China 2010 Part I - Beijing

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June 24th 2010

Published: July 1st 2010

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Ake Och Emma

Poster

I saw this poster in a Hutong and liked it.

Going in exile in China

In the end of June this year Ake has decided to travel in China for a couple of days. Emma is not going with him on this journey so Ake will be writing the blog entries from the Middle Kingdom all by himself.

I really like China. I think this is my fifth visit in total. One of those trips was to Sichuan Province and the Three Gorges and is described on this blog. If you want to read about that trip you can follow this link or this one.

This visit to China has a somewhat unusual background to it. If you want to read about the background then you can visit a blog entry that I wrote a few days ago. I deliberately posted it without sending you any update from the blog mainly because I am not so proud of the photos on it. The rest of the contents of that blog entry I am not in the least ashamed of, but the photos are not up to the usual standard. If you still would like to read it just follow this link to it.

Now back to the journey in China

Bell Tower

The original construction is from 1272. The version of the Bell Tower that stands today was built in 1747

in 2010. On this trip I spent half the time in Beijing and half the time in Xinjiang Province in the far west of China. In this blog entry I am going to write about some of the things I did in Beijing.

When I was in Beijing I stayed in a youth hostel not far from the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower. So for me it felt quite natural to begin by paying these two attractions a visit. Well they were just around the corner and I have to do something to earn my reputation as a tourist, right?

The Bell Tower and the Drum Tower were both originally constructed in the year 1272. Both of them were later destroyed by fire and rebuilt. The version of the Bell Tower that stands today is from the year 1747 and the Drum Tower of today is about 300 years older.

The original purpose of both these towers was to keep track on time and report to the people the exact time of the day at various intervals. In other words, they were a primitive version of a wristwatch. But if you consider that they in the

The bell in Bell Tower

The bell in the Bell Tower weighs in at about 63 metric tons

Drum Tower had not less than 25 different drums each in the size of a man and that the bell in the Bell Tower weighs in at about 63 metric tons you realise that carrying this watch on the wrist was never an option.

In 2001 I lived and worked in Beijing for half a year. In the nine years that has passed since then a lot of things have changed in the Chinese capital. When I arrived at Tiananmen Square I wanted to visit one of my favourite spots in the city. It's a small street just off one corner of the square. From Tiananmen Square you could hardly see that there even was a street there. But when you entered it you also entered another world quite different from the busy noisy shopping street around the corner and the majestic Tiananmen Square. There you could buy noodle soup and sit down and eat it and watch old men play Mahjong.

But I found out that my noodle shop is not there anymore. In fact, the entire street is gone. They have torn down the houses to make way for a new road and a parking lot.

Drums in the Drum Tower

Originally there were 24 drums similar to these in the drum tower

And they did all of that without even asking me if I was OK with it. How rude of them...

Another place that has changed a lot since I was in Beijing last time is Qianmen Dajie. Qianmen Dajie is a shopping street that starts at the southern end of Tiananmen Square and goes south. Last time I saw this street it was noisy and dusty and the shops along the street sold household items, machine parts and cheap simple clothes. I also remember that the traffic on the street was heavy and congested. Today there is no traffic at all. The shops are also much different. Now the street is dominated by McDonalds, Starbucks, Zara, H&M and Nike. The former house fronts have all been replaced by something that the emperors of China would have approved of. Today Qianmen Dajie looks all artificial but I still think it is an improvement compared to what it was like before.

Just off Qianmen Dajie is a named Dazhalan Jie. This is another one of my favourite spots in Beijing. Dazhalan Jie is a shopping street but what I like about the street has nothing to do with shopping but

Zhengyangmen

One of Beijing's former city gates. This stands on the southern end of Tiananmen Square

rather the appearance of the street. It looks like it was modelled after a picture in a Tintin album named the Blue Lotus. Look at the photos and maybe you understand what I mean.

One morning I decided to visit the Olympic stadium in Beijing. Whenever I visit a city that has held Olympic Games I go to the stadium and take a photo. It is a kind of tradition I have. This tradition is not so much for visiting the stadium itself because Olympic Stadia are not much to see. It's more for having a reason to make an excursion. Well, the Olympic Stadium in Beijing is picturesque so it was worth the effort to go there. Also I got to see the water sports arena where Michael Phelps won eight Olympic gold medals. The 10th most successful country in the Beijing Olympics was France. France took only seven gold medals...

Many cities in the world, for example London, New York City and San Francisco, have a Chinatown. For obvious reasons Beijing does not have a Chinatown. But Beijing instead has a "Russiatown". It is a neighbourhood between Ritan Park and the Second Ring Road where most

My Noodle Shop used to be here...

My noodle shop is not there anymore. They have torn down the houses to make way for a new road and a parking lot. They did that without asking me. How rude!

shops and hotels have signs in Russian and where shops sell Russian furs and restaurants have typical Russian menus with beetroot soup and Russian Vodka. On the street you also often hear Russian spoken. Why Beijing has this "Russiatown" I don't know but I think it is a bit funny.

Since one of the photos from "Russiatown" is of a shop selling tea I would like to write a little about the word "chai". Tea is called "chai" in Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic among other languages. That means that you can say "chai" in almost every country from China in east to Morocco in west and everywhere people will know that you are saying the word "tea". I think that half of all people in the world say "chai" when they are talking about "tea". I think that is fascinating.

One afternoon I went to Tiantan Park, one of the most important parks for the emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties. I wanted to see the Temple of Heaven but I arrived too late. The temple had already closed when I got there. When I entered the park there was a man standing there writing

"Tintin street"

This is a photo from the shopping street Dazhalan Jie. Doesn't it remind a little bit of the picture from The Blue Lotus

a poem on the ground using water and an oversized brush. I took a photo of him when he was writing and when he was finished I wanted to ask him if he liked the photo or not. He looked at the photo and to my surprise he said in really good English "No I don't like it". "Oh, why?" I said. "Because the text is upside down. People can't read the poem when it is upside down." he explained. Well, the solution was simple enough. I had to take another photo where the text is upside up.

On the last day I was in Beijing I spent a few hours in Beihai Park. Beihai Park is another one of the imperial parks in Beijing. These parks are nice to walk around in because it is a quiet spot where you can get away from the noise and the crowds in the rest of Beijing. Unfortunately you can't get away from the smog. In Beihai Park there is a large artificial lake. The smog was so heavy the day I was there so I could almost not see across the lake.

In Beihai Park most buildings are built

Tintin in Blue Lotus

Compare with the photo taken on Dazhalan Jie

in the classical imperial style. This style is reoccurring in most imperial parks, imperial palaces and also in the emperors' graves. If you during a visit in Beijing try to see all imperial park and palaces in one go I can testify that you get very tired of these houses.

There are a few things in Beihai Park that makes it different from other imperial sites. There is an unusually nice dragon screen and there is a large pagoda. Because of the smog I don't have any photo of the pagoda.

On the last day in Beijing I also visited a restaurant named Guolizhuang Restaurant. This restaurant is specialized in a somewhat different kind of food. It is in fact so special that when they opened the restaurant they even wrote about it in the newspapers back home. The food in this restaurant is not for the timid or the fainthearted because the only thing they serve is male genitals from various animals. You can have pig penis, bull male member, ram phallus or horse pecker for instance. You can also try testicles if you like. I tried the willie from a bull. It was interesting.

In

Math formula decorating a bridge

Mean value theorem: If a function is smooth and continuous on an interval there exists an epsilon such that when x equals epsilon the value of the function is exactly the mean of the values the function has in the ends of the interval

case someone who reads this would like to visit this restaurant here follows a description on how to get there. From the subway station Dongsishitao you walk about 500 meters down Dongsishitao Lu. The restaurant is located on the south side of the street. I believe the address is Dongsishitao 34-3. At least that is what it said on a sign outside the restaurant. By the way, there is another restaurant next door that has more traditional food. So if you are a group of people going out together and someone has a problem with the food served in Guolizhuang Restaurant they can eat their dinner next door instead.

Finally I would like to write about the Hutongs in Beijing. Hutongs is the streets where people of Beijing has lived for hundreds of years. In the hutongs the houses are low, small, simple and sit close to each other. The hutong streets are narrow and often forms a maze. The problem with the hutongs is that they are not economical. The houses are only one story high and if they are replaced with apartment buildings 10 or 15 stories high you can squeeze more people in which is more

Qianmen Dajie

A place that has changed a lot is Qianmen Dajie. It used to be noisy and dusty with heavy traffic. Today there is no traffic at all. The shops are McDonalds, Starbucks, Zara, H&M and Nike.

economical. So today many of the remaining hutongs in Beijing face the risk of being destroyed.

I completely understand that it is impossible for Beijing to keep and preserve every single hutong. The city must be able to develop and in that process some hutongs have to give way to more modern buildings. But what I am worried about is that they maybe don't take enough care to the historical values of the hutongs. Some hutongs have been continuously inhabited for fivehundred years. Beijing take great care in preserving historical sites such as the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the imperial parks. Some of the hutongs in Beijing were built at the same time as these cultural treasures and they are also part of the historical Beijing. I fear that in Beijing today only the monetary value of the hutongs is interesting and the cultural value is less important. I hope I am wrong about this and that the important hutongs will be kept. I really hope I am wrong or else there will 20 years or so from now not exist any hutongs in Beijing anymore.

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