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Published: August 6th 2007
Go China!
Mascot of the Asian Games.Appologies are in order, this journal has somehow managed to get well and truly behind me. I've had good reasons for neglecting to keep you all informed about my highly exciting adventures: I've been run off my feet for the last few weeks. So lets all try to catch up with me.
Last Vestiges of Minority Exploration
Two reasons pushed me onto a train bound for Beijing, one was the fact that my Mum and Dad were arriving there in a week or so, the other was intertwined with an Indian trained exotic dancer, food poisoning and a bad reprimand from Uncle Karma. So there I was, in the Kaili train station waiting room at 5am.
Kaili had been a good stopover; the city is small and quaint, still holding on to the last vestiges of old-world charm, and sits smack bang in the middle of the minority cultures which fill Guizhou province. The tourist attractions of the area all center around visiting minority villages for small festivals, dances and feasts. However, Felix and I had been doing that scene for a couple of weeks already so we instead did very little other than eating and drinking. On
Vices
Hostel life in Beijing was interesting. one day I did manage to fulfill my cultural obligations though by visiting the Minority Culture Museum.
Question: What would you expect from a museum dedicated to minority cultures?
If you answered "lots of displays of traditional dresses, foods, building styles and other cultural things" then you would be as sadly disappointed as I was. Instead, what I found was a series of displays showing how the Chinese government has helped to improve the lives of the villagers. An examples is the successful relocation of an entire village, moved from their traditional home (now a dam which is labelled as now being "more beautiful scenery made by man") to a modern apartment complex. Other displays show the construction of factories where all the villagers are now able to work, massive cities built so as to provide prosperous jobs for all, and the construction of hundreds of dams. Essentially, the government has destroyed the cultures which make Guizhou individual and interesting, the very things which are bringing hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, and has replaced them with industry. Sure, this will make the region richer, but what concessions have been made to preserve the culture? The answer
Olympic Mermaid
Inside the construction site Rotem and I found this mermaid statue. Presumably a remnant from the previous structure. to that is twofold: the museum, and a handful of newly constructed bridges which are made in traditional styles (ie. a regular cement bridge with a traditional wooden facade placed on top of it). Clearly Kaili wasn't the place to really see minority cultures so I ran away as fast as a I could manage, hence the ridiculously early train ride.
Train rides in China are actually quite fun, at least I think they are. When you travel alone in a carriage full of 50 Chinese people you really do become a superstar. Everyone who can speak English wants to be your friend, everyone else probably does too but lack the skills to tell you as much. If you can speak a little Chinese (an overstatement for me) you are even more popular and whole days can slip by between innumerable identikit conversations. Through sheer weight of practice I've become very good at saying sentences such as "I am Australian", "I am not a student", "I am travelling alone", and "Hello beautiful girl, you are very beautiful". If it weren't for the continual onslaught of seven year old children who can speak English better than most Australians trains would
be really boring. I did however manage to come up with two methods of passing time on Chinese trains in case all conversations fail: 1. Try to figure out how to translate "your mum" jokes into Chinese, 2. get on the train without any concept of how long the ride is and then try to determine your time of arrival by examining a Chinese road atlas and the occasional street sign (mine turned out to be almost 40 hours long).
Beijing Tourist Guide: How To Avoid Tourists
Beijing is a big city. Really quite enormous to tell the truth. Although you wouldn't notice it when you arrive by train, the city stretches over a perfectly flat plain that extends almost infinitely in ever direction, all of which is filled to overflowing with people; twenty million of them in fact. Everywhere you go in the city you get the feeling of being surrounded, that there are always people busying themselves nearby. Even at 4:30am the place seems crowded (thousands of people wake early and head to Tiananmen square to watch the flag-raising). Unlike most big cities, especially unlike most capitals, Beijing doesn't have a great deal of skyscrapers or
tall buildings. Instead, large sections of the inner city still remain as low-lying houses on small streets and alleys called Hutongs. Entire city blocks look like 200 year old housing estates in areas that are almost crying out for a 100 story building.
Walking around the city is quite a thrilling experience as you really do get the feeling of being in China. The streets are shady (a blessing given the 35 degrees plus temperatures) thanks to rows of trees, old brick walls with tiled tops bound every space in a distinctly Chinese manner, small temples and pagodas appear out of nowhere right next to shopping centers, calm and peaceful parks are dotted around the place, and daunting communist styled buildings take their places next to traditional homes. If ever a city looked exactly the way I imagined it to, then Beijing is the one. There is an air of ancient-ness, a general feeling of thousands of years of culture layered around you is present in almost every section of Beijing.
All of this is rather surprising though as Beijing really isn't the center of Chinese culture or history. It was only after the Mongol invasion in 1215
that Beijing first became a capital city; previously China had been ruled from Xian to the south west. By all accounts Beijing is actually a bad choice for the capital: it's far from the center of the country both in terms of land and population, it doesn't lie by the sea or even a river, north of the city is the desert of Inner Mongolia (the Great Wall was built to keep foreign forces out of China and it is only 100km from Beijing, if the wall was breached the first place to fall would have been the capital) and the weather is nothing short of inhospitable. However, after the Mongols were kicked out the psyche of China stayed attached to Beijing and it has played a crucial role in the ruling of the country ever since (actually keeping track of Chinese dynasties and history is well beyond my skills).
Being in a city such as Beijing is a great privilege and if I were a conscientious traveller I would have spent every waking minute exploring the plethora of historic sights to be found there. If you asked an average person on the street to tell you what there
was to see in China you would find that 99 times out of 100 they would talk about something in or around Beijing, the city simply has a monopoly on cool stuff. But of course, I am not a conscientious traveller. I am rather the opposite: a lazy bum, and more so, I was a lazy bum with a good excuse not to see anything. My family was going to arrive in Beijing and with them I was planning to see the major sights so I clearly couldn't visit them on my own, additionally I wasn't sure what sights they wanted to see so that cut a few borderline places off my list as well. Add to this a fantastic guesthouse (Leo's) filled with a dozen or so great friends, some of the best food in China and a spattering of great clubs, and you get my week in Beijing.
To give you an idea of what I was up against in the hostel here is a quick run down of a few of the people there:
Iain: an English guy who thought it would be good to look like Wolverine complete with mutton chops, a bad hair
Daniele
The Italian gigolo. cut and crazy facial expressions. He came to Beijing and as far as I know hasn't left, when I last saw him he was up to his 33rd day in the guesthouse, just because he was too lazy to go anywhere else.
Ailbhe and Emma: a pair of Irish girls who somehow managed to turn a month long exploration of China including all of the big destinations into a very long stay in Beijing and a quick stop over in Hong Kong.
Daniele: an Italian guy who had problems with visas and bank cards which resulted in an extended two week stay.
Ben: well, he's been away from home for almost three years so you can imagine how long he stayed there.
Looking at that list of itinerants makes me feel good about myself as I only sat around bludging for a week, they are much worse that I am!
In the week leading up to my family trip I managed to see a grand total of three tourist attractions, eight clubs, two poles that I may or may not have danced on (no injuries sustained this time) and one bowling alley. I had so
much fun in that week that I actually didn't want to leave. The 4pm games of Risk, late night poker, 6am Jiao Zi eating frenzies, drinking games and general hooliganry were a welcome change to the. . . oh no, I've been doing that sort of thing for a long time now.
I guess I should tell of the tourist attractions though as that is what I came to see. On the north side of the Forbidden City (which is currently being done up for the Oympics and is thus covered in scaffolds) I found the Lama Temple. This complex of temples is one of the largest and best preserved Tibetan temples in the world (because all the big ones in Tibet were recently destroyed of course) but I found it to be rather uninspiring. Compared to the temples I've seen out in the Tibetan areas it really wasn't even in the same league, and in most areas I really didn't even believe it to be Tibetan as it looked very much like a Chinese Buddhist shrine. However, right at the back of the complex stands the worlds largest wooden Buddha made from a single piece of wood and
it was truly amazing. Standing some 17 meters tall and with a width of about 5 meters it is simply the largest tree I have ever seen. Actually, I have not even seen a tree that was close to big enough to make the statue, let alone one which was the right shape. Standing there below the towering monolith made me feel incredibly small and insignificant.
Nearby to the Lama Temple are the Drum and Bell Towers: two very obviously named and old towers which were used in the same way that we use clock towers. Unfortunately the views from the towers were obscured by the thick smog which more often than not covers Beijing like a blanket. To see more than 1000m in any direction is a rare occurrence there.
The third and most impressive sight on my list was the Olympic Complex, the collection of construction sites being hurriedly finished for the Olympic Games that are to be held late next year. The entire country is gearing up for the games: logos and advertising is in every town, everything is being cleaned up across the country, and all tourism facilities are being smoothed out in preparation
for the rush. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the northern quarter of Beijing where the games themselves will be played out. And to make things even more fun, the workers let you wander around the construction site! Rotem (an Israeli girl) and I explored the complex, walking around foundation works, ducking under fences, climbing walls, and generally poking our noses into everything that we could. As a hockey player I managed to get the ultimate rush by standing on the site of the Olympic Hockey venue (the stands were complete but the field hadn't been laid just yet) just to take the obligatory silly photo. When the games do come around I know that the facilities will all be glistening and polished, but what intrigues me is what is going to be done about the rest of Beijing. For me the city is thrilling and exciting, full of sights, smells and sounds that beckon me to investigate and explore. But for most people of the world the idea of a taxi driver who doesn't know his way around (fair enough in most case as Beijing is huge, but one driver wouldn't take me even when I told him
that I knew the way and that it was straight down the road without a single turn), the idea of a metro system that hasn't been upgraded in 40 years or the idea of restaurants without English menus might be too intense. How will a hundred thousand people cope in a city that has trouble coping with itself? I really can't wait to find out.
My favourite thing to do in all of Beijing was a simple thing, in the late afternoon I would walk from wherever I had gotten to back to my hostel via Tiananmen Square. As I came up from the underpass onto the square itself, with The Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tian An Men) to my right, Chairman Mao's portrait staring forlornly down on everyone, the Great Hall of the People ahead of me (the biggest and proudest communist styled building in the city), Mao's mausoleum down the other end of the square, the museum to my left, and nothing but empty space and a flag pole within a hundred meters, I got a sense of Beijing. Throngs of people come to the square every afternoon, some to see the flag lowered, some just to
Olympic Hockey Stadium
Aunty Suellen, this is as close as you're going to get to seeing me at the olympics. Sorry. sit out in the open space and enjoy the cool breeze that always persists there. The square is so vast and empty, the nearest buildings seem to be paper cut-outs held up in the distance, that I always felt happy and free. The confines of the city, the crowds, the touts, all of these were gone and I almost felt alone for just one minute. I really did enjoy that five minute walk from Tiananmen down towards Qianmen (another huge and beautiful gate) and on to my guesthouse, happy to be in Beijing and happy to be heading towards friends with cold beers.
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Bill
non-member comment
Beds and birds nests
Yeah the birds nest is looking good - glad you could see it through the pollution. Hope Dad and Christine can get you out of the hostel and into a proper bed somewhere for a few days. Dont get run over by the bicycles, enjoy the Wall et al, and have a great time whne you get to Shanghai! Bill