Big, Big Beijing
Trip Start
Feb 29, 2004
1
23
33
Trip End
Nov 24, 2004
Beijing,
China
Thursday, September 16, 2004
BEIJING
Finally, finally. The big city that has been looming as the turnaround point of my trip for the past months. So, what's it like? Well folks, the best way to describe it would be simply 'big'.
Arriving absurdly early on the Datong express, we hopped into a taxi to the hotel (the driver actually used the meter without ripping us off - a landmark first for me in any capital city east of Berlin). The hostel I'd headed for is in the messy hutong (an old residential area) just south of the Forbidden City, and the hostel is set in a courtyard house, not unlike the Pingyao mansions. The night receptionist was thrown off by my Chinese visa that had no entry stamp (see the Tibet entry for the reasons why) - no entry equals no official existence equals no bed in the hotel. I crashed in one the rooms anyway for a few hours until the manager came in, glanced at the visa, heard the word Tibet, threw me a knowing glance (encompassing the same hatred for stupid Tibetan visa rules that I have developed), and tossed me the key of my room.
After visiting the Vietnamese embassy to get a visa, I had a few days time to explore the city. I'd heard from travellers who love Beijing, and from those who hated it. In my case, the jury is not out. I think I'm impartial to it. Many sights are grand, but also pompous and overpriced; the traffic is horrendous; the architecture of the new highrises mushrooming up everywhere is dour; the distances are huge. But on the other hand it has some real top sights, there are much less uniforms on the streets than I expected, and getting around by metro, taxi or even bicycle is easy and cheap. Beijing is loud and commercial and brash but can also be quiet and charming.
Tiananmen square, site of Mao's mausoleum and the student rebellion of 1989, is plain ugly; a square so huge that it can only have been made to intimidate the individual. To view Mao's frozen corpse, you stand in line outside the gate. Every ten minutes or so, a group of about 200 people is allowed in, and are ushered across the courtyard, lead between painted lines in the ground in 90° angles to come to a standstill before a flower kiosk. Here a man with white gloves and a megaphone has the crowd re-arrange itself in lines of four (the blond Dutchman registering silent protest against mindless militarism by standing ever so slightly out of line), and urges people to honour the memory of the Chairman by purchasing a bouquet of flowers. Then we're frogmarched around another imaginary 90° corner and straight up the stairs of the building. Inside, flowers are deposited at the foot of a white statue of the Chairman on his Chair (to be collected and resold at the kiosk again, of course). The it's in fast pace, single file, through a glass corridor, with the deep-frozen dictator lying in a glass coffin like a fish finger, waiting for the kiss of a prince of perhaps for someone to finally bury him and put an end to the show.
This is China, so it was not quite unsurprising that immediately after leaving the sanctuary you get deposited between a dozen Chairman Mao article souvenir stands. Clocks with Him waving away the seconds, pins, pens, T-shirts, ties - you name it, you can buy it here, and nobody seems to see the irony of it all. To the contrary - the hundreds of Chinese that file out of the mausoleum seem only too eager to have a lasting momentum (other than their fucked-up country) of Uncle Mao. I look at all the Chinese people who are deeply moved by their visit to Mao, and can't help wondering if they really see him as a hero, or as the mad power-hungry monster who they still can't afford not to show respect.
Later I had a discussion with an expat about the student revolts of 1989. I know a dictatorial police state when I see one, and I think the crushing of the revolt was a terifying show of the rigidness of China - and perhaps a preview of more to come. To my dismay, the expat I talked to said it was a necessary move, as China would have been thrown into unimaginable chaos if the revolution had succeded in changing the regime. So, what about democracy, an end to authoritarianism, true freedom for a people that has suffered enough from their whimsical leaders? Nothing of it - stability for the growing business opportunities semed to weigh more for him. Sadly, this seems to be the case for most foreign businesses in China - they can't afford not to be in this booming market, and all moral is shoved aside for profit. The trade embargo with Myanmar (Burma) is upheld because the military leaders are bastards, but in the case of equally brutal China, when it gets profitable it's OK in the name of stability. Now I'm all for free trade, and don't beleive in either protectionism or boycotts, but in China I do get a bad feeling about all the companies raking in the money and having their lavish dinner parties with the local bigwigs while the top brass still has political prisoners' heads chopped off and threatens Taiwan with war. The locals that I see on the trip don't seem to be too bothered about it though - just like a generation of East Germans they are happy to sacrifice a slice of freedom for material gain and political earplugs. Maybe the next generation will also want to have a say in the way their country is run.
Just north of Mao's mausoleum, his portrait (one of the last ones shown in public in the city) is still pinned above the entrance of the huge Forbidden City palace complex. Bertolucci's film 'The Last Emperor' was filmed here, and I remembered the fabulous images of the coronation ceremony as I walked across the main courtyard. It was from here that generations of emperors ruled China, but nowadays, as a tourist attraction, its main appeal is its impressive size rather than subtle beauty. Just walking in a straight line through all the gates and palace buildings to the rear exit takes more than an hour, and I was releived to reach the royal gardens at the end of the tour.
With Ruth and Claire I visit the spectacular Tibetan temple in the north of the city centre. Nothing like the temples in Tibet, it's modelled on traditional Chinese temples, but is amazingly beautiful, with painted columns and dragons everywhere, and courtyard after courtyard of beautiful buildings. In the small museum about Tibetan Buddhism, there's no word of the Dalai Lama's exile, nor of the estimated 80,000 Tibetans that died during the 'Paceful Liberation' of Tibet.
We wander through (and get lost in) the hutong areas north of the Forbidden City; we take a break at a peaceful lake that is surrounded by cafes and restaurants. Sinking away in lakeside sofas, we sip on the green mint beer (try everything once) and later sit on a crammed terrace eating fabulous Chinese food. Before hopping in a taxi back home, we watch dozens of people dancing classic-style to jazzy music along the lakeside. Beijing is cool.
Two of the reasons that I am visiting China and Beijing at all are Roger and Jessica, two friends who I met a few years ago when they were living briefly in Warsaw. They're both avid China-lovers and speak quite a mouthful of mandarin. Roger has a company that buys old and 'new' antiques, restoring them and selling them to the US market. He had a client in town, and took me on a trip to some wharehouses on the edge of Beijing. This is where wholesalers who scour the villages bring tons of dusty antiques to sell on, and many of the objects are beautiful, and very nicely priced. I bought a pretty 150-year old lacquered box for the wedding I was to visit in Hong Kong, and eying the fantastic wooden four-poster beds (intricately carved, some even with a porch!), promised myself to buy one if I ever manage to settle down. Jessica is a beautiful jazz singer/songwriter (see
