Beijing

A Walk in the Forbidden City and Beyond

c. Sue Wright

The Lonely Planet guide to China says those who have slugged it out in hardship trains and ramshackle buses through the poverty-stricken interior of China appreciate the creature comforts of Beijing.  You said it!

Actually, we certainly appreciated its creature comforts when we got to the PRC capital, but we weren't exactly living in luxury there.  We had located our new lodgings through the Lonely Planet guide way back in Zibo.  That's
because our hard-working travel agent, Henry, said he couldn't find space for us in any hotel in Beijing.  How could that be, we wondered? But turning to our trusty " bible," the LP guide, we began the search for cheap digs for ourselves.

Under "Places to Stay, Budget," in Central Beijing, the China guide showed an interesting listing for "the newly renovated Red House in a convenient location near Beijing's expat area."  Suites are available for long and short-term rental, it said---and the magic words were,  "Major credit cards
are accepted."

Ah ha, we said!  Just what we wanted and over the telephone bargained down the price for a two-room suite to $24 a night apiece, and we were set.  When we arrived in Beijing and took a taxi to a back street off the beaten path
listed in the guide, miraculously, there was no screw-up.  The Red House had our room waiting.  It was up three flights of marble stairs and we had to carry our luggage, but who cared.  The suite was plain though comfortable-and best of all it possessed a refrigerator and ample hot water
for a shower-- if you could figure out how to manipulate the Rube Goldberg series of red and blue buttons, nozzles, and levers that turned the water tank on and controlled the shower nozzle.  It seems the Red House was either a former (or maybe current) youth hostel. We never figured it out.  But we were in business.

As always, it was first things first-in this case, comfort food-western style!   Adjoining the Red House down a back hallway is "Club Football," a sports bar and restaurant.  There, a never-ending soccer game blares loudly on a giant TV screen, and its hamburgers and fries are to die for if you've been starving on a chopsticks-only diet of dried noodles and cabbage.  (We ate there two evenings, and the owner became our best Beijing friend!)

But we also had one of our best meals in China the day we visited the Great Wall.  There in the city it is named for, we were served one of the capital' s greatest inventions, Peking Duck.  If you've never had it, you've missed out on a great meal!  .  They raise the ducks in farms around Beijing,
fattening them with grain and soybean paste. The ripe duck is lacquered with molasses and dried and roasted over a fruitwood fire. (I took a great picture of the chef roasting ducks in the kitchen.) They serve thin slices of the tender boneless meat and crispy skin with a side dish of shallots and
plum sauce, and you heap this all into a crepe, wrap, and savor the tantalizing aroma and flavor!.

But back to the nitty gritty of being a tourist.  We managed to cram all the familiar tourist attractions into our too-short stay in Beijing, and the sights, sounds, history, and extraordinary culture of China all comes together in that city of 12 million people. We tramped through the Forbidden
City, the largest and most amazing cluster of ancient buildings in China- and which was the center of power of the Middle Kingdom and off limits to outsiders for 500 years.  Two hundred years ago, the price of admission would have been instant death, but today enormous crowds, mostly Chinese, beat a steady path through the incredible maze of ornate palaces, gates, walls, halls, stairways, bedrooms, wedding halls, and terraces.

We had to keep up a quick pace through the crowds to follow our Chinese guide who waved a green flag. Since we were the only two English speaking persons on his watch, he took us aside at each stop and patiently retold the history of the temple and palaces.

The Tiantan (Temple of Heaven), an impressive example of Ming architecture and the symbol of Beijing city, was our next stop, and after a morning's non-stop walk through both of these enormous sites in the rising heat of the day, we were ready to drop.  But moving right along, after lunch we stopped by the Summer Palace.  We found a cool oasis of royal gardens landscaped alongside a lovely lake where weekend boaters escape the summer heat in a setting that you might see on a traditional Chinese scroll.  There we
strolled through the grounds and through the Long Corridor-the endless corridor, I renamed it before I finally got through it late that afternoon. But I enjoyed eyeing the mythical scenes painted overhead, sipping my bottled water to cool off as I trudged on through.

Enough of touring that day.  In the evening we wandered around our new neighborhood near the Red House, searching for an internet café, as usual. And boy, did we find one.  The On/Off  Carioca Restaurant and Internet Café
was a blast!  I couldn't believe my ears as I sat there in the middle of Beijing listening to the incredibly foreign sounds of Swiss yodeling music and then the familiar voice of  John Denver singing all my favorite Rocky Mountain High songs as I composed my first e-mail home in ages!

My only problem in writing home was the young man who was my waiter and became my best friend in the bar!  He was from Mongolia, he said, as he asked me where I was from (of course, in the few words of English he knew.)
Now that we were fast friends, he proceeded to lean over my shoulder as I wrote home, reading my messages and laughing whenever I wrote something he thought funny. He also asked me questions about what I was writing and who I
was writing to.  This was very disconcerting to say the least, but I didn't have the heart to turn him away.  . Especially when he served me free cappuccino!  When we returned the next night, he was waiting for me, and we went through the same routine. We hugged when I left, and I'm not sure
whether he knew I would not return.

The grand finale of our trip to China was climbing the Great Wall.  It was our last day in the Peoples Republic of China, and this experience was the culmination of a lifelong dream of mine!  Nancy had seen the Great Wall many years ago and was not eager to repeat the climb.  So when we got to Badaling, the most crowded and popular entry onto the wall, I was on my own.

Standing for over 2000 years, the Great Wall is called ancient China's greatest public works project and it's the country's most spectacular tourist attraction.  For good reason!  The Great Wall is actually many Great Walls built by many dynasties over a 2000-year period and stretching over 35,000 miles and across seventeen Chinese provinces and autonomous regions.  The construction required the monumental  strength of hundreds of thousands of workers, many of them political prisoners, and legend has it that many
are buried in the wall itself.

But I had no idea what I would encounter when I got off the tour bus.  What I did find, in addition to a solid wall of Chinese tourists, were steps, steps, and more steps, up and down the mountainsides endlessly, grey stone steps with uneven rises, sometimes just a few inches and other times a foot high. Enough to buckle any weak knees and slip if you weren't on guard. But luckily a pipe handrail was built into the stone wall to hang on to for safety sake.

So, I started my climb up China's Great Wall. Up I climbed, slowly and steadily, stopping at scenic viewpoints to catch my breath and enjoy the magnificent vistas of  silvery pale green mountains shrouded in fog as I paused between the steep inclines of stairs and ramps.  With its uneven series of stone staircases, interspersed with level landings, parapets,
ramparts, and beacon towers, the Great Wall appears and then disappears as it snakes over the top of one mountain and appears again in a never ending ribbon of stone over the next peak, far into the distance.

The day was hot and very humid; bright flags of red and green and gold fluttered in the breeze along the wall. Vendors sat in tiny stalls at intervals hawking water and ice cream,  and crowds of Chinese families chattered away as they enjoyed the climb.  Strangely enough, I was the only
Westerner in sight during the entire walk, and one of not too many older people hauling themselves up the stairs.  I marveled over the energy of tiny children and young people who practically ran up the stairs as I cautiously paced myself up and down the steep stone pathway synchronizing my
steps with those beyond and behind me.

It was a memorable experience.  I would love to go back.  I'd then hike along the wall in another more remote location, a place where the Great Wall stands silent and crumbling, but withstanding its 2000-year history of maurauding nomads and warring factions of Chinese emperors and dynasties.

That was it.  What could possibly top my lifelong ambition to walk on the Great Wall?  It was time to go home.  I had had an incredibly rich and rewarding experience of instant immersion in Chinese history and geography and contact with its people. But my time there was all too short.  I had just skimmed the surface, trying to absorb a fragment of its culture and understand its people better.   I'd love to return.