Tibetan Adventure

Tienanmen Square: Revolutionary History and Olympic Absurdity

Like many Asian cities the old and the new meet at odd angles on the streets of Beijing.

This is a picture of a fifteen foot clock counting down the minutes to the Olympic games. We ran across the street to the center of Tienanmen Square, where Xiao was searched and they didn't even look at me even while I stood next to Xiao the whole time.

At the Center of the Tienanmen Square: the monument to those who died during the revolution.

After visiting Tienanmen Square and checking me into a cool back alley hostel called LeoHostel, Xiao and I walked around the HuTongs. HuTong basically means a small street created by having many walled square houses built near each other. Some HuTongs are wide enough for a single car to pass with people pressed up against the walls, others are very tiny. The Hutongs were built many centuries ago and are slowly being demolished or taken over by rich Beijingese. However, at the moment, you can still find some authentic HuTong action:

Xiao and I went in search of his birth place and found some beautiful little sights along the way:

This is a classic HuTong scene. The entrance to a communal living area. Before the revolution, only the aristocracy lived in the HuTong's close to the Imperial Palace, size and distance determined by rank and relation. They had entry ways like this and then large front and back courtyards and several buildings all for one family. When the people "liberated" themselves (and Beijing's housing property) many poorer families would take over an aristocratic family's home and thus the HuTong culture was born.

We found Xiao's old home! (Hint: it's that doorway to the right.)

There are public toilets every so often and everyone in the HuTong shares them as it is rare to have one's own.

At the exit of one of the HuTongs we walked through, Xiao stopped to see a traditional Chinese picture framer. He was a delight to meet, and was pleased to explain his 32 step traditional process to Xiao. I bought some accoutrements for practicing calligraphy and we learned about the most famous modern political Buddhist in China, who happened to have been the framer's acquaintance. Apparently Buddhism might have been mostly wiped out if it hadn't been for this one man's political influence. In any case, here the framer demonstrates technique:

she she, mister framer man.

Xiao thought it would be auspicious to visit the original site of the Beijing University, where all the modern Beijing intellectuals were trained. Unfortunately, the gate is locked, and the surroundings are now filled with tenants, so this is the best picture we could get. So, this is me, in front of a gate, with a building in the background, which was the original site of Beijing University. It's a bit like going to visit Oxford, but only getting a picture on the side of the road nearby.

Here Xiao gives his best "I'm not posing," pose in front of a monument to important revolutionary dates with sayings and descriptions chiseled in Mandarin and, you guessed it, French.

So that was my Beijing experience in pictures; minus the eating of hundreds of chicken wings with Xiao's middle school buddies, and the scam where I lost 690 Yuan, and the hanging out with Aya when we got rockstar treatment at the best Peking Duck place in town (Da Dong rocks!) and again when we got shoulder and foot massages at an underground spa. (Not underground like illegal or artsy, but literally under the ground.) You're the best Aya!
Hu is also the best, cause he drove me around a bunch, and I only got to buy him lunch once.
Here is Xiao and Hu in all their glory:

Bye bye Beijing! I'm off to Lhasa.

Everything is printed in Chinese! My actual blog site won't load at all so someone let me know how these are coming out.
Seriously though, everything is not in Chinese, plenty of signs are in English and the city is hot with Olympic fever. Beijing is almost as cool as Kyoto, and that's saying a lot coming from me. Besides needing to have your destination written out in Chinese characters for the Taxi drivers, Beijing is going to be ready for the Olympics. Other than the 90% of all people you meet trying to take advantage of you the place is great. I am still getting used to the idea that one must bargain for virtually everything and that a price tag often means very little when you have white skin.
The venerable Xiao Ouyang guided me through HuTongs and fried chicken bars, modern malls and, of course, the Imperial Palace itself. If not for Xiao I would have been lost many more times and the struggle would have been endless. However, many signs are printed in English now and Beijing is not a complex city. Everything spreads out from the Imperial Palace in regular blocks and the subway is pretty easy to navigate. The air isn't as bad as I expected, but in the morning it does feel a bit like you smoked cigarettes the night before. All in all I give Beijing an A minus as a world city (not that I'm an authority on world cities, but this is my blog so I get to do what I want.)
It is certainly an impressive place. Wow, I sound like I'm trying to sell a tour to Beijing or something.
Well anywayz, I will let the pictures speak, but maybe not for themselves:

None of my pictures can give the sense of immense space created by the architecture of the Forbidden City.

There are at least six gates to the Forbidden City, which is a series of rectangles dividing rectangles surrounded by a huge moat, the Tongzi He. Each major gate opens into a gargantuan courtyard. Standing in the middle one can easily understand the impetus for director Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower. An invading army, even if it got past the first two gates, would be in a continually worsening situation of being out in the open courtyard surrounded by high walls, which would have been filled with imperial archers. It is abundantly clear that the entire city was built as an extension of the masculine power of the Emperor. Zhang Yimou tries to express this patriarchal reality hoping that he shows what was wrong with the old imperial state, while showing the growing feminine strength to be associated with the people's revolt. But, just as in the movie where the Emperor survives to the last, being around the Chinese for even a short while convinces me that the rectangle and straight line are still very much the symbols of masculine dominion, and that the Imperial Palace still represents the Chinese ideal, however much may or may not have changed with the cultural revolution.

The entrance to the Forbidden City with Mao's 20 foot face over the gate.

As you can see, there is a constant stream of tourists, mostly Chinese, crossing the bridge and entering the gates underneath the watchful eye of Mao. Xiao tried to get a pic of me up close but there were military personnel standing guard and they shewed us along. If you go to Beijing you will find there are many very helpful people around directing the swarming throngs of tourists. Xiao said maybe it was the American in him but it was a little weird to be watched all the time; I said it was very nice that the state cared so much for its citizens.

Inside the Forbidden City there are all kinds of wonders to be found. Like this fake grass basketball court with a millitia on it. These guys were drilling while not 30 yards away there was a line of tourists going into a building labeled with a sign that said "Pictures of Eunuchs from the Imperial Palace." In 1813 it was the eunuchs who helped a revolting populace get far inside the walls of the Forbidden City. There were many eunuchs because the hundreds of courtesans had to be kept safe and untouched inside the walls.

The People at Work: The Forbidden City is Under Construction

It probably took these guys half an hour to put one piece of scaffolding up. They didn't really look like they were paid very much. But there they were, representing the people working inside a place they never would have been allowed to even see. The amazing thing about the Forbidden City is that it is perfectly divided by an ancient road, parts of which only the Emperor and his mother were allowed to walk on. This central line of power is now the main route for tourists as they move in towards the Imperial Palace. There are huge courtyards surrounding the road, but they are almost completely empty of people because everyone stays on this one small stretch of cobble stones. Xiao believes this to be an excellent example of the Chinese people's attitude. People do not wander off in the larger areas even when the road is packed with people, because it is in the center line that power abides and it is there they are drawn from all sides of China. As Mao's picture at the gate declares their right to enter the "Forbidden City," so too their taking of pictures declares their place in the power structure.

Some one thousand tons of stone went into the creation of this phenomenal single piece sculpture. In the foreground massive dragons duel each other.

An old man watches the Imperial Palace get older.

Once inside the living areas of the palace grounds, a maze of rooftops, courtyards and tiny rooms presents itself.

All the rooftops are fitted with these strange ornate figures:

The Emperor's Inner Sanctum:

The Illustrious Guide Himself:
"I think I've got all I need: Nietzsche, Beckett, and cigarettes." Seriously though, I read most of Waiting for Godot while waiting in line at the Bank of China. It's going to be silly when the city is overrun with foreigners for the Olympics. In case you go, don't bother with so much traveler's checks, just use the ATMs from the Industrial and Agricultural Bank of China to withdraw Yuan. There's no point in going to the bank if you can avoid it. Also, most of the ATMs start in Chinese, but just press a button you think looks right and you'll get to a window that will allow you to choose English, then its easy.

Can you find me?

The smaller buildings of the palace have amazing architecture and fine woodwork. The Chinese have repainted some of the larger buildings, but many are left with ancient peeling paint for added effect. Strangely enough, many of the small museum areas are newly painted on the outside, but the pieces on the inside are left with inches of dust on them. I would think that European and American curators cringe whenever they visit. We saw some ancient pieces that were just sort of sitting out in the open gathering dust.

For the architecturally inclined. Most of these buildings have no nails or screws in them.

According to Xiao the architects wanted to create the sense of the wings of a bird as it takes off the ground. Unfortunately I couldn't get far enough away for a proper shot because there were so many other little buildings like this one, housing alters to various gods.