Oct 2008

The Great Wall
Mao Zedong once said "He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a man". Not to have my masculinity mocked by the Chairman, I promptly found a travelling companion and headed out for the wall to prove myself. Eron, from Israeli, was sharing a dormitory room with me at the time, and shared my disdain for the cost and hand-holding of the great wall tours, so we decided to head there independently. Keeping true to our adventurous spirit, we choose the Jingshanling-Simatai section, a 10km hike through both restored and unrestored sections, as a nice alternative to the more famous touristy sections at Badaling. Unfortunately, it is also located about 3 hours from Beijing, requiring us to travel into the next province and then walk back other the border on the wall itself. But we can do it!

Everything begins well. We catch a bus for the first 70km for a paltry 15 yuan ($3), but are a little confused about how to make the next step from Miyun to Jingshanling...where will we find taxi drivers in this small town? No worry, the moment we get off the bus we are surrounded by taxi drivers yelling "Great Wall! Great Wall!". Our taxi driver doesn't speak any English, but he seems positively chuffed with the amount we paid to him for the taxi ($70 for both us for 150km, plus 4 hours waiting for us at the other end), and smiles and jokes the whole way. We revel in our freedom, stopping at McDonalds along the way and laughing at all the tour groups eating glad-wrapped sandwiches on their mini-buses.

After an hour or so, we arrive at the foot of the great wall, and leave our smiling taxi driver to begin our hike. At first glimpse, the wall looks like...well, like a big wall on top of a hill really. We walk through the gate, chatting loudly, until we come to a window and step outside to have a peek at the view. We abrubtly fall silent. In front of us is a panorama of bleak hills and barren fields, with the great wall gently snaking away into the distance. The landscape follows us for the rest of the way, with the views growing more and more superlative the longer we go. It is a harsh landscape, a landscape of war, an epic world of bleak mountains, crumbling watchtowers, everywhere characterized by the mesmerizing view of the wall snaking into the infinite distance.

We figured that Jingshanling would be the most peaceful section of the wall, given that it is of very little interest to most Chinese tourists, and is such a strenuous hike that most travellers would be discouraged. But the smell of foreign money proves too great to resist, and a whole host of locals hike alongside foreign tourist groups, selling T-shirts, water, coke, beer, snacks, photos, and just about anything else they can lug up there. Most of them are middle-aged or even elderly women, who completely deflate my new-found sense of masculinity when they tell me they complete the hike every day on their souvenier-selling runs.

Not that the hike is in any way easy, mind you. Soon after we leave Jingshanling the wall decays into its original Ming-Dynasty form, and without modern restorations to smooth out the hard parts, we are left panting for breath. The brickwork is decaying, and the path follows the ridiculous inclines of the mountain ridge, a dragons back of endlessly undulating ups and downs which the old women selling souvenirs seem to manage with ease. At one stage, we are confronted with what appears to be a sheer wall, but turns out to be a staircase - an 85 degree incline, which we are expected to climb to reach the top.

Finally we reach the end, exhausted and content. The gods of irony quickly disperse the clouds as I hop in my taxi home, but I am satisfied. I have what every tourist comes here for, an unmissable event in every trip to China; a photo of me on the Great Wall.

The Forbidden City

The first gate I walk through is Tiananmen, passing beneath Mao's famous portrait as I step through the red stone passageway. I enter a world of hawkers selling T-shirts, guides offering me tours, and photographers cameras with giant lenses as they bustle through the ticket queues. Armed with my entrance ticket, I proceed to the Meridian gate, which in times of old only the emperor himself could walk through, into a whole new world waiting beyond the palace doors...

I have seen temples before, and would consider myself a little bit worn-out on ancient architecture after travelling through Japan and China. But the Forbidden City is not a temple, nor is it an ancient building...it is a true city, sprawling endlessly on a scale that defies the imagination. I am glad I left an entire day to wander around, but realize even this will not be enough to see even half of the treasures on display. I happily bounce off the walls between the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity and other superlatively named buildings, taking photos everywhere I go.

Once again, I am "always alone, never alone", and before walking an hour I am adopted by a group of Chinese students who show me around the complex. In a rare variation, they are not English students this time, but rather students of Czechoslovakian language in the Czech republic. But luckily for me, they speak English as well!
Together we roam the imperial gardens with its amazing collection of strange vegetation, while I take photos of ancient Chinese buildings and they take photos of the foreign tourists. I guess there's something to interest everyone in the Forbidden City!

In the evening, the Forbidden City closes and the guards attempt to herd everyone out of the buildings, not an easy task given the massive size of the complex. At this time the scenery is at its best; the evening light casts warm shades over the stone, and the huge crowds that mar the scenery are completely vanished. It is a completely different world, quiet and majestic, and for a moment I pause to breath it all in before a guard directs me to the exit.

The Temple of Heaven

If the Forbidden City is the place where the emperors basked in their glory, the Temple of Heaven is the place where they came to humble themselves, offering sacrifices to the gods once a year. Here even the emperor cannot walk through the centre gate; this is reserved for the god of heaven himself in case he decides to come strolling in. Though not as grand as the forbidden city, it wins points for the minor details; the points of the two temples line up precisely only when you look at it from the furthest gate, the path is inclined a fraction of a degree upward as you walk toward the temple of heaven, the rainwater is channeled through auspicious stone sculptures on its way through the drainage system, and the walls of the altar of heaven are aligned in such a way that sound travels perfectly along them, allowing one to hear a whisper from the other side of the altar 20m away. Well, at least that's what the pamphlet told me; when I was there the altar was crowded with about 100 people attempting to yell messages out to each other over the tourist din, seemingly with little success.

The Memorial Hall of Mao Zedong

Although long dead, it is indeed still possible to pay a visit to the late Chairman. Following the example of Lenin, Mao's remains were preserved and remain on display in a grand mausoleum in the centre of Tiananmen square, free for entry to all those who wish to pay their respects. Unless you happen to be levied an unofficial charge, that is.

I was just at the point of lining up when a man in a suit stopped me. "Sir! No backpacks inside! Please follow me to the lockers". I find his efficiency somewhat surprising for a Chinese government employee; he blocks traffic on either side as he rushes me across the road, quickly hurrying into the doors of the official checkroom where I hand over my bag. Then he rushes me back over to the line, to lament the fact that "my friends", the two foreigners who happened to be in line next to me, are no longer there. "Don't worry, I can take you back to them!" he says.
"Hey that looks like them!" he exclaims, pointing to two generic foreigners standing halfway through the line.
"Yep, sure does!" I reply, and he lifts up the barrier to let me through, right in front of the security guards.

Then he explains, using gestures, that I should give him 10 yuan. That's when I realize that although he has the identical uniform to the other officials, he has no name badge; he is merely a mercenary, filling the gap in the inefficient government infrastructure. I gladly give him 10 yuan. Later, toward the front, I see the sign that says "no backpacks", and realize that without him, I would have waited in line for an hour only to be turned back at the front door. It seems Chinese Communism is as dead as its great leader lying inside; below the red flags of the people's republic, capitalist innovation continues in ways even the decadent west could never have dreamed up.

Peking Duck

I figure that the best place in the world to eat Peking duck is Peking (aka Beijing). And apparently the best (if priciest) place to eat Peking duck in Beijing is Quanjude, the famous duck restaurant visited by heads of state and government dignitaries from all over the world.

Me and my companion, a Taiwanese art student from California, are drooling with anticipation by the time it comes out. A chef (or at least a guy wearing a chef's hat) brings it out on a trolley, and begins cutting it up before our eyes with a giant cleaver, in a few minutes succesfully turning the duck into two main dishes of duck meat (according to our specifications), a plate of impossibly crispy skin, and a side dish of the meat from the head. The procedure is simple enough; paint some sauce on the pancakes, insert duck meat and scallions, wrap up, chew and feel happy. Despite the menu's protestations that Peking duck is low-fat and high-protein, I am absolutely certain that nothing that tastes this rich can be good for me. My friend describes the taste as "transcendent", and indeed it is difficult to describe. The duck meat is slightly smoky, and the skin ever so deliciously oily and crispy. Combine that with the tangy sauce and scallions, and you have what TV commercials describe as a "flavour sensation".

The Far East Youth Hostel Kitchen

Admittedly not recommended by any guide book, but a great place to wind down after a big day of touring. Drinking a cold 50 cent bottle of Beijing beer and listening to the other backpackers exchange stories of lands far beyond is something I look forward to every night, even if many of the conversations are in Hebrew or Spanish...

This is Beijing?!

Clear blue skies, wide open roads, clean streets and technology that would put Tokyo to shame...where is the backward, polluted industrial city I have heard so much? It strikes me that no tourist literature had ever described Beijing as "beautiful", but that is exactly the word that comes to mind as I wander through it. The paralympics is still ongoing, with western tourists and athletes crowding every corner of the city, and the whole city buzzes with excitement.

The fireworks herald the end of the paralympics, and the last days of the olympic era come to a close. Gradually the tourists become less and less, and as they do, the threads begin to unravel. The roads, once relatively quiet, fill with cars honking cars, making many streets a walkers' dream of gridlock. Construction, put on hold during the olympics, begins once more, from the giant cranes silently sliding around the sky to the ad-hoc welding, sawing and sledgehammering in the streets. And then one morning I wake up and the whole world is grey. Walking around, I find the once beautiful streets are now dank and lifeless, and sitting on top of a hill in the evening I watch the sun becoming dimmer and dimmer, disappearing behind a curtain of haze before it even gets close to the horizon, leaving me cold and depressed in the twilight.

The subway system also goes through a dramatic transformation. When I first arrived during the Paralympics, I was amazed to see state of the art automatic ticket machines, escalators, and conveyor belts, and LCD TV's on every train, far surpassing the technology of even Tokyo's subway systems. Now, the subway begins to show its Chinese colours. The ticket system is completely incomprehensible to the locals, who just last year were using paper tickets, and each ticket gate requires several staff members to help the confused patrons. To make matters worse, every time they make a mistake the machines emit a peircingly loud high-pitched noise, ensuring that every station is a cacaphony of noise. There is one good thing about the transformation; Locals have given up trying to work the ticket machines and buy their tickets from the staff instead, which means I never have to wait in line for the machine.

On the trains themselves I am sometimes entertained by the regular propaganda screenings on the new televisions, with songs about the beautiful harmony of Chinese society, complete with video-clips of Tibetan people cheering and high fiveing Chinese visitors (I noticed that this particular ad campaign was never screened during the olympics), but for most of the time the TV's are simply quietly malfunctioning. To fill the silence, hawkers selling maps yell their way up and down the carriages, ocassionally replaced by duos invariably consisting of a pitiably disabled person singing sad ballads into a karoake microphone, and another running around the carriage asking for money.

And while I reminisce about the pleasant days of the olympics when everything ran oh so smoothly, I am completely oblivious to a much greater chaos about to visit me. For next week is National Day, a week long holiday when ordinary Chinese people get a break from work and a chance to travel around their country. China is a country of 1300 million people, and when the majority of them decide to get up and go for a holiday, chaos inevitably follows shortly. Especially if you happen to be in China's most touristed city...

On national day itself, I think to go to Tiananmen square, to watch the raising of the national flag and hopefully catch a glimpse of the Premier giving his speech. My hotel is only 20 minutes walk from Tiananmen square, its the perfect opportunity, right? Well, my hotel used to be 20 minutes walk from Tiananmen square, it is now more like an hour. The streets are jammed full of people eagerly taking pictures of themselves in front of anything even moderately famous, tour guides waving little flags and wielding megaphones, and the occasional local looking murderously at the tourist invaders.

The subway system becomes a complete nightmare, as any door, staircase or other bottleneck becomes a site of general pushing and shoving, and getting on and off trains falls only slightly short of mob violence on occasions. I resolve to simply sit in my hotel room and wait the week out, and I expect many locals are doing the same. Finally, the Chinese tourists leave as the foreign tourists had done only a few weeks ago, and Beijing is at peace once more. The newspapers triumphantly proclaiming that a new all-time record had been set for tourism during the week; in the period of one week, over 8 million people visited the city, including 2.8 million visitors to the olympic stadiums alone.

No doubt Beijing has enjoyed its time in the spotlight, but most residents seem to be glad to see the tourists go. The locals wander the neighbourhood with no particular purpose, playing chess on the street, and spitting in the gutter. Sure, its nice to be famous. But sometimes, its nice just to be yourself...