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No More Smog
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Arriving in Beijing was quite an experience due to the reach and "depth" of it's legendary smog. About 100kms out we started driving through a blanket of yellow/grey smog which blocked out the light, easily taking 3 hours off of the daylight. It was clear that this needed cleaning up and for the next day and a half we had rain and joy after this blue sky which we thought was quite rare for this bustling city rushing towards its world podium in August next year. Whether the reduction in cars by banning access to odd/even number plates on alternate days will help reduce pollution is not certain, but for us it seems that there is already less traffic than in Shanghai or other large cities. We were lucky enough to be welcomed by Christile who put us up in her luxurious appartment in the embassy area.
For a capital city there are still plenty of old buildings even though many are being razed to be reborn as shiny new hutongs or shopping malls. Hutongs are really just alleyways with small living abodes or shops/restaurants tucked away in them, so small they don't usually have toilets (you can imagine the public ones). The more modern ones have often been converted to tourist shops or bars, yet even here they keep that cosy charm. The malls are just expensive shopping experiences where according one sign you can experience the surprise of a grope.
Our preferred visit was to the Summer Palace and not because it took so long to cover the 12kms to get here but just because although heavily visited the large park and surroundings lets you breath a little. It's covered, like the earth, with 70% water and brightly decorated with pavillions and assorted buildings. The signage does harp on about it being burnt by the anglo-french allies but this sounds like the plaintives of a spoilt child after reading it for the umpteenth time. Tianmen square, for us quite surprising since it's not a square in the classic sense, being formed of squares and courtyards surrounded by museums and encircling the imperial palace. There's a strong military presence backed up by the police who like to direct people around and control their flow through the underpasses. The imperial palace was also known as the Forbidden city because one of its many areas was closed off except to those who had important news for the emperor (not because it housed his concubines). We didn't really have enough time to visit everything since at 5pm prompt everbody gets pushed out, however what we did see shows a lot of renovation (still not finished) and some fairly comprehensive English texts. The calligraphy was well explained for a change, we saw the manchu script which is a cross between arabic and hindi and many dictionaries of manchu chinese. It turns out that there is a basis for these languages in sanskrit.
Heaven Park as the name suggests has religious connotations, it was the place of sacrificing animals to the gods by burning. The Emperor was inclined to watch this spectacle after 3 days of fasting and celibacy. Dongyue temple has some interesting Taoist statues depecting why to live a moral life and what happens if you don't. These statues are most often amusing, people reborn as animals or locked forever in a ghostly form. We didn't just stay in the city but took off for a couple of days into the northern hills to see the great wall. Many people go to see the completely renovated Badaling but this sounded rather boring, so we headed to JinShanLin which allows one to walk 10kms of wall into Simatai. The watch towers are in various states of repair and often you descend the wall to wall along the mountain before rejoining it at a "safer" point. Hardly any people were around so we had uninterrupted views of the snaking wall over the mountains. It seems a little mad to have built a wall here since the mountains were probably protection enough, the highest in the area being 2110m.
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Latest Comments (1)
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ni men hao! (reply)
Oct 11, 2007 17:08 EST by jon_helen
Still enjoying reading your blogs from China. You've broadly done the same things as us! Feels like you've been there for ages now - we got China'd out after a month - eager for a moment of peace! Did you read that I proposed to Helen when we stayed overnight at the Great Wall at Simitai? Yes, she did agree.
Back in the UK we notice now how much is in print and film about China. Last... show all
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