The longer I stayed in Beijing, the more I thought of Hudde Ledbetter's immortal words about Washington, D.C.: "It's a bourgeois town." And for that very reason, a bit of a disappointment. It is to Shanghai what Madrid is to Barcelona:
a busy capital city dominated at its center by government buildings and
operations, but a bit of a bore compared to the vibrant commercial city on the coast. The only really exciting
architecture is the Olympic stadium.
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City seem echoing
soulless places compared to the elegance of the Humble Administrator’s Garden
or the stunning tribute to the Tang dynasty in Xi’an.
Nevertheless, there is something so elegant about traditional Chinese
architecture
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| Forbidden City |
and I found myself drawn to the few artifacts still in evidence, such as the turtle below.
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| Turtle, Forbidden City |
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| Summer Palace |
More interesting is the Summer Palace, with its beautiful lake, lush gardens and lovely buildings.
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| Summer Palace |
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| Summer Palace |
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| Entrance to a home in the Hutong |
We were able to visit the Hutongs that still exist near the
Forbidden City and had lunch in a home there.
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| Hutong Street Sign |
Even though this family is considered quite well-to-do, occupying an
entire courtyard with two rooms, a kitchen and a newly built upper story
bedroom for the family’s only child, toilet and bathing facilities remain
communal and the structures are for the most part in decay. It was fun to take a rickshaw ride through the tiny neighborhood. Beijing is trying to preserve what remains of the hutongs, built originally by the Mongols (as was the Forbidden City), but the real estate is so valuable it is hard to believe they will succeed.
For entertainment, there was a Kung Fu performance, the
story of Chung Li, the abbot of a Buddhist monastery who was a high
practitioner of the art and a troop of Chinese acrobats, all waiting to be
discovered by Cirque de Soleil.
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| Section of the Great Wall |
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| Great Wall |
Of course, no visit to Beijing would be complete
without a trip to the Great Wall, which has been built and rebuilt over the
centuries to guard what was then China’s frontier.
The landscape is forbidding and so is climbing
even a small section of the wall, since much of it is straight up, a staircase
rather than a road.
We were there on a
misty day, which softened somewhat the barren foothills and the mountains
looming in the distance.
And everywhere there was shopping.
We kept asking ourselves who bought all this
stuff, especially the luxury items.
With
rare exceptions there were no Chinese people in Western ads, which I found
shocking given the size of the market they represent.
We saw few Chinese with Western shopping bags.
Perhaps that is because everyone is saving
for a car.
As an anti-pollution
measure, car ownership is rationed both in Shanghai and in Beijing, but how
they accomplish the objective is instructive.
Only so many license plates are issued per year.
In Shanghai, you can pay as much for the
license as for the car.
In Beijing,
there is no charge for the license, but one may have to wait years to win the
lottery for the limited number of new license plates and then can drive only
every other day.
Translating not just from one language to another but also
from one culture to another produced some pretty funny moments. For example, our hotel in Beijing had a
Liquid Bar and a Solid Restaurant (who knows what the Chinese characters really
meant). In Suzhou, two bars across the
street from each other were named the Old Feeling Bar and the New Feeling Bar (we drank our dinner that evening at the latter!).
This was a wonderful trip. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to visit
China, to try to understand the country and the culture a bit better. I am grateful to have seen this land when the
air has been almost entirely free of pollution.
The food, which in no way resembles food served in Chinese restaurants
in the U.S., has been superb (fresh and delicious, especially a wonderful new
discovery – lotus root) and I’ve become a devoted fan of Chinese beer (there
being little wine and less Scotch in most restaurants). Nevertheless, I am grateful to have returned home. After all, one can enjoy a traffic jam anywhere!
