Beijing 1: The Forbidden City

Monica and I found a cheap flight over a three-day weekend and decided to visit Beijing.  Arriving at the airport late at night we opted for a taxi straight to our hotel.  The taxi lines were well organized with ropes leading us into a tight queue.  Everyone in Hong Kong talked about how crowds push and shove to be first in Mainland China, and I was excited to see this myself.  I had both elbows out ready to go but was let down by how orderly the process was.  To be sure, Monica reported that a woman had blatantly cut in front of her in the woman’s room, but the men’s room had no crowd to fight with.

            We wound around and around through the taxi line.  At the front a security guard blew his whistle repetitively, motioning taxis to stop opposite the queue in little parking spots.  As a few taxis pulled in all order collapsed as people started to madly dash out of the queue into the road, jumping in front of then into taxis.  I loved it!  They had gone through so much effort to impose basic order on the situation and then at the last minute the crowd mentality took over and the order fell apart.

            We rode through suburbs filled with large shopping malls, convention centers, and corporate looking hotels, then on to the old streets of Beijing as the infamous giant face of Mao that towers above Tiananmen Square appeared.  Just like that we were in Beijing—and it was like a movie about old China.  Even at 11 PM there was a steady stream of men, women and children walking to and from the square or sitting around playing mahjong and badminton.  As we went past Tiananmen Square I noticed a typical sterile house from an American suburb with a steep, fancy, Chinese roof stuck through the top.  It was so ordinary on the bottom and so fantastic on the top, and I wondered if it was some sort of government building or just a random house plopped down in the middle of the historic center of Beijing.

            We headed further into the neighborhood and the driver stopped and timidly indicated that the hotel was ahead and to our left.  We went into a hotel and showed them the name of ours and they motioned down a side street that was for pedestrians only.

            As we headed onto that street the charm of old Beijing’s hutongs immediately struck us.  Every building had unique and beautiful Chinese architecture, with intricately designed gates.  Dragons, serpents, horses, and other beasts guarded every window and balcony.  There were Chinese restaurants and cute little cafes, massage parlors, tiny groceries, all with brightly colored flashing signs.  We heard a bell and a man on a rickshaw pulling a fruit cart rattled past.

            After going by perhaps 100 hotels we saw a big flashing sign for Hotel Leo.  It was like a portal into another dimension as the Chinese street gave way to loud, drunk, white backpackers.

            After check in we went back out onto the street for a quick walk.  The neighborhood was unexpectedly quaint and quiet.  We walked down side streets and there were a few jumbles of telephone wires and piles of garbage, but far less then in Bangkok, Hanoi, Kathmandu, or other poor cities I had visited.  The greatest impression coming from Hong Kong was how quiet and peaceful it was.

            The next day we had a simple breakfast at the hostel and made towards Tiananmen Square.  The area around the square reminded me of a Chinese version of the mall in Washington DC and we passed museums and monuments to trains, stamps, and all the other mundane aspects of daily life.  Coming from Hong Kong the sheer open space was striking, with wide boulevards lined with leafy sidewalks.  The sky was clear blue with big, puffy clouds on the horizon, a pleasant surprise as we had expected the sun to be hidden behind layers of smog.  We later found out the Prime Minister of Greece was visiting, and the government often shuts off the power plants to impress foreign dignitaries with fresh air.

            There were guards in sharp red-guard uniforms standing at attention, and there were more modern and intimidating guards with machine guns huddled around trucks.  We saw a few Communist bureaucrats around.  We watched two who wore matching white dress shirts and black pants.  They stood four paces apart and each had his hands behind his back.  They were mirror images of each other and had an interaction that seemed to be totally scripted.

           We went past fire breathing red gates and a stone castle called the arrow tower.  We saw Mao’s mausoleum in Tiananmen Square but it was not immediately obvious how we could get into the square because huge barricades blocked us off from crossing the wide boulevard.  We found a tunnel under the street  where one direction said Tiananmen and one said Palace Museum, but the Tiananmen side was closed off.

            We headed straight to a fancy gate that announced our arrival at the “Forbidden City.”  The “Forbidden City” is also known as the Palace Museum.  It encompasses the living spaces as well as the political and ceremonial buildings associated with the dynasties that ruled China for almost 500 years, from 1420 until 1912.  An incomprehensible amount of history, drama and intrigue obviously took place within this walls that I was overall embarrassingly unfamiliar with.

We passed a security check and then we passed through enormous grand gateway as we looked down on the pale red walls of the Forbidden City.  A stone staircase led down into an enormous courtyard.were looking down a staircase across an enormous stone courtyard faced the pale red walls of the Forbidden City.  Orange rooftops were held up by tall, intricately painted columns.  We opted for the virtual audio tour that came with a GPS map on the back.  Everything lit up until the areas we visited faded.  The woman on the tape asked many rhetorical questions: “Would you like to know why there are 11 figures on the top of this gate?  There are 11 figures because-“ and “Can you note any difference between this gate and the previous gates?”

            Almost immediately on entry two women with a selfie stick ran at me and shoved it in my face.  My immediate reaction was, “why do you need me to take the picture when you have that stupid stick?”  Then I realized they wanted a picture with me.  At first I enjoyed the attention and felt like a rock star, but after several more people asked me to pose with them I started to wear down as any rock star eventually must.  By the time the late afternoon sun hit I would be gritting my teeth in frustration as a man pushed his confused son into a picture with me.

            The audio guide was more engaging once we moved behind the wall.  My frustration with history is when it is presented as a list of names and dates and deities.  I want to be able to imagine the human stories and the day-to-day lives of historical figures.  This tour did a relatively good job balancing both aspects.

            When we got by the coronation room she told the story of the last emperor, coroneted as a 3-year old boy.  He started to cry during the long, chaotic ceremony and was told to not worry because “it wouldn’t last for long.”  “It won’t last long” was taken to be a curse on his rule, which only lasted two years before the Communists swept into Beijing and took power.

         

   We got to the Hall of Supreme Harmony where the emperors held court in the famous Dragon Throne and all of a sudden I saw the frantic, pushing, shoving Chinese crowd that I had looked forward to all this time.  Selfie sticks turned into spears as the crowd jostled and pushed for position to see the great dragon throne.  I stepped into the madness with elbows out, reminiscing on mosh pits at metal shows I attended as a teenager…only to watch as people noticed me and then turned civilized: instead of pushing and shoving to get ahead they stepped around me to push small girls and children instead.  One person bumped me and immediately apologized.  Maybe it is because I’m a western man, maybe because I have a beard, or because I am so intimidatingly strong, but everyone clearly avoiding bumping or shoving me while a mosh pit whirled around me.  Monica kept getting pushed and suddenly the situation seemed even worse, with them deliberately avoiding pushing a man but not a small woman.

            I feel obligated to point out that while this does happen at crowded places in China, its not the majority of people, and throughout the trip we saw people being deferential to each other and trying to avoid running each other over.  Talking to people who have been in China before it does seem that the younger generation is beginning to learn the habit and patience of waiting in line, something that seems so simple and taken for granted to us but was not part of their culture for a very long time.           

            When I did get a glimpse through the crowd I noticed that the throne was of course very fancy and covered in all sorts of swirling dragons and gold, and like the Iron Throne of Westeros it looked horribly uncomfortable.

            The Forbidden City stretched on before us in all directions an grand sculptures and paintings led us through tiny, mazelike alleys. The illuminated map on our audio guides seemed to mock us because no matter how far we walked it seemed like we had seen only a tiny fraction of the palace.  

            We passed an unbelievable 200-ton slab of rock carved into dragons riding along a river.  The audio guide told a story about how thousands of workers erected an enormous sled to slide it to Beijing from distant icy mountains.

            We passed through the outer court that was used for public ceremonies and events and then into the inner court where the royal family had lived.  We accepted that we would never be able to see the entire unfathomably large palace in a day and found a café for lunch.  Looking at the map I marveled at the descriptive and idealistic names of buildings like The Palace of Cherishing Essence, Revering Benevolence, or Earthly Tranquility.  There was a Chamber of Joyful Longevity, and one of Immersing in Virtue.  We avoided the hall of Abstinence, which was conveniently as far as one could get from the Hall of Concentrated Beautys where the concubines of the emperors would live.

            Lunch was standard Chinese noodles and dumplings in copious amounts.  I watched a nearby woman with a stroller and a baby on her lap.  I don’t know how the stroller could possibly include a baby as it was filled with shopping bags.  She was wearing a brightly colored hat and had 2 additional bright hats draped over the stroller as backups in case her hat blew away.

            Indeed, as we sat and wandered we were struck by the colorful costumes all around us.  A high percentage of the tourists wore 3 or 4 bright, intricate patterns that did not even come close to matching one another.  Fashion is rarely something I notice at all but it was so over the top that I giggled when mismatched women paraded by.  One might wear a flowery purple dress with a bright orange pinstriped shirt.  She would then top it off with a rainbow “piñata hat” and even more flowers on a colorful umbrella.  Some men were also dressed in such vibrant colors and patterns while many opted for basketball jerseys and baggy shorts.

            I thought of Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World while observing the center of Communist China.  In 1984 basic human instincts are repressed and people engage in “double speak” to deal with the contradictions and lies inherent in daily life.  There were elements of this in the great forgetting of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the pretending that the air pollution doesn’t exist, the repression of minorities, the denial that the concept of democracy even exists.

            Yet in Brave New World Huxley described a world where our desires are met instantly, before we can even experience the longing of desire that makes us feel human: we are endlessly distracted from comprehending or noticing our repression as we drown in instantly gratified but superficial pleasure.

            One would picture a repressed communist society as grey and colorless, and yet I think this worldview goes a long way to explaining why China is not, with consumption of over the top, colorful items filling some sort of void and giving people a feeling of power in otherwise bleak lives.

Between the palace and watching the costumes parade by the day was a fascinating kaleidoscope of colors, patterns and wonder.  We went through the Imperial gardens.  Every cliché of Chinese architecture or design was on display in staggering amounts.  I half listened to the audio guide and got confused about whether she was talking about a rock that looked like a tree trunk or a tree trunk that looked like a rock.  It would enchant emperors who wrote poetry in its shadows.  An endless landscape of pine trees, flowers, ponds, fountains and pavilions surrounded us as we passed below both beautiful tree trunks and rock walls.

We passed the living rooms of the emperors’ concubines as the audio guide explained how thousands of beautiful women were sent from throughout the empire to be chosen for the part.  After the emperor they served died the concubines were sent to live a monastic life.  The audiotape provided a small recounting of the story of Empress Wu, who was able to seduce the son of the emperor and avoid being sent to the monastery.  Then she gained influence and eventually became the first and only empress in Chinese history, flipping the tables by taking hundreds of young men as concubines and drinking their semen to steal their energetic power.

We went into the room of clocks and watches and marveled up at intricate, 2 story high clocks.  Dancers spun in circles, flowers bloomed, animals played all to wind up the gears and move the clocks’ hands.  Clocks were from all throughout Chinese history and many were gifts from European capitals.

We went next into a room of armor and weapons.  Around this point I realized my brain was saturated and I couldn’t process any more historical facts or artifacts.

We oriented ourselves and walked out the back gates of the temple then into the leafy Jingshan Park.  The park contains a hill that was made from the dirt taken out of the moat around the Forbidden City.  We went up the hill into a pavilion from which we had a panoramic view back over the Forbidden City and out into Beijing.  I was struck by the leafy suburbs that hardly resembled a city and led up to lines of skyscrapers out in the distance.  To the west we blue hills sloped up towards the Himalayas.

            We walked through the park and heard the sound of a marching band.  It turned out that it was one old man wailing on the saxophone along with his boombox.  We watched him play for awhile as women in funny hats drifted by.  There was children playing hide and seek and grownups playing badminton, and everywhere we walked the park was filled with life.

            We left the park to head towards the Llama temple.  We were back into the tiny little alleys of a neighborhood, yet for awhile the neighborhood was strangely grey and empty.  It looked like a movie set and hardly real at all, it seemed newly painted and erected.  Everywhere we walked there was nothing but grey buildings and roads.  We began to think no one was living there until we peeked in one building into the staring eyes of a family.

            A woman came by carrying an enormous stack of boxes on the back of some sort of rickshaw.  All the boxes immediately crashed down as she tried to make a turn.  I saw no indication that she could have expected a different outcome nor that she could expect to ride for long without a repeat of the crash.  She laughed and laughed, not seeming troubled by the hopeless inefficiency of her mode of transit, and we helped her stack the boxes up again though she seemed to have no expectation of anyone helping her.  We watched a couple minutes to see if they would spill again then journeyed on through more parks and windy streets.

            As we approached the temple the streets got more lively, with bookstores and quirky little shops selling incense, art and religious relics.  Now there were men playing mahjong in little groups and smoking cigarettes.  I discovered how much worse the smell of Chinese cigarettes was then that of normal ones; as a nonsmoker I was still able to tell the difference.

            We needed a rest so went in a little dark café that was filled with books, couches, and artwork.  They had craft beer from all over the world and an espresso bar and it was filled with young people on MacBooks.  We could have been in Portland or Brooklyn as Beijing continued to surprise me.

            After our drink we walked the rest of the way to the temple but it was closed and we were worn out at that point so we took the metro back towards our hotel.  We found a typical looking crowded Chinese restaurant and ordered 4 items; a hot and sour soup, eggplant with minced pork, dumplings, and steamed broccoli.  I ordered a beer and they asked if I wanted small or large and I said large assuming it was a pint.

            They soon brought a pitcher of beer and enough food for perhaps 10 people.  The order of dumplings was 20 and the soup was practically the whole pot.  I ate and drank as much as I could after a long day of walking but we still finished only half of what they brought.  Full as could be we headed back to the hotel to sleep early, preparing for the Great Wall in the morning.