Go On, Hock Up A Reeeaaalll Good One…
Well, I’m back again, once more posting through my media manager – Berin McAmazing. My frustration at the internet censorship here is at an all time high, but thankfully the good old Auntie Herald seems to slip through the radar, and I’m getting my news through it. If any of you urgently need to contact me, just make it onto the front page and I’ll probably read about it in the near future.
It seems that 2004 is down to that last, warm, flat sip that’s left at the bottom of the bottle near the end of the party. Welcome to December.
I can’t quite bring the cheer and charm that I normally would to today’s post; 9 days in Beijing is far too long, and it’s starting to take its toll on my morale. Still, I’m sure I can get to that later, there’s plenty of good stuff to natter about, so put on the kettle and fluff up your massage pillow – this could be a biggie.
Congratulatory shout outs to my cousin Libby, for getting engaged on a bridge in Prague last week. She’s nabbed herself an English boyfriend (who I trust wasn’t living under said bridge) and I look forward to meeting him when I arrive in England in just three short weeks.
Big ups to Tom and Kerryn as well, who in their Homy van, have covered 4,714km around sunny Nu Zillund. Keep up the miles, and keep playing ‘Drivin’ at every opportunity.
So, I can honestly say that it has been the best of times and indeed the worst of times. The sights in and around Beijing are really amazing, and worth the effort of going to see, but after 4 months in 6 other supposedly ‘underdeveloped’ countries, I feel like I’ve never been so wantonly ripped off and taken for a ride as we have here. As my erstwhile traveling companions, The Tinseltowners would put it; it’s two fingers, up way past the knuckles.
My blossoming ill feeling about the city (germinating in the fertile soils of bitter cold, a vast and difficult to navigate city, and less English than a first year Chugakko classroom) got a thick, grainy dose of fertilizer on Friday.
Feeling good after splashing out on my big, green People’s Liberation Army fleecy-lined jacket, we headed into town in the back of a little motorbike taxi, after negotiating a reasonable fare of 6 yuan for the good man’s troubles. On arrival, this figure miraculously jumped tenfold, and we were stuck in the classic ‘no-common-language’ standoff. Intemperate language was exchanged (fortunately, and for both our Karmic benefits, neither party really understood the other), collars were grabbed, and we ended up leaving him a fistful of yuan in his door and walking off – having fallen for apparently the oldest trick in the book.
Tip one – write down the price…
The new species of Illfeelingus moderatus now sported a healthy stem with several vigorous budding shoots reaching for the foul light that bathes Beijing, and this I carried throughout the day until dinner time – when we were royally lubed and fingered once again.
Deciding to try Mongolian hotpot (there are some of you back home who will know this as ‘Steamboat’, from the restaurant of the same name at the top of Queen St in Auckland), which I have to say is an excellent and warming dish to end a long winter’s day on the streets of a big city, we chose a little restaurant where we were warmly welcomed (that’s 5 w’s in a row people, beat that…) inside by the friendly owner. Fortunately they had an English menu, but with no visible prices, and the carnivorous traps on my Illfeelingus Moderatus snapping at its edges, we decided to ask the prices of the component parts (hotpot, with soup and fire underneath, plate of meat, plate of cabbage, plate of greens) and thought it was all looking good. To go with our meal, we of course agreed to a little bowl of rice (and I’m talking fist sized here, about enough to fuel your standard eight year old for about 17 minutes), and two palm sized dishes of satay sauce.
Warm and replete, with my withering plant at hand, we stood to collect the bill, at which time I found that the three items we didn’t ask the price for (satay sauce and one bowl of rice) were written up as coming to the price equivalent of the rest of the entire meal put together. This standoff was even more tense than the morning’s one, involving other customers (who we’re pretty sure were on our side) and near fisticuffs between Julie and the owner. The woman was a witch, enough said… We left pretty upset, as did the locals at the table behind us, by this stage sure that the Beijing water supply connects directly with the sewerage system of Hades. My great vine of ill feeling is now a major attraction, posing a threat to local air traffic, and living in a separate hotel room.
Tip two – expect to be treated like a giant public wallet…
Anyway, in the interests of maintaining chronological order – rather than burning off the growing rage that resurfaces when I find myself writing about these incidents – I’ll try to get on to something more positive…
Saturday took us up to Tiananmen Square, where according to the National Museum “students massacred innocent soldiers in a 1987 uprising”. It’s a big old square indeed, the focal point of Beijing in fact, and as major city planning elements go, it’s quite a doozy. It sits at the halfway point of a giant axis that runs unbroken for 6km and terminates in a temple park north of the Forbidden City (more on that later.) It’s bounded to the south by the Chairman’s mausoleum and at the north by the famous Tiananmen gate. Approximately in the middle of these two landmarks is the Monument to the People’s Heros, a 36m granite obelisk. All around are people flying kites and just generally milling about trying to escape the 14 million other people who are desperately trying to find some peace and quiet. It’s a pretty cool space really, good if you like your imposing Communist architecture. (See also Albert Speer, The Berlin Wall, and the 1936 Munich Olympics.)
After a good wander around there, along with the requisite piccies in front of that famous portrait of the Chairman (I can confirm they didn’t airbrush out his rather large chin mole) we entered the Forbidden City.
With the Simpsons-like byline of, “500 years ago it would have meant instant death, but today it will cost you only 40 yuan!” we plodded in through the crowds.
Now, this was a pretty impressive sight really, acres and acres of palace buildings, countless terraces, and massive porphyry courtyards. I think this is where Bertolucci’s ‘The Last Emperor’ is set, but don’t quote me on it… A lot of it is under reconstruction for the Olympics (as is most of Beijing – I have counted at least 50 buildings over 30 stories tall under construction, that’s a lot of food parcels…) but it still maintains its effect. The buildings are almost all raised on giant red plinths, at least as tall as the building itself. While none of the individual buildings are as beautiful or intricate as those I saw in Japan, the effect of these buildings in forming outdoor spaces is incredible. Each major building is linked to the next with long galleries (much like the encircling galleries at Angkor), and terraces drip down from the main buildings to break down the scale of the courtyard spaces. Scattered everywhere are giant bronze vats, designed to hold water in case of fire. Good luck…
That evening, and on the way back from the Forbidden City, we managed to catch the flag-lowering ceremony in Tiananmen Square just on sunset. There was a pretty large crowd assembled, but Jules and I managed to nudge our way to the front (pushing is a national pastime, exceeded in its popularity only by spitting, which is preceded with a great hocking noise before the participant deposits his/her phlegm wherever they happen to be. This includes on buses, trains, in carpeted restaurants, hotel lobbies, or on your shoes) and had a pretty good view.
As the ceremony got underway, the supreme palace guard marched out from the Tiananmen Gate – a collection of crack troops trained to march at precisely 108 steps per minute, of exactly 75cms. They all carried some of the most glimmeringly clean rifles (with fixed bayonets of course) I’ve ever seen, except for the leading three. The middle officer brandished a perty silver sword, while the two officers either side of him carried – fans of Alec Baldwin movies get ready – chromed folding stock AK47s. I’ve never seen much marching (the NZ infantry guy was sick on the day I went to see them), but it’s pretty impressive, almost cinematic. I was kind of waiting for someone to abseil in and create scripted chaos, so entranced was I with the marching that I didn’t actually notice the flag coming down. A cool thing to see, check it out if you come this way.
Let me now just say something about the transport system as it stands here in Beijing. There exists a subway system which runs basically around the main ring road that encircles a 5km radius out from Tiananmen. These stations are pretty easy to find, with the ticketing system easy enough to work out. However, (oooo, you just knew there was one of them coming didn’t you) in not one of these stations could we find a sign saying just which station it was; of course there was nothing on the outside of the station, and infuriatingly, even the subway maps inside the station didn’t include a ‘you are here’ marker. This led to more than a few annoying trips underground, to ask the attendant “Which station is this?” Of course, that’s a drastic simplification of the whole process, as it usually involved a lot of finger pointing (down, that is; “here!!!, here!”) and gesturing (shrugging mainly, “where??”) before trying to reconcile the answer with the completely unrelated Romanized spelling of the place name. The inner circle of hell deserves a specially warmed, name-engraved seat for the inventor of pinyin, a worthless system whose pronunciation bears absolutely no resemblance to the actual Chinese words it is supposed to represent.
Deep breath… and, ooooout…
Things better be better by the time hundreds of thousands of non-Chinese speakers pour into this city, or by hokey there’ll be trouble. You’re not too old for me to put over my knee and give you a damn good…
Sunday took us back to the square, for something I’ve been looking forward to for a really long time; my first preserved Communist leader. Now, my media agent has been kind enough to forward comments onto me from the blog, and there appears to be some consternation at the fact that I didn’t manage to visit Uncle Ho while in Vietnam. The reason for this are simple – he wasn’t there.
Now, lying around on display is pretty tough work for a dead guy, and just once in a while (say, September to December, if that happens to coincide with my blimmin’ traveling timetable!) our favourite goateed old guy has to make a trip to Russia, where he is ‘maintained’. This presumably entails some sort of checklist;
“Uncle Ho?” - check
“Still dead?” - check
Who knows, but apparently he takes a little looking after, and that’s where he was when I came to see him. Sadly that thwarted my plans to see the Big Three; Uncle Ho, Chairman Mao, and Comrade Lenin. I’m saddened, but have decided to keep going.
Anyway, this is Uncle Ho; different decade, different country, different distinguishing hairstyle. Let’s get back to the man in question.
The Chairman is kept on the south side of Tiananmen Square, in a purpose built (not to be confused with off-the-shelf) mausoleum. He’s only open certain hours, so be careful if you’re going to arrive when he’s ‘open’. We checked our bags (over the road to the east of the square, don’t tell them there’s a camera in there and you’ll only pay half) and joined the queues. Those of you who have queued for other preserved leaders could confirm here, but we really rocketed along in the line, moving at a brisk walking pace. About halfway before entering the actual building, there’s a little stall, where you can splash out 2 yuan on some plastic flowers to leave as a tribute (we passed). After scaling the stairs, you enter “The Splendid North Hall”, where a white statue (think of the huge seated Abe, but smaller, and not Abe, but Mao Zedong) sits surrounded by plants. This is where the faithful leave their plastic flowers, before filing around either side to line up for “The Magnificent Hall of Last Respects”, where Mao lies.
So, I don’t really know what to say, if you don’t want to hear anything about it and would rather see for yourself, then skip on a couple of paragraphs, but otherwise, here’s Rakish Richard’s rundown on the whole thing:
The beloved leader lies draped in the hammer and sickle flag, in a truncated rectangular pyramidal glass case. He’s quite a chubby little fella, with no visible legs, and when I first entered I found his head so brightly lit that I actually thought it might have a light inside it! Anyway, once I got almost side on to the great man, I commented to Jules that he looks kind of ‘anguished’, to which she replied, “Well, he did die…”. I thought this was a good point. He also looks more than a little waxy, and there’s some debate as to whether he might in fact be a copy. He’s my first one, so I’ll reserve comment until I’ve seen Mr. Lenin. So, he doesn’t look ‘happy’ per se, but neither does he look angry, in fact he kind of looks like he’s got some sauce dripped onto his pants, and it’s just starting to soak through but he doesn’t want to let his hosts know that anything has happened.
On the way out you run the gauntlet of souvenirs, which are plentiful, not to mention original. There are figurines, portraits, books of quotes, little tanks and artillery made of bullets, and other unimaginables.
Good fun. He’s Chairman Mao, admission’s free, and he’s in town for all of eternity.
After that we headed up to the China Art Museum, which had some amazing 20th Century art. Funnily a lot of it was anti-Japan, but I can’t quite work out why… Good pieces anyway, and I was feeling a little uncultured besides. By this stage we hadn’t been more than mildly conned in at least 56 hours, so I was pretty weary…
We rolled into bed on Sunday night, ready for Monday’s excursion – a trip to some wall north of town.
It was a long ride out of town, in peak hour traffic, and – as you do – we got talking with Ruby, a girl from the Philippines who was staying in the same hostel as us. She was showing us a wooden comb she’d bought, and I made the usual humbling, self deprecating comment about how I didn’t really need one. To this Ruby made the priceless reply that, “mmm, yes, my brother, he is the same. He was 24 when his hair failed…” Other people laughed.
After almost 4 hours in the bus, we arrived at Jinshanling to begin a 10km walk along the Great Wall of China.
It was great. (haw haw…)
10km flew by in no time at all, and the sections of wall we saw varied from fully restored to ancient and decrepit, with the whole range inbetween. It was pretty cold when we arrived, but once we got up on the wall itself and started walking we soon warmed up, and all was good. We were looking out over Beijing province to the south, and Inner Mongolia to the north, with nary another object in sight. Our only interruptions were the incessant touts, whose main tactic on the wall is to walk 5kms with you, chatting about the wall the whole way, before saying, “I walk home now, long way. Please you buy book before I go?” This is the cue for intense guilt and a subsequent sale. Determined not to be stiffed again, I screwed the lady for two packets of postcards at wholesale rates, and have to guiltily admit I felt better.
Tip three – find a better way of dealing with China than I did.
The worst consequence of all this is that I now trust no-one, and suspect that everybody is trying to rip me off. This is unfortunate, but the only way I can protect my precious yuan. If anyone (especially you Fred, you lived here – give me some tips to ease my anger!) can help, go ahead in the comments please.
In true form, our hike was designed such that to exit the section of wall we bought a ticket for, we had to enter the first hundred metres of the next one – resulting in needing to buy yet another admission ticket. Clever. Or just extortionist, I’m not sure which. After paying to cross a swingbridge, we then had to pay again to cross back over the same river, this time by flying fox, so it was kind of worth it. 20 seconds, one extremely steep ravine, and about 150 metres in distance, it was quite the ride before heading home.
The Great Wall is great, get on out there. One of the benefits of going in winter is that there are very few tourists to contend with. This does mean that in terms of touts there’s proverbially ‘more lions, less wildebeests’ but it can be overcome. Anything less than an entire day would seem far too little. You can stay out there overnight (at Simatai, where our hike finished up) but you’d have to pay for another admission ticket the next day.
Photos have been snapped (some will be printed, and there’s a lucky few of you who should check their postboxes in 10 days or so), sights have been seen, and now we’re waiting for the next journey. Apparently my Russian visa has been processed ok, and my passport is on it’s way back already. I’ll leave on Saturday night for Moscow, Julie will leave for Mongolia the same morning, and we’ll separate for the time she’s traveling through Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal and India
Beijing’s been an experience, and I’m grateful I don’t live here. Staring is endemic, with the guards on the train looking at me with such distain you’d think I was mincing babies. At any given moment you can look behind you and guarantee that people’s eyes will be fixed on you, mouths open, huge glob of phlegm ready. It takes a really long time to get around, it’s expensive, and we seem to have been magnets for bad experiences. Short of getting shot by a band of gypsy children, anything that happens in Moscow will be a welcome relief.
Well, I’ve taken up too much of your time already, it must be time to get the spuds on. Keep up the hellos, and hopefully I can access my comments once I get to Russia.
Your man, getting just a little bit cynical about the world’s most populous nation,
Arch :)
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