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Other entries in Peking

Forbidden City, Embassy Row, Ritan Park

After my 3:00 am arrival in Beijing Disaster and the 5:00 am meeting of my head with a soft pillow,  I happily slept till 11:00.   Beijing was nothing of what I expected and I was thirsty with excite to consume the experience without regard to fatigue or really much else.  I was nearly intoxicated with the prospects.  Tourism in Mongolia was a more relaxed undeveloped affair.  Beijing was one of the great gateways for the Far East. It was a center of culture and history, and it is truly a modern metropolis that can take its place among the great cities of the world.

My 4 bed dorm in Beijing at the Red Dragon Hostel and Hotel, while in the basement, still received a good amount of light, and the sheets were luxurious and clean, the mattress very soft.  There was a stunningly beautiful Israeli girl in my room.  At first with her accent I thought she was French.  Even after she told me, I still thought she had a French look to her. I talked to her for 15 minutes and realized that tourism in China was going to be delightfully social.

I walked down the hutong to a hotel down the street that had a big sign advertising western breakfast.  A hutong is an alleyway, Beijing in famous for them. Beijing has broad avenues with 6 car lanes and 2 bike lanes separated from the car lane.  And then it has these alleyways with courtyard homes.  All sorts of men with cargo bicycles go up and down the hutongs, one man wants scrap cardboard, another man is selling milk.  They sing out a rhythmic sort of song pleasantly announcing there presence.  It was immediately fascinating.

I had myself a delectable western breakfast.  I ended up talking with a few tourists, I read some brochures printed by the tour industry.  Some of them were for hostels in other Chinese cities.  I had no idea that China would have such a large tourist industry completely aimed at the budget tourist, like me.  It was a chore I was dreading, but as my first day in town I was to head straight for the Embassy district so that I could present myself to the Vietnamese Embassy.   Feeling energetic, I decided to walk the distance.  It turned out to be about 5km or one hour of walking.  It was a bright and sunny day.  I had gotten a lot of sun in Mongolia, but Beijing even in October was a warm 27 degrees.  I was expecting it to be colder, but still nothing like Ulan Baator and its status as a dry winter wasteland. 

In front of each embassy was a serious Chinese man in military uniform, complete with rifle and sun umbrella on a wooden platform raised 20 cm.  They made me feel a little uncomfortable.  I had to walk by many of them to reach the Vietnamese Embassy. When I arrived it was about 1:00 and I had to show my passport three times to get to the consular section behind the embassy.  I was to find out they had no opening hours for the day, so I resolved that I would have to come back tomorrow.   I was only about 500 meters from the Ritan Park, which had some history and monuments of sun worship.  The monuments were not so interesting but the park was absolutely beautiful and well groomed. I was so impressed, it was nearly the density of a complete botanical garden.  Even better it was festive, with people playing music just for the joy of it, all sorts of food was for sale.  There were a series of ponds and little channels of water. Everything was immaculately clean.   One man was renting out a bunch of remote control boats in the pond.  I was mesmerized, so I sat for a long while just taking things in.  As I was leaving the park I saw an old man practicing Tai Chi, because that’s what old men do in the park in Beijing.

While sitting in the park I decided to go nuts and visit the Forbidden City.  So that meant a walk past the restored remnant of a Ming Era wall (14^th Century).  I got a great laugh out of the pictorial sign listing at least 2 dozen things that were forbidden in the park. It should also be noted about Beijing and the center of all the large cities I visited in China, is that they have most of the signs transliterated into pinyin.  pinyin is a scheme of taking the Chinese language and putting it into the Latin Alphabet, meaning that someone who does not understand characters can at least read a map and with some practice try to make a Chinese pronunciation. To the international visitor, pinyin is like the holy grail.  It makes China much easier than it could be.

I walked by one of the large Beijing train stations, it had thousands of people just entering and leaving.  It was crazy.  I then walked around the corner and found the metro.  I only road the metro a few stops and then I was at Tiananmen Square.  I visited one of the famous gates to the Forbidden city and then walked around the square, famous for the 1989 massacre.   Although its likely that of the estimated 2000 people who were killed in Beijing, that no fighting was actually done on the square itself.  It should also be noted that due to Falong Guang members lighting themselves on fire, there fire extinguishers placed around the square.  Tiananmen Square is billed as the largest public square in the world, but with Mao’s Mausoleum in the middle, it seems a bit broken.  I had my picture taken by a postcard salesmen after I bought a set of post cards $2.50.  It was a picture of the famous portrait of Mao, on the city gate leading to the Forbidden City.

There were thousands of domestic tourists lining the square.  With the density of the crowd and the large size of the square I would estimate that 50,000 visitors were in the square.  It was a crazy amount.  There were of course memorials and mascots for the 2008 Olympic games along with a count down timer.   I had heard that the Chinese were very serious about the Olympics and this view was reinforced many times on my short visit to China.

The mass of people going over the gate into the Forbidden City was massive.   The courtyard was filled with thousands and people selling everything. At least the Chinese were well organized and there were signs in English everywhere.  I had no trouble purchasing a ticket.  The price was a staggering $8 dollars.  Even  reading the Chinese version of the sign with the international number system, it seemed like they were paying the same rate.  To be fair they were spending a lot of money on reservations.

As soon as I entered the Forbidden City I was tickled with delight because close to the front gate was an exhibition from the Kremlin’s Armory.  It was the Armory that I didn’t get a chance to visit, that I could have visited if I was willing to part with $70.  Boo for Russian corruption. So I saw all the great and exquisite, ornate metal work created for the Russian nobility in Czarist times.  It was great stuff, like completing a full circle.

The Forbidden City is quite large.  It was so large that parts of it are in a state of constant renovation, although some of it was really badly in need of a renovation.  The scale was certainly more impressive than any individual grandeur.  It was much simple than a European palace.  The individual emperors apartments were more modest than you might expect.  The Forbidden City was built to house the entire nobility and government. There were also many ceremonial structures, all sorts of history.  China has a long and complex history and I only understand it at its most basic. Beijing was founded with Mongol conquest in the 14^th Century, after their dynasty was over, other Dynasties kept Beijing as their captitol.  The Forbidden city was meant to keep the nobility safe and secure from the masses of people. It was also a military fortress, but that to me didn’t seem to be its major function.   So imagine this place is huge, I had walked a lot before I entered, afterwords my feet were hurting.  There was a Starbucks inside. They had resting rooms for people who were too tired to do anything else but rest.  Many of the guards were taking siesta while other guards watched over the city. 

My favorite part of the city was a large rock and water garden and a small temple with a domed ceiling. It was certainly an interesting experience.  I took a small western style sandwich, and then spent my own hour sitting on a bench.  By this time I was tired of fighting the crowds for a look at the city.  I took a nice long sit on a bench along with some older Chinese men and women who looked like they had been sitting there for a long time.

I left the city through a side entrance and then walked along some market streets next to the Forbidden City.  It was fast getting dark.  I made it into some rich glitzy commercial districts.  The lights were beautiful, the streets were full of activity.  I ended up walking past the famous night market, where you could eat anything, all sorts of squid and weird Chinese things along with more normal things.  I would ask a price of something, decide that it was too much and then the price would start changing quite fast.  I would just laugh a bit and keep walking.  It was another great introduction to Asia.  In Mongolia people were relatively straightforward with the exception of drivers, but in China, haggling was more important. Eventually I ate some more boring spiced chicken, and then some sort of candy something on a stick, I am not sure how to describe it. 

After I left the market I visited a large and beautiful lit Catholic church.  The architecture was beautiful.  After that I getting close to collapsing from exhaustion and mania at the same time. I was close to my hostel.  So I went back and wrote out a bunch of post cards and had a few words on the wonderful hostel porch.  You could buy a 640ml 5% beer for 25 cents.  That led to a lot of talking, and one lively porch.  I went to sleep like a feather.  After 2 months of life on the road, Beijing gave me a certain manic energy.  My only wish looking back is that I would have had more time to spend in China.

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