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Published: November 22nd 2007
Sextant and sun
Ancient ObservatoryRegrettably the "fast" train from Shanghai to Beijing was a 200km/h crawler, giving me a burst of maglev nostalgia. I did however learn a new word for toilet, as a sign in the smallest room requested people to not put wastepaper in the "closestool".
Beijing is an exhausting city, and I don't mean that in the same positive way I might use that adjective to describe New York. With it covering such a vast area, the transportation options were disappointingly piecemeal - the subway system was far from comprehensive (and tickets could only be bought from a woman in a booth), buses were crowded and not the easiest to understand, and taxis of course could only give convenience at a price. I took bus number 11 (i.e. walking) whenever possible, a decision my feet came to regret. Though the population is less than that of Shanghai and those people are spread over such a wide area, it felt very crowded.
Mornings started with a thick haze of pollution, which I may have been inclined to charitably describe as mist if my occasional nose-blowings hadn't produced blackness. The air temperature was probably 10 degrees down on Shanghai but once the
Arches
Forbidden City sun had burned through some of the smog then it was warm walking around in its rays.
There's a lot to see in and around Beijing and much of it has more than just local significance, with elements of China's past, present, and future all collapsed in time to this one part of the country. I decided to give the Great Wall a miss - having already experienced the remoteness of its western end at Jiayuguan, I figured the more visited eastern end would be unlikely to compare favourably.
Tiananmen Square was where I began my sightseeing, as it was close to my hostel. It's a truly enormous expanse of concrete, even with Mao's mausoleum plonked in its southern section and thus breaking up its full extent. Its name comes from the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace) at its northern end, the entrance to the Forbidden City - originally there was an imperial path leading from the Forbidden City to Qianmen (the gate now at the square's southern end) and then on south to the Temple of Heaven, but after the Communist takeover the square was created by demolishing buildings that had previously lined this path, a
Pulao on bell
A pulao is a monster that apparently shrieks when attacked by a whale - the wooden implements used to hit the bells were often in the shape of a whale
Dazhong Si gesture symbolising the end of the imperial system and a rejection of all it stood for. The new buildings on the east/west sides of the square are monumental blocks, housing the congress and a couple of museums.
I first went through Tiananmen Square on a Sunday morning. The only image I had of the square in my mind was of TV footage showing tanks rolling through it in the ruthless put-down of dissent that the government carried out in 1989. My visit showed not crowds of dissenters but an endless queue to visit Mao's mausoleum, as well as numerous tourists posing in front of the mausoleum or the Monument to the Heroes obelisk or the giant portrait of Mao hanging on Tiananmen Gate. I wondered whether most of the visitors were there to venerate Mao or make sure he really had gone. Or maybe just to give some recognisable background to their photos.
North of Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City, a vast complex of hundreds of buildings containing thousands of rooms and millions of tour groups. I was less impressed by the complex itself than the historical background. Life within its walls had been more than luxurious
for the lucky few, a fact never fully appreciated by ordinary Chinese at the time simply because they weren't allowed to even approach its walls.
Meals could consist of over 100 dishes, with a handful of people nibbling at what might have fed many a village. The emperor had his pick of thousands of concubines, an experience only someone like Julio Iglesias could empathise with nowadays. To eliminate paternity claims, the only other males in the palace were eunuchs, who carried their testicles around with them in the hope that, when they died, being buried with their balls might prevent them violating the Confucian principle that disfiguring the physical body had negative implications for the soul.
Unfortunately several buildings were covered with scaffolding when I was there, including the largest gate and the most important ceremonial hall, but that didn't stop the glut of red walls and yellow roof tiles becoming a little numbing. A few days would be needed to see everything inside the Forbidden City but I doubt the average tourist has the stamina for that.
Visits to Baiyunguan Si (a Taoist temple complex where my favourite statue had little arms coming out of its
Tiananmen Gate
Tiananmen Square eye sockets with the eyeballs held in each hand), Dazhong Si (the Great Bell temple containing bells from many dynasties and in many styles, including one 6.75m tall monster weighing 45,600kg), and the Summer Palace (in a charming location next to a lake, with sites including the Hall of Embracing the Universe and the Tower of Moonlit Ripples, but to be avoided at weekends unless you like crowds - also contains a horrendous tourist street that's totally out of place) all had their moments.
I had two favourite sightseeing locations in Beijing, one off the beaten track and one well on it. The former was the Ancient Observatory, set in a quiet site handily placed on the way to the Mongolian Embassy. A peaceful garden and courtyards contained a sundial, sextant, armillary spheres and other astronomical instruments, plus a fat and rather needy cat. A visiting Chinese astronomer mentioned that the accuracy of these instruments (from several hundred years ago) compared with that of modern day computer calculations. Even ignoring their worth as scientific apparatus, the pieces were aesthetically pleasing, with intricately carved dragons coiled around their supports.
My other favourite was the Temple of Heaven at which,
on the winter solstice in days gone by, the emperor would offer prayers and sacrifices for a good harvest in the coming year. Though firmly on the tour group trail, it had enough variety yet compactness to keep one's interest. And with green and blue the dominant colours, it was a total change from the Forbidden City. I should add that though the original complex was built nearly 600 years ago, certain parts have been restored more recently.
Not surprisingly you're presented at every turn with reminders of next year's Olympics, in the form of countdown clocks and adverts featuring Olympic hopefuls and the 5 colourful Olympic mascots. Merchandise concessions have penetrated both shopping malls and temple complexes. The array of Olympic goods on offer is staggering (and I'm sure no different to previous Olympic venues). Only someone suffering from a money/sense inequality would choose to cough up the best part of $3,000 for a china plate in a washed-out green/grey colour scheme with a gold centre featuring the Olympic logo. Or maybe the wooden display stand had some hidden value.
Shopping in general was tedious, with the crowds of fellow shoppers being only one reason. The high
tourist throughput means that, in markets, the level of hassle is as high as the prices. As someone who will not voluntarily enter anywhere as a result of the proprietor inviting me in, I was left with few options, and it was extraordinarily hard work beating down prices from their initial ludicrous levels. When the opening quote you get for a T-shirt at one place exceeds the price you just paid for a jacket at another, you can't help but groan and see the next 10 minutes of your life disappearing in a haggling hole. Even the fixed price stores were trying, with an assistant shadowing you throughout your visit.
Acrobatics have been a Chinese entertainment for 2,000 years and I attended an excellent display that included feats of strength, balancing, and dexterity. The most impressive act consisted of guys jumping between a pair of swinging beams. The "blind" jumps, with the acrobat somersaulting backwards then locking his legs around the destination beam, were a combination of athleticism, timing, and a pain-resistant crotch.
My final cultural experience in Beijing was to sample the famous Beijing duck. I've had this in a couple of places around the world but
was unprepared for the sheer fattiness, succulence and flavour of its hometown presentation. The venue for this was a 5-storey, 2,000-seater specialist duck restaurant whose past regulars included Mao and Zhou Enlai. Zhou had apparently advised the kitchen on how best to prepare the dish, and supposedly was also prone to bringing foreign dignitaries to the restaurant whenever diplomatic discussions had reached a delicate state. Going by the many red faces in evidence on the night I was there, I'd guess it wasn't just duck grease that was helping the wheels of diplomacy turn more smoothly. And the painful indigestion I had afterwards suggested I shouldn't make this a regular part of my diet.
Beijing nightlife proved to be as disappointing as in most of the rest of the country with live music bars predominating. It's as though the Chinese on holiday (e.g. in Litang) have vastly different preferences to when they're at home. It's a lonely feeling when no-one around you has a craving for cheesy dance music. The temerity of some bars to charge a cover at weekends was even less of an incentive to venture out.
Internet access throughout China has generally been fast. Sure,
Mao
Tiananmen Gate there are certain blocked sites but you can usually get to them by roundabout means. The 2 big exceptions to this have been Shanghai and Beijing. Firstly, the cafes in these places insist on seeing your passport - not convenient when you're applying for visas. Having photocopies of the relevant pages won't necessarily pass muster. And then there's the speed. Hotmail was often so slow I couldn't even log in to it. At unsociable times of the day it was fine, suggesting some sort of load issue, but that was never a problem further west in the country and didn't seem to affect Gmail either.
In Shanghai my friend Adam had commented that one feature of life in China these days is the speed at which construction is taking place. I experienced this myself in my hostel in Beijing when, literally overnight, the cafe at the front of the building was moved inside, a wall built between the old location and the rest of the hostel, and some sort of renovation then continued in the old space.
The local news threw up a couple of interesting items. One was an article about the state of hip hop in
Tiananmen Gate
Tiananmen Square China and included the quote "Our life's interesting but it's not about getting into a Benz after the show. We get on a bike. That's the life of a Chineses MC." Also a man from Shandong had applied to the Guinness Book of World Records to be listed as the Chinese person with the largest English vocabulary, but had been told no such record existed.
I was sad to finish my trip to China with Shanghai and Beijing, as they had been rather disappointing compared with almost anywhere I'd been in Yunnan and Sichuan. Certainly tourists who only visit these 2 big cities plus Xi'an are missing out on a great deal of richness in the rest of the country, of which even so I only saw a fraction.
However it was already mid-November and, with a flight back to the UK awaiting me in Moscow in just over a month, it was time to start heading for home.
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KangoGRL
non-member comment
Love the pictures!
First of all... your pictures are amazing. I went to Beijing last year and my pictures all resembles yours, but they are not nearly as good looking! I like your eye for the details. Also, thanks for sharing the story. It made me reflect on my time in Beijing. I actually feel like I missed some things now. Did you have a tour guide? It seems like you know a little about the history behind some of the monuments... very helpful as well. One more thing, where did you go at night? You said the nightlife was not too great there, but I actually enjoyed it. I now live in a city near Shanghai and I can tell you that the Beijing nightlife is definitely better as far as variety and culture. Did you go to Vic's or Nick's? Thanks for sharing! KANGOGRL