibet. In Datong, the fifth emperor of the Northern Wei dynasty, a strict follower of Daoism, declared an edict to eradicate all Buddhism in China, including the killing or banishment of all nuns, monks and practitioners of this foreign ideology. However, the emperor met with an untimely death. It was seen by his heir as a divine message and he commissioned the construction of the first Buddhist caves at Yungang. Successive emperors continued this tradition for nearly a century until moving their capital to Luoyang, employing artists and sculptors from foreign lands to design places of homage and prayer, ensuring safe passage to Royals who'd descended to the Netherworld. In Luoyang, the practice was carried, establishing the Longmen Grottoes as a place of pilgrimage. Buddhism fell into disfavour and not until the Tang dynasty, more than a century later, was it to become the predominant religion, its royal patrons commissioning what is now seen as the peak expression in Chinese Buddhist art. The tour continued onto the Hanging Monastery, a wood structure dating originally to the Northern Wei dynasty. Located at the foot of the Henshan Mountains, we had to drive a couple hours across a grey-yellow desolate and picturesque landscape of low wind-blown mountains. There were a surprising number of tourists and at the site easily accommodated in the vast car park dominating the narrow valley. We queued for close to an hour zigzagging up the cliffside walkway. The monastery was originally constructed on beams cut into the soft rock-face to provide sanctuary from the floods that routinely swept through the valley. As it no longer provides either a religious retreat or a safe haven from floods, it has become quite plainly yet another tourist trap. Were it less crowded, were it infested with fewer tourist kitsch vendors, or had they preserved this heritage without the need for erecting a tasteless dragon amusement ride, I would have recommended a visit. Luckily I enjoy car rides so all in all the day was good fun. We returned to Datong with a couple hours of day light remaining. I checked out the famed nine dragon wall, the oldest in China, and the nearby Benevolent Monastery.

Chengde: Qing dynasty summer resort

Yet another train journey out of Beijing took me north-east into Hebei Province, to Chengde, home to the largest Imperial garden in China. The train pulled in late afternoon to pissing down rain. I was literally swarmed by a dozen hotel touts. It appeared I was the only foreigner in town and the local were suffering a poor start to the tourist season. I followed one tout, the kindest and most motherly one, back to her small hotel, adjacent the Summer palace entrance and down a lane of several similar looking mid-sized hotels. The room was kinda shabby but well heated and the bed was firm, and the shower, hot - a good deal for 65Y a night. I took an evening stroll through town, found a lane of outdoor food stalls, and sat under a tarpaulin next to some mangy looking locals. Oily and spicy aromas filled the cold air. The rain hit harder and harder on the tarpaulin and I enjoyed perhaps the best meal of my trip. The foul weather remained all next morning but seemed to exhaust itself by early afternoon. Aboard a rental bike, armed with a simple map the shop owner had offered me, I followed the river out of town skirting east along the walled Imperial resort. I'm always amazed how such short distances on maps can be such long journeys on a single gear bicycle. To the north of Chengde, the Qing emperors of the mid eighteenth century constructed hilltop monasteries in Tibetan and Mongolian designs to illustrate the variety of culture held within the vast empire. Despite the drizzle and cold wind, I paid a visit to half a dozen of the great temples, including Putuo, perhaps the grandest, an imitation of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Puning Si, housing a colossal wood statue of the Buddha, Pule Si and Shuxiang Si. Note bien that I paid a visit. All but one of these temples is run either by UNESCO or the government and entry requires an electronic coded ticket. I reached the last temple under a torrential sky. I had to jump a meter-wide stream along the street curb. It was enchanting to see though that at least on temple in Chengde still housed practising Lama monks. I still recall quite clearly, entering under a wine-red archway into a small courtyard where a large brass incense reliquary puffed away, and heard a deep voice chanting a mantra. The voice stopped abruptly, surprised by my appearance. I turned to catch the gaze of a young man, younger than myself probably, dark wet hair and a little stubble on his chin and over his lip, continue back to his sutras. Buddhism can be so sexy.

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Photos

early morning, Forbidden City
moat in the southwest

one country - two systems
Coca-cola in the Forbidden City, near the Starbuck's

Forbidden City
I was here

Mao & I, Beijing
a megafone atop the 'parked' truck was telling me it was forbidden to stop there

temple of heaven
i had to return the robe

Comments

[df]

so nice
wow. thank you for sharing this. I love what you've done and what you're doing. David