Around Beijing and Shandong Province

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I emailed my friend Chenchen in Beijing.

‘I can come in November, but I am worried that it will be too cold’, I said.

‘No, no’, she replied, ‘it will be pleasant’.

So I booked my ticket.



I spent the night in the airport in KL and then flew to Tianjin, a city 70 km to the South East of Beijing. My first impression as I got off the plane – ‘Coo, it’s a bit cold’.



The taxi journey into town got uncomfortably expensive as the driver obviously had no idea about the general location of the City Youth Hostel. Luckily I had the phone number and they guided us in. The Tianjin Youth Hostel is of the low calibre variety and is not located anywhere near the city centre. Fortunately it is located near a shopping centre as it was obvious that I was going to have to invest in a big coat as my first priority.



Tianjin is a pleasant spacious city. After I had negotiated the 13 lane highway outside the hostel it was easy to find the Hai River which runs through the centre and thus the mildly interesting historic sites which make up the touristic agenda.

The word ‘historic’ has to be taken with a pinch of salt in modern China. For example, the Ancient Culture Street has definitely been built within the last twenty years, no doubt recreating the style of an actual ancient street that used to be there, but with shop fronts and public toilets.

I found myself admiring a porcelain figure of an old man until I realised that it was priced at £30,000. There was also a shop selling intricately carved ivory - ‘Not for outside China’ – at multiples of that price. Having seen the beauty of such pieces, I can understand the allure of ivory as an artistic medium and possession.



There is an Italian Quarter where I had to work hard to convince myself that the buildings really were left over from the olden days, and the British Concession area, where the buildings really were old enough and thus of interest to visitors (if you like looking at old banks).



Along the river bank I was surprised to come upon a series of statues of life-sized naked couples doing naughty things in bronze. I suppose it’s a step up from Ladybird books for the kids.







A bullet train to Beijing cost about £5 and takes 45 minutes. Another 20 minutes on the crowded metro system and I was unpacking my bag in the Drum Tower youth hostel within 2 hours of leaving the Tianjin Hostel.



Chenchen came across town to meet me and we walked around the circumference of Qianhai Lake, which was nearby. She was a lot smaller than I remembered which was a shame as I had bought her a jumper.



There is loads to see and do in Beijing, and it would be rather pointless to reel it off in chronological order, but I filled 8 days this time and 4 days at the end of the trip without any trouble.

The extensive metro and bus system makes getting around so easy, and it is very affordable. A typical journey costs from 20p. I put £2 on thetravelcard Chenchen lent me, and it lasted nearly the whole time.



Chenchen has Mondays off and was happy to be my guide on a weekly basis.



We took the public bus to the Great Wall. Since I am so used to hearing it called The Great Wall of China, it seemed curiously incomplete to keep hearing it referred to as simply The Great Wall.



The bus goes to the main touristic section of the wall, where it costs £4 to get in. I was surprised by the number of fragments of wall clinging to the steep hillsides in the surrounding area. The section at Badaling has been restored and is safe to walk on. It needs to be, judging by the hoards of people we were sharing the experience with.



‘Good job we came on Monday’, said Chenchen, ‘It would be really busy at the weekend.’



The walkway along the top of the wall undulates with the hillsides so you are always negotiating steps or steep slopes and trying not to get in other peoples photographs. After about 90 minutes of lateral translocation my knees were expressing their discontent and I was becoming concerned about the return journey.

We sat on our books on the cold stone steps and ate our lunch (Me: Lonely Planet China-lightweight edition/syrupy sponge cake; Her: English language examination papers/sugary bread).



Eventually we had accumulated sufficient energy for the return journey. We took the sliding car ride down the hillside to the entrance, but it turned out to be more suitable for children and pensioners than adventurous types like us.



Just before the exit there are a couple of bear pits inhabited by about 13 brown bears. Vendors sell fruit to be thrown so that they catch it in their mouths.





The next week a couple of her university chums joined us for a trip to the Summer Palace.

This was where the Emperors used to hang out when it got too hot in central Beijing. There is a lake and gardens overlooked by the not-so palacial palace on a hill. In the Chinese tradition, the gardens are manicured to within an inch of their lives.

As we wandered along the narrow paths and over the remarkably humped back bridges I began to wonder what our plan was for closing time. Come nightfall I realizedthat there wasn’t one and we were a couple of miles from the nearest exit, which was a couple of miles from the nearest metro station. We did eventually get back to civilization, and celebrated with a large bowl of spicy noodle soup in a spicy noodle soup shop.





I planned to go to the Forbidden City, so called because commoners used to be forbidden from entry. These days it is called the Palace Museum and when I used the term Forbidden City among my Chinese friends I was met with blank faces.



Tiananmen Square is at the front of the palace grounds. I was trying to determine which entrance to use when I got talking to a group of jovial Chinese businessmen fromShanghai. We were having a laugh so I joined them on a trip to a teashop. We were shown into a private room at the back and one of the guys ordered a pot. A pleasant hour passed in which I learnt a lot about their view of Chinese culture, in particular (funnily enough), about tea.



When I mentioned that I carried teabags, they all virtually choked in disgust.



‘We call that garbage tea. A Chinese person would never drink it’ (Indeed, I never saw teabags in a Chinese supermarket).



‘Also, Chinese food is garbage food. We would never eat food in a cheap restaurant. You will get cancer from cheap food. Do you know what they put into it? Well, neither do we.’



As I spend much of my time hunting for, and eating in, cheap restaurants I felt compelled to defend them, but I was aware of some of the food scandals which have caused much consternation in China in recent years.



‘You Westerners don’t understand the Chinese. To the Chinese good quality tea is one of the most important things in the world. We cannot imagine to drink your garbage tea’



During this time we each had consumed several cups from the pot. They were clearly enjoying it, though not in a sippy connoisseur-ish way, more like, well, drinking a cup of tea.



To my untutored palate it tasted like any other cup of Chinese tea. When the bill came it was £100 for the pot, so I realised that I should have paid more attention. The 3 guys each chucked their £25 equivalent share onto the table as money well spent. I was not so sanguine, but prised the notes out of my wallet with clammy hands.



Back on the street they hailed a taxi.

‘Are you coming to the restaurant?’

Having just spent my budget for the next couple of days on a cup of tea I politely declined.



It was a few days before I built up sufficient motivation to go back and visit the Forbidden City.







It was still cold in Beijing. I thought that if I headed South it might warm up a bit. I was wrong.



I took the bullet train to Tai’an in Shandong province.





It was not a stress free day.



First of all I was late for the train and had to run through Beijing South station to catch the train by the skin of my teeth. The lady in the next seat did not seem very impressed as my recovery time included coughing, wheezing and palpitations.

Once the train was moving I went to stand in the corridor for 20 minutes while my body re-centred itself. Usefully, this bullet train had a pair of sinks in it which was handy as my lungs took this opportunity to evacuate amounts of phlegm from the not normally expanded bronchioles.



On arrival at Tai’an I was dismayed to find that my carefully prepared directions were redundant as I had been deposited a vast new out-of-town train station instead of the city centre one I expected. There weren’t any English speakers on hand to help me so in the end I decided to just get on a bus in the expectation that it would head towards the city. It did and with a bit of taxi’ing and wandering I eventually found my way to the local youth hostel.





The next morning there was a clear blue sky, ideal for climbing mountains, which was handy as that was what I has in mind.



The city of Tai’an sits at the base of Taishan, one of the main sacred mountains of China. Commoners and Emperors have been climbing it in earnest since at least the 11^th Century. Mostly the Emperors were carried up on a litter, and to facilitate that a stone staircase was built from base to summit. As I spent 4 hours walking up a never ending staircase, I reflected that this must be one of those engineering marvels of olden times that you never really hear about.



I had considered taking the cable car, which starts from the half-way point, but when I got there it was out of commission.

I fortified myself with a bowl of thick noodles and soldiered on. All the way up I was considering that I had bitten off more than I could chew, and would turn back to save my collapsing knees, but eventually I made it to the top.

The plateau is like a small town, with an array of shops and restaurants, and paths around the edge to maximise the scenic view. Despite the weather a clear bright winters day, visibility was limited to only about 4 miles. Tai’an below looked a bit ghostly through the pollutant haze, which you don’t notice when you are down there. Some of the Chinese were raving about the views. I didn’t have the heart to tell them than in any other country they would be able to see for miles and miles from this elevation.



I was mostly alone for the two and a half hour walk back to base. Where were all the Chinese day trippers that had made it to the top? I realised that they must have had the good sense to take the bus from the half way point.



I passed the next morning looking around the Dai Temple complex, which is in a large compound in the shadow of the mountain. It is a pleasant combination of typical temple architecture and aged cypress trees encompassed by walls you can walk along the top of.



In one corner there was an out of character, but very educational, geological display. Here I got chatting with an young Chinaman who had also walked up Taishan the previous day, and was suffering from the after effects more than me. We went back into the city for lunch.



‘What will we have?’ he asked.

‘You choose’, I replied as usual.

He played safe and we ended up in a dumpling restaurant.





Walking near the town centre, I came across a large area of demolition. Fifty percent of the Chinese economy is based on construction and they are locked into an endless cycle of renewal. (Many young people I meet complain that they cannot recognise their home town as it has been knocked down and rebuilt so much since their childhood). Commerce continued amongst the piles of rubble as the shopkeepers tried a make a living. I was surprised to see 4 full size snooker tables in one lot, unprotected protected from the elements. The players tried to ‘up their game’ as I took their photograph.







I took the bus to Qufu. The manager of the Youth Hostel came outside to welcome me as I arrived. I turned out to be the only person staying there.



Qufu is known as the Confucious City, as this is the place where the great sage was born and died. In between times he travelled around the country philosophising but, as is so often the case with such Greats, he went largely unrecognised during his lifetime. Later on his writings gained momentum amongst the Chinese and he eventually became a national hero, ingrained into the collective psyche.



In some way (which I could not ascertain) his descendants were able to utilise this legacy to obtain fabulous wealth and ended up second only to the Emperors on the Rich List.



So the three main historical sights of this small city – the Confucious Temple, the Confucious Mansion and the Confucious cemetery – have much stronger links to his descendants than to the man himself. Give that, the collective entry fee of £15 seems a little steep.



The strongest direct link exists at the Confucious cemetery, where a grassy mound by a simple pavilion is said to be his actual burial place from 479 BC.



The cemetery itself is huge (200 hectares) and I spent a few hours following the paths amongst the trees and historic burial statues on a crisp, blue skied morning. Family members were buried here for 2000 years, right up until the Communist ascendancy in the mid 20^th Century.



The Confucious Temple is the second biggest temple complex in China, after the Forbidden City. Emperors would come to pay their respects.



The Confucious Mansions housed the accommodations and administrative offices of the family. They were rich and powerful and lived the life style of the super elite, but there is not much to see there now.





The cold was getting me down in Qufu. The hostel was a good one, but it was not designed for winter. The rooms were set around a courtyard and the communal washing area was on the outside with only a cold water tap. Not much fun at freezing point.



The AC unit in the dorm was supposed to have a ‘warm’ setting, but I couldn’t find it. After a night of shivering I asked the manager to set it up.

‘It’s a bit old’ she said.

After for running for about 12 hours it had managed to raise the temperature in the room from ‘freezer’ to ‘fridge’.

I found that if I laid on the top bunk directly underneath it I could access a bubble of warmth. It was like being breathed on by an emphasematic miner, but I managed to get a nights sleep.



Despite the cold, all the pensioners gathered at dusk to do their group aerobics. When I first came to China twenty years ago they would be doing Tai Chi. These days they have a beat-box pumping away as they clap and stamp in unison.










Qingdao is a big city along the coast of the Yellow Sea. I stayed in one of the highest rated Youth Hostels in the whole country, and it was easy to see why – FREE BEER.

For £2 a night I got a decent dorm bed and a free bottle of Tsingtao beer, the famous beverage of Qingdao. Seemed like a good deal to me, so I hung around for a week, having reached the final destination on my agenda. As a bonus I found that the seaside weather was considerably milder than further inland.



I wasn’t expecting to see much domestic tourist activity at this time of year, but when I went down to the town beach at the weekend, thousands of people were playing on the sands and scrabbling around in the rock pools.



Like many seaside towns, Qingdao has a coastal promenade. Being in China, this one defies expectations - it stretches for 43 kilometres. Most days I set off for a brisk walk around 10am and returned about 3pm, walking at, maybe, 5 km/h. That means that I was covering 25 km a day, excluding excursions for breakfast and dinner. Sounds like a lot but I could have gone further had not the dusk been approaching.



Qingdao was the location for the water events in the 2008 Olympics and I would walk to the Olympic marina before turning around. This is an impressive development flanked by architecturally adventurous skyscrapers. Much of it was closed for the winter or lack of custom, and I wondered how many of the skyscrapers were actually occupied.



The city was occupied by the Germans between 1898 and 1914. The Governors residence, built towards the top of a hill, is now a quite interesting museum around the corner from the old Protestant church.



There was a lot to see and do in Qingdao, well worth a visit in the summer, I thought.



I sent Chenchen an SMS to inform her of my impending return to the capital.

Her reply:

‘It is snowing in Beijing. You are so lucky’.

Somehow I didn’t think that we were on the same wavelength.



I spent a worrying few hours one afternoon lost among the hutong. These are the back alleys of the old residential quarters of the city. They are supposed to be charming and characterful but it now appears that most of them have been knocked down and rebuilt with modern amenities. As with humans, the old soul escapes when first they die and the reanimated versions can be a bit scary.



I thought it best to dive in amongst them and rely on my sense of direction to get me out. After about an hour I decided that was a mistake. Too much time spent in foreign back alleys can be deleterious to ones health. Eventually I traversed a pensioners playground (steps and rowing machines rather than swings and slides) and found myself in familiar territory.



Heading back to the hostel I came upon a roadside bookstall selling books in English. I was surprised to see a copy of ‘Security Analysis’ by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. This is an investment classic that I have been meaning to buy for ages, but is always a bit expensive (£30 on Amazon). I asked the lady how much – only £1.50. I bypassed the formality of bargaining and handed her the full amount. The shopping streets seemed extra busy as I wended my way back to the dorm to rip off the plastic covering. This made up for the mega costly tea of my earlier stay in Beijing. The Universe had righted itself once more.





Chenchen and I met up on my final Monday morning and crunched through the snow at the Temple of Heaven, misnamed it is said, because there is no temple there. There was not much sign of Heaven either.



This is another manicured park with some interesting structures within. The most impressive is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a triple gabled circular building set in the centre of a large square. The most fun is the Echo Wall which surrounds the Imperial Vault. Sound waves travel around the round wall and return to you so you hear each noise twice.

It is said that if you sound in the middle of the Round Alter, your voice will sound rich and timbrous. I tried this and found it to be true.



After leaving the Temple of Heaven I shared a Peking duck with Chenchen in a local restaurant. After giving it a bit of a build up, I was a bit disappointed with it compared to how flavoursome it can be in England. Turns out that the proper Chinese version is prepared using oven cooked duck, whereas the duck is deep fried in a UK Chinese restaurant.





I bade farewell to Chenchen at the metro station and returned her travel card.



The next day I took the bullet train back to Tianjin in preparation for my flight back to Kuala Lumpur.

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Photos

Beijing
Olympic stadium

Beijing
Olympic stadium

Beijing
Olympic stadium

Beijing
Olympic stadium

Beijing
Yongle Bell Temple

Beijing
The Great Wall

Beijing
The Great Wall

Beijing
The Great Wall

Beijing
The Great Wall

Beijing
The Great Wall

Beijing
The Great Wall bear cage