Beijing, September 26, 2008 - Friday
Trip Start
Sep 26, 2008
1
31
Trip End
Oct 18, 2008
Beijing,
China
Sunday, November 30, 2008
01 Beijing
. So that's where I was headed this time, into one of the most secretive countries in the world, to look the evil straight in the eye.
Of all the countries I've visited so far, or seriously considered for a visit, North Korea is the only one you can't enter as an independent traveller. It doesn't mean one can't enter it alone and in theory choose their own tailor-made itinerary which local authorities will maybe even approve, but at the end of the day you're not independent. In every event, by yourself or in a group, you've got to have your itinerary approved in advance and once inside, there are no deviations from it on the spot and going with the flow. Flow of tourists into North Korea is always well regulated, like an artificially regulated water canal. And that's easiest achieved if you are assigned local guides and interpreters who are at the same time minders, too, making sure that you don't stray from your route or get sidetracked by things they would rather you don't see. And there are no exceptions to that. If you're a tourist, there is no moving about on your own in North Korea.
And that gives importance to those few travel agencies which have specialised in organising package trips to Hermit Kingdom, as the west fondly calls the country. They cut through the hassle of paperwork, which is obviously an uncharted territory compared to procedures required for most of other countries of the world, much more efficiently than a single individual ever would
02 Beijing
. And on top of it all, no one can give you any guarantees that your independent efforts will eventually bear fruit and that you'll get your visa. By the looks of it, it was easier and safer to solve bureaucratic formalities through someone who's been doing it all the time and who has already won themselves a certain trust by North Korean partners. Of course, you can always grapple with it for personal satisfaction, in order to prove you too can do it. But that satisfaction seemed to me to be of a rather questionable practical value. So I decided, against my usual habits, to employ the services of a travel agency this time. The one that after certain research left the best impression on me was "Koryo Tours", a Beijing-based British agency, which has built its reputation precisely on organised trips to North Korea. To such extent, in fact, that even the BBC and "Lonely Planet" used their services for their documentaries and guide books respectively. And if "Koryo Tours" was good enough for them, it would do for me, as well.
At the same time it meant that before my departure to the easternmost axis-of-evil support I must in any case arrive in Beijing. At least for two or three days. And now that I had to arrive for at least two days anyway, why not two weeks?
The most of the rest of the world literally and metaphorically descended on Beijing on August 8, at 8:08, all in line with the Chinese belief that eight is a lucky number and that Olympic Games which Beijing organised this year would thereby easier find themselves a nook under the lucky star
03 Beijing
. With all due respect to the Olympic Games and all those people who considered it the greatest sporting show on earth, I neither shared their opinion on that nor ever directed my trips according to any sporting events. Once I attempted to go to the World Football Cup in Germany, two years ago, but I couldn't get a single ticket for the matches of my national football team. And that was all. So I watched the World Cup at home on TV. And had it not been for my Chinese friends to whom I thought I owed being a bit informed about the events on the Games, for they were obviously a source of pride for most of them, I would've hardly followed them at all. This way, for the sake of sheer politeness, I sought to be clued-up at least in general. That was one reason for which I happily missed out on the Games and planned my trip to Beijing for well after they turned the last lights off on all the sporting events. The other reason was that I believed China, in this case Beijing, which was crowded anyway, would with such a scrum of foreigners be even more crowded. Which would in effect make accommodation more difficult to come by, drive the prices up and cause all those unwanted consequences for a tourist like me.
And so I flew into China after both the Olympic and Paraolympic Games had called it a day, almost two and a half years after my previous Chinese trip, landing this time at the ultramodern airport of the Chinese capital on an overnight flight from München
04 Beijing
. Once again the passage through customs control was straightforward and without any hassle. Chinese policeman checked the validity of my visa, checked the photo in the passport and raised his eyes to see if it matched the person standing in front of him. I smiled and nodded: "That's me."
He smiled back, stamped it all and I was officially in China.
PingPing was going to wait for me at the airport. Of course, her real name was XiaoPing, like Deng XiaoPing, Chinese statesman reformer. When I once asked her how come she had a male name, she said she didn't. Then, the other way around, I asked how come Deng XiaoPing had a female name. I received an answer that he didn't. I wasn't entirely clear about that, but then I got an explanation that "her" XiaoPing wasn't the same as "his". What the difference was, it belonged to the learning matter of higher classes where I had not arrived yet. And probably never will. But as far as I worked it out, her name was written with one set of characters, and his with another. And the fact that they were pronounced the same way, well, it wasn't their fault that an ignorant like me was confused. Even if at the end of the day I wasn't entirely sure they were really pronounced the same way at all. Only transcription into Latin characters, or so-called romanisation, was the same. Which obviously fell well short of what Mandarin language really was
05 Beijing
. Either way, female name or not, once I finally entered the airport building, PingPing was nowhere in sight. I didn't know what to think. Certainly, it would be no problem to reach the hotel by bus or taxi. It'd be neither the first nor the last time. But I couldn't leave just like that, without knowing for sure what had happened. The flight wasn't delayed, I had arrived on schedule and everything was just as planned. So I really couldn't understand what could have happened. I lingered around the gate I had come in for a while, but without any results. Then I wandered around the airport building hoping that I might see her like that, but that was a rather tall order in such a huge space. So I returned to the same exit gate. Then wandered again. Then I tried to reach her on the phone, but for some reason the phone which boasted of accepting credit cards wouldn't care to accept any of mine. And all that began to look like a sort of merry-go-round, taking almost an hour. I was somehow getting ever closer to the decision like "just this round and then I go", and I really don't know how much longer I would have stayed.
If I hadn't spotted her at last.
She was standing where she was supposed to be all along. Right at the exit gate from the duty-free zone, intently staring at it in a rapidly thinning waiting crowd. Which in effect was no crowd any more, but rather only a few people left who have not met those they had been waiting for yet
06 Beijing
. Having seen her, I came up to her from behind and pinched her in the groin area. Startled, she swirled around and, seeing me, exclaimed: "Where are you?!"
"Where are you?" I countered.
"I'm here! Where did you come from?" she was frowning.
"From there," I indicated at the gate that was shut then as no one was coming out.
None of us understood what had happened and how we had missed each other, but at the end of the day it didn't matter much. I arrived, by and large everything was fine, and we could finally leave the airport building.
She had parked in the airport garage. We went underground to her car and so my trip really began.
As we were leaving the garage, I fastened my seat belt. PingPing first looked at me flabbergasted, then her face stretched into a wide smile, and finally she burst out into a full laughter:
"What's up?" I smiled.
"Your belt."
"Is it funny?"
Sure, she wouldn't dream of buckling herself up
07 Beijing
. "Of course," she answered enjoying herself immensely. "No one does it here."
"Hmmm. Where I come from, it's mandatory. If you didn't do it, police would stop you before you know it."
"We must do it here, too. But police stops you only if you fasten it!"
Now I burst out laughing.
"What do you mean, it's obligatory, and police stops you if you have fastened it?"
"Because no one does it. So if they see you do it, they think you are suspicious of something else."
It was a remarkable piece of information. An anecdote, really. Worth remembering for sure.
"But you're a foreigner. They won't bother you for that."
I considered it consoling. For I had no intention to unbuckle it just because no one else did it here. I thought those things were not done for the police, but for your own safety. It was reassuring to know I'd be able to abide by some rules and get away with it.
The day was warm and sunny in the Beijing way
08 Beijing
. Which translated into a milky fog in the sky, blocking direct sunshine, basically consisting of a healthy dose of smog. In other words, the thing Beijing was notorious for, carrying a dubious title of one of the world's pollution champions. Traffic on the four-to-six-lane motorway leading into town was quite heavy and it appeared that people in the cars had a rather liberal approach to the driving. Abiding by no obvious traffic rules except that most basic one of driving on the right side, it was almost a sort of free-for-all on the road, with every metre of the carriageway up for grabs. Blinkers were optional, which meant no one bothered to use them, and people changed lanes at their own discretion. I immediately thought China had to be the land of the colour blind as it seemed no one noticed red traffic lights. Lingua franca on the road was car horn. Whatever you were fixing to do and whatever you planned to let your fellow drivers know, there was the hooter. If this were in Europe, there would already be miles of strained nerves, tens of snapping drivers and at least a few traffic accidents. Someone like me would never survive such a traffic regime, leaving the car in their right mind. But the Chinese took it all in stride and averted not only disasters, but even possibilities of slightest incidents so effortlessly that it was fantastic. People were driving slower than in Europe, never seeming to get wound up at all and everyone knew exactly how to behave on the road
09 Beijing
. PingPing even sang along the music from the CD player. "Interesting!" I said.
"What's interesting?" she asked.
"The traffic," I said. "No blinkers, it's like traffic lights don't exist at all..."
"This is China," she smiled.
But of course, I hadn't finished my thought. It was also interesting, or even more so, that everything in the face of an apparent disorder nevertheless went smoothly.
Along the road towards the city centre the symbols of the recently closed Olympic Games still dominated the cityscape. I was looking around with interest, trying to soak up as many details as I could even through the car window.
"Beijing is clean now," PingPing told me.
"It wasn't before?"
"No. They cleaned it up for the Games," she answered.
I took her word for it. After all, she was living here and who would know if not locals? But it was true that Beijing impressed me as cleaner than anything I had seen around the Easter of 2006
10 Beijing
. At first sight, of course, it was obvious I had arrived in Asia. Maybe this was even the city many people first think of when someone mentions Asia. But for now it could most definitely enter any contest for the cleanest spot of whatever I had seen in Asia as yet. However, I knew I had just arrived. There would be time for more comprehensive impressions. It took us only a bit more than half an hour to reach Xicheng district, when PingPing parked and announced:
"Here we are."
"Already!?"
I had a room booked in the "Red Lantern House", a hotel which targeted mostly independent travellers and backpackers, located in a siheyuan, a dying breed in one of increasingly few remaining Beijing hutong. Siheyuan is a traditional courtyard residence, an architectural style peculiar to Beijing, even if not really exclusive to it. The name literally means "a courtyard surrounded by four buildings", so I was expecting to book a room in precisely such a place, a square housing compound, with rooms enclosing this central open inner space. As Chinese have always been very much aware of feng-shui energies and corresponding layouts, it was natural that siheyuan were almost always built observing the laws of feng-shui. Thus nearly all siheyuan had their main buildings and gates facing south. Maybe for better lighting, too.
As siheyuan join one another to form hutong, or alleys, lining them on both sides, a majority of hutong run from east to west. And then they run on each other, forming entire hutong neighbourhoods. They vary in width. Some can take a two-way vehicle traffic. And some are a real squeeze where not even two people can go in opposite directions at the same time
11 Beijing
. The living conditions in many siheyuan are considered squalid, with very few having private toilets. So with the unprecedented rise of Chinese economy, systematic demolition of old urban buildings has been taking place in Beijing under rapid economic development for the last ten or fifteen years. Siheyuan are being torn down and razed from the face of the earth with a speed matching the deforestation of rain forests. Granted, China has to address the problem of overcrowding and no one can deny that it needs modern residential tower blocks. But it's also true that siheyuan and hutong are a real, colourful China, and those tower blocks are a drab and dowdy feature of every skyline in every boring developing, or already developed, city in the world. No tourist will ever travel anywhere for a portion of those. But as I once raised that issue with some of my friends, it was met with an almost angry response that we westerners were hypocrites. We didn't want China to realise its natural right, the right to develop like any other country, and those hutong were an ugly wart on China's ever more fetching skin, and an ungainly obstacle that needed to be obliterated as soon as bulldozers were available. I was surprised that my friends saw neither a link nor a parallel between a potential drawing power of hutong and European architectural legacy, something that clearly set Europe apart from the rest of the world. It made me wonder why they couldn't see that every well-preserved and, of course, advertised hutong could kick in for the general good by attracting foreign tourists
12 Beijing
. PingPing was one of my rare Chinese friends to whom it was clear.
Fortunately for hutong, unless already too late, it seems that it started to finally dawn on some high-ranking Chinese officials that there was much more to hutong than met the Chinese eye blinded by mostly unimaginative uniformness of recent architectural achievements in the west. And China unabashedly looks up to the west, seeking to eventually beat it in its own game. Someone up there has obviously cottoned up to the need of preserving something that only China has, which possesses a uniquely Chinese soul. So at last some hutong have been designated as protected areas in an attempt to preserve this aspect of Chinese cultural history.
"Red Lantern House" was in one of them, the Zhengjue hutong. Should I say mainly only western tourists stayed there? The Chinese were only personnel.
Eventually, it turned out my room was not waiting for me in "Red Lantern House", but rather "Red Lantern House 2", another piece of real estate acquired by the same owner, though not in Zhengjue hutong, but rather in Xinjiekou Beidajie, a real city street that Zhengjue hutong came out on, some five minutes on foot away from there. I settled the balance, and then they summoned a lad on a tricycle with a rear part a cargo section
13 Beijing
. A pick-up bicycle, as it were. I loaded my luggage on it and he set off, navigating slowly through Zhengjue hutong, and PingPing and I trailed behind. After only a few metres he turned around on his seat and said something. "He asks if we want to take a seat inside," PingPing translated it for me.
"Inside?" I pointed at the cargo section with my luggage.
"Yes."
Certainly, on one hand it would be cool. But on the other:
"You know what. I've been on the road for twenty four hours and mostly only sitting. I'd prefer to go on foot."
And I meant it.
PingPing translated it back and we went on. Coming out on the Xinjiekou Beidajie, I was immediately treated to another lesson in Chinese traffic behaviour, free of charge. Our guy hardly looked around when he emerged from the hutong. Cocksure, he set out right across the street, completely unfazed by the four lanes and an enviable number of motor vehicles driving up and down at any time. Some of them couldn't be accused of being undersize traffic participants at all. Likewise, our bicycle rider hardly spared a glance at the traffic lights some ten or twenty metres up the street
14 Beijing
. PingPing followed him deadpan. Only I showed signs of being aware of the flow of traffic in both directions. And I was the only one who displayed apprehension regarding the whole undertaking. For the two of them it was just a common street crossing which most likely evaporated from their memory the moment they stepped on the pavement on the opposite side of the street. For me it was a life-risking adventure. And on the road itself none of the drivers displayed a single sign of jitters. Fantastic.
Xinjiekou Beidajie was, as I could see very soon, a street of music shops. A shop upon a music shop, they lined either side of the street, elbowing for space in two long rows only occasionally broken by a restaurant or a place selling some other commodity. Each of those shops specialised in one type of instruments, from drums to accordions, and everything in between. I had an impression that in each of them, or in front of them, there was at least one young and up-and-coming musician working, who on one hand used the working time to practice their respective instruments, and on the other showed off whatever skills they had acquired as of yet to other aspiring wannabes. I can't say it was necessarily an image we in the west held of China, particularly not the traditional China. But what I saw there, I liked it very much. Only, there were no piano shops.
The musicians smell each other and so, passing by those shops, at my first day already, I collected a decent number of greetings and nods. I liked this neighbourhood just fine.
"Red Lantern House 2" wasn't situated in a hutong, but once we entered it through a small, side passage, it looked every bit as siheyuan-like as "Red Lantern House" did. There was a nice tree in the front courtyard, ripe with fruit of the sort I didn't recognise, probably something very local, right beneath it a pool table and then the entrance into a beautiful siheyuan, complete with living plants, fish pond and a small, wooden arch of a bridge. Of course, there was an inner courtyard, too, surrounded, true to the form, by wooden houses all painted in red, with red curtains on the windows and red lanterns. All in accordance with its name and image. And in the quest for luck and prosperity which, according to Chinese beliefs, tags along with red colour.
As I had booked my room well in advance, I had a privilege to get one of the few single ones. "Red Lantern House 2" was not a three- or four-star accommodation, but rather a place, as I said, for independent travellers and backpackers. The likes of those have their own standards and expectations and they don't necessarily include all things offered by conventional hotels. But they offer an opportunity to backpackers to get to know each other and be sociable, an atmosphere which is much friendlier and more informal than in conventional hotels, and sometimes even striking up of a good friendship. Rooms in such places are usually no king size, but if they are clean and the bed hard enough, that's all a traveller like me - like us - needs.
I took out those few presents I had for PingPing. They were my band's two official CD releases, both signed by all band members, two DVDs with our not too frequent TV appearances, and a big "Dorina", the most famous Croatian chocolate bar, the "Kras" milk chocolate with hazelnuts. "Kras", of course, being the biggest Croatian chocolate manufacturer. And that was it. As far as I was concerned, I was ready for action.
"Do you want to sleep now?" PingPing enquired of me.
"No. I'd like to go out, if you don't mind."
"Are you sure you don't want to take a rest?"
"I can't sleep now. It's nine in the morning in Europe now. My body functions according to the Central European Time."
"OK. Would you like to eat something?"
"Are you hungry?" I countered with my question.
"No."
"Neither am I. I was eating all the time in the airplane."
"So where do you want to go?"
"I have just arrived," I smiled broadly. "I know nothing here. You decide."
She asked me to open the city map which she herself had bought me. I gave it to her, she studied it for a while and then said:
"I know! Let's go to the Houhai."
I picked up only the most basic stuff, which in essence included my small backpack and a few little things inside, and then we went out.
We were again on Xinjiekou Beidajie and started back to the Zhengjue hutong. At its very beginning we stopped for a moment to buy something to drink and then began our first walk. And right off Zhengjue hutong started revealing gems that in my part of the world didn't exist any more. First there was a street cobbler who was, in a company of a lady, repairing shoes on a low wooden box, which at that moment served him as a makeshift table, and in the night probably as the stowage for material and tools, and all that in a way that had been extinct where I come from for years. Then we saw a street cooker where a brew completely unfamiliar to me was being prepared, at the ready for sale to whoever wanted to pig it out on. Then there were bird cages with speaking birds, an awful lot of bicycles and tricycles, as many people as you can expect in China, quite a bit of trash along the hutong edges, but also a solid number of modern-looking cars. There were quite a few shops there, selling everything such a community needs, and even if it wasn't exactly such a closed world, it was nevertheless still a genuine China, and to my satisfaction I seemed like the only foreigner in this neighbourhood right now.
We were in no hurry as I would stop in front of every little thing that looked picturesque to me, and it was every one I couldn't see back home. So to get to the Houhai lake, which actually wasn't that far at all, it took us at least forty five minutes. In fact, the first thing we came to was an area that with every new step grew greener and fuller of elderly citizens who were leisurely spending this sunny afternoon there. Some of them played some kind of checkers, some played mahjong, and around every game and every player there were always at least as many on-lookers.
"This is Houhai," PingPing said to me.
"So, we're there?"
"Yes."
Quite a few trees were full of bird cages hanging from branches like balls on a Christmas tree. All around there were bicycles leaning against fences or low walls. Weather was very nice. Friends and acquaintances were there, present and future ones. Life in Beijing, at least today and on this spot, didn't seem half as bad at all.
And then we emerged onto the lake shore. So Houhai was first and foremost precisely that - a lake. Situated in a nice setting, in the centre of the traditional hutong area of central Beijing, as I could witness myself, and with some ancient historical monuments relatively nearby, it was obviously a spot that had something to it. Much more than just trees along its shores and water birds on its surface. Someone realised there was a potential for a lot more, so little by little, the lakeside neighbourhood of Houhai has acquired a reputation as Beijing's favoured leisure zone. It happened only recently, over the last five years or so. But as it's often the case in China, once you set the things in motion, they become unstoppable and the snowball rolls ever faster. So with its almost hundred restaurants, bars, and cafes, Houhai is nowadays one of the most famous and popular nightlife spots in town. Not exactly the cheapest one of all, though. You can't really call it a wallet-friendly neighbourhood. True, there are no thieves around. And pickpockets, if there are some, are less than visible, but nevertheless, money in your pocket hardly enjoys more safety for that. They obviously have more subtle ways to skin you around here. So unless you belong to the class of high-rolling tipplers and posh boozers, being a lush here means being skint before you can count to three.
Yet, many people know that, so the number of strollers, at least while PingPing and I were there, vastly outnumbered those who were sitting at some of the outdoors tables, drinking and letting their wallets off the string. And some didn't only stroll around. Some were anglers. Some enjoyed the sun in such a way that they were sitting by the lake shore and painting. Some were playing instruments. A flute, a clarinet, a guzheng...
"Guzheng?"
"Yes. It's guzheng. A traditional Chinese instrument," PingPing told me after I had repeated the name of the instrument, not being certain I had got it right. We stopped next to a woman who occupied a spot right be the lake shore, facing water and playing that traditional Chinese string instrument, which in terms of sound, and even its looks, resembled cimbalom. She was apparently indifferent to whether anyone listened to her or not.
A bit farther off, we saw a couple who had just got married and, against the setting of the sun which had just begun announcing the last part of the afternoon, all dressed up in their wedding best, they started having photos taken by a professional photographer to go down the time into their old age and posterity, as a memory to this very special day of their lives. There were also those who used services of a pedicab, i.e. a motor rickshaw, and circled the lake that way. And there were swimmers who didn't shy away from dipping into the lake's shallow water.
"They swim like this whole year," PingPing said.
"Even in winter?!"
"Yes. Every day."
And of course, there were western tourists, who were crawling out of some of neighbouring hutong only to disappear a few minutes later in some other ones.
Houhai was obviously a very lively place and just watching the people was quite a fun in its own right. I may have not slept entire last night in the airplane, but Houhai made sure just nicely that I didn't feel it yet. All in all, the magic and attraction of this spot was that you didn't really need to reach deep in your pocket and break the bank, and yet you could still have a good time. Even if they went out of their way to milk you if only you let your guard down.
And Houhai had one or two street toilets, as well. That was something I didn't remember as a fixture on Chinese streets on my previous visit.
"Those toilets were all put up for the Olympics," PingPing told me.
"So it would mean they were not here before?"
"Of course not."
"Seems the Olympics put Beijing through quite a face lift."
"Yes. City government did a lot of things for the Games."
At the east side of the Houhai lake, at its end we found the Yandai Xiejie street which gave the effort to look traditional its best shot, being without any motor traffic, lined on either side with one-storey buildings with upturned eaves, decorated with numerous red lanterns and - in the run-up to the forthcoming national holiday - red Chinese flags. But numerous shops with souvenirs and goods that might not be souvenirs according to the strictest of definitions, even if merchants selling them first and foremost had tourists in their mind, it all clearly indicated that genuine tradition had disappeared from there a long time ago. It was just a make-up which desperately tried to emulate it, same as an actor trying to look authentic in a period movie, but everybody knows that's just a movie. That's how I perceived it here, as well.
"This is a true traditional tourist-oriented street," I said.
"Yes," PingPing agreed. "It's all for tourists."
Some time around seven I had to think about returning to the hotel. I needed to meet Maggie, too, who had been working until then. This time much faster, PingPing and I returned to the Xinjiekou Beidajie. Before we went each our own way, we made an arrangement for the next day.
"What would you like to see tomorrow?" she asked me.
"Maybe it would be best to start it out with the Forbidden City."
"When do you want me to pick you up?"
"There's no need for you to pick me up," I answered.
"Why not? How will you get there?"
"By underground."
"But how?"
"Very easy. Just tell me which station to get out and I'll be there whichever time we set."
She didn't appear too convinced and for a while she strongly suggested she collect me some time tomorrow morning. But there was no need, indeed. She lived in the Haidian district, at least half an hour away by car from my hotel, and all that when the traffic was friendlier. Like let's say late at night. I felt I would only be taking advantage of her hospitality and friendliness. So I stayed the entire course and wouldn't give in. Eventually she did, still pretty dubious, but I held my ground.
"Don't worry," I tried to soothe her. "I've travelled so much around the world so far that I just can't get lost. You'll see."
We set our appointment at nine in the morning, at the exit A, and the station to meet at was Tian'anmen West. After that PingPing went to her car, and I returned to my hotel.
When I arrived, Maggie had already been there. She had arrived directly from work and was now quite tired. Finally, I could claim the same thing about myself, as well. So we didn't go out. We just stayed in the hotel and talked. I gave her the English books I'd brought her, as well as another two signed CDs by my band and a "Dorina". She gave me a spare battery for my digital camera which couldn't be obtained anywhere else except in China, and even there with many difficulties, as well as a heap of postcards and three city maps. For a good measure.
When we were finally both so tired that we couldn't go on, she went home and I started preparing for bed. I didn't know how I'd react to the time change and for how long jet lag would have a hold on me. But I decided to disregard it and behave as if it never mattered. I would set my alarm o'clock as if I were a Beijinger and would neglect the fact that my body would for a while still function according to six time zones back. I hoped it would work.
