CONQUERING BEIJING AND THE GREAT WALL
When tourists think of Beijing, a different image comes to mind for everyone – which is not surprising as the capital of China has enough history to keep you occupied for a week. This time around, our stay was limited to the highlights: hiking on the Great Wall, visiting the Forbidden City and walking around the hutong alleys, as well as catching up with a high-school classmate.
BEIJING SIGHTSEEING
After the lightning-fast journey on the Shanghai maglev from the airport, we were looking forward to another fast trip between Shanghai and Beijing. It didn’t quite work out as planned, as our train was delayed by 2 hours on a 5-hour journey; none of the locals seemed to be particularly worried, so we accepted it as normal.
Probably the most famous attraction in Beijing is the Forbidden City, the quarter within the capital where the imperial household lived until the last emperor was deposed in 1912. The complex had some very imposing buildings and plazas, but it seemed a bit larger and felt more mystical in the movies – perhaps the incredible crowds also reduced the extent to which we could enjoy it. Thanks to the audio guide, we finally learnt what the double lion statues in front of the buildings mean: the male lion on the right resting his paw on a globe symbolises the emperor’s power, while the lioness on the left with her paw on a baby cub represents the emperor’s fertility – I guess this demonstrates the relative importance of the emperor vs. empress…
In the afternoon, we strolled amongst the hutongs and visited the Drum and Bell Towers. The Drum and Bell Towers were built in the centre of the city, and were used to signal the time to residents in ancient times. (As a sidenote, it was interesting to see how the standardisation of timekeeping and weights was such a fundamental symbol of order, that the sundial and scale were considered imperial symbols.) While only one of the 24 enormous drums remains, the others have been reconstructed, and we witnessed a very loud performance when the clock struck 16:30. The day wasn’t particularly clear, with quite a bit of smog, so we could barely see two blocks away from the top of the tower! Around the Drum and Bell Towers are a number of hutongs, which I would describe as traditional Beijing small alleys with a really nice atmosphere to them. Unfortunately, they are constantly being redeveloped to make way for new buildings, so only a fraction of them remain today – still plenty of distance to cover on foot though!
At Renata’s idea we paid a visit to a Chinese opera piece (these are most famous in Beijing and Chengdu). These are quite different from Western opera, besides high-pitched singing they also include extravagant traditional costumes and the occasional mock sword-play and fighting. The show we went to was a mixture of 3 shorter scenes from full-length operas to give tourists a taste of the art – although we agreed that it was probably enough for us. We were quite lucky that the show went ahead, because Renata chose somewhat more authentic theatre, which also meant fewer tourists – to be exact only 4 of us in total as the full audience!
Throughout our time in China – while we occasionally felt a bit lost or unable to communicate – we never witnessed any crime or felt ourselves in physical danger – perhaps the only exception was on the way to the opera theatre during rush hour on the Beijing metro. I’ve never seen such crowds before in my life (London rush hour is peanuts compared to this!), this is certainly the survival of the fittest! People standing at the door don’t get off to allow others to exit the carriage, and people on the platform don’t wait for the people who want to exit to get off before squeezing themselves on, so everyone has to literally use their full force to shove people aside (with no special treatment for the elderly or women with babies). At one point I was using both hands to push against the handlebars with all my strength to shield Renata from getting completely squeezed! Perhaps next time we’ll take a taxi even if it takes longer and is more expensive…
The social (and culinary) highlight of Beijing was meeting my high school classmate, Orsi and her husband Máté who have lived in China for nearly 4 years! Using their extensive knowledge of the city, they took us to the restaurant with the best Beijing duck! Renata was a bit apprehensive when she learned that it is mainly the crispy skin and fat of the duck that you wrap up in a pancake with some cucumber, leek and special sauce, but even she was impressed and had to admit it tasted very good! It was interesting to hear about the advantages and challenges of living in China as a foreigner and see how people adapt. Thanks again Orsi for the great food and the advice on coping in China!
Last but not least, we also stopped by the Llama temple, the largest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside of Tibet. Having already seen Japanese Buddhism, we could appreciate the similarities and differences between the two (e.g. the colourful tapestry flags hanging in concentric circles were a novelty). It also felt like there was much more incense burning going on here – while we thought a single incense stick must surely be enough per person, every visitor received a whole handful of sticks, so sometimes you could barely breath.
TREKKING ALONG THE GREAT WALL
We spent a lot of time researching recommendations for which section of the Great Wall to visit and hike along. It isn’t an easy question, because the portions which are easily accessible are also incredibly overcrowded, sometimes to the extent that you feel like you are walking on Oxford Street during the pre-Christmas shopping spree. Luckily the Great Wall is pretty long (8,850 km in fact), so we had plenty of choice; based on our guidebook we decided to go to Gubeikou and hike across the Wall to Jinshanling, something which I would absolutely recommend to anyone due to the stunning scenery and the complete lack of crowds!
Getting to Gubeikou wasn’t exactly easy, from Beijing we had to take a bus to Miyun county and switch to a smaller bus – in all the other countries we’d been this wouldn’t have been a problem, but it gets a bit complicated when you can’t even read the bus timetables (looking for destination cross-headlights-upside down seven-cross, leaving at stick-cross-two sticks-cross-upside down V makes it more difficult). We were “helped” by taxi drivers with a vested interest in us not finding the bus (something we were used to from South America) and friendly passengers on the bus who quite aggressively tried to fool us into getting off at the wrong stop to generate additional business for the taxis (a totally new level of deception we haven’t encountered yet on the trip). Luckily we didn’t fall for the trick, and we got to Gubeikou in the end, but it was a good introduction to the challenges of independent travel in China.
The Great Wall was built in several phases over 2000 years, starting in the 7th century B.C. with the intention of preventing invaders from entering China from the North. Despite the unbelievable effort that went into its construction, it failed spectacularly in its purpose, and didn’t prevent the Mongol nor the Manchu conquest of China (which resulted in the Yuan and the Qing dynasties respectively). It wasn’t particularly useful either in protecting the country against the modern weapons used by Western powers in the 19th nor the Japanese invasion in the 20th centuries. Contrary to how you would tend to imagine the Wall, it isn’t a single continuous line across the North, instead there are sometimes gaps in it (presumably where no defence was needed), and sometimes there are multiple sections which run parallel in heavily fortified areas.
Today, there are two kinds of Wall: ruined walls and restored walls, at Gubeikou it is all ruin wall, while the Jinshanling section has been almost fully restored. In Gubeikou, we saw a photographic exhibition consisting of images of the Wall nearly 100 years ago, and what the exact same spot looks like today. It was shocking to see how entire towers have been demolished by people who wanted to reuse the bricks and stones for building materials, sometimes (such as during the Cultural Revolution under Mao) at the government’s encouragement. Perhaps with tourism bringing more money to locals, there will be more incentive to preserve the Wall relatively intact, but there is just so much wall that it will be difficult to save it all.
Gubeikou used to be a key frontier town along the Great Wall, and several different sections of the Wall meet here. In the afternoon when we arrived, we did a 4-hour hike along the extraordinarily steep and picturesque Crouching Tiger section as a warm-up exercise (the mountain ridge on which the Wall was built kind of looks like a tiger that is about to jump). I was expecting the Wall to be higher and wider, but as our lungs attested, the fact that it was built on top of a mountain ridge was probably protection enough. It was a bit creepy that we only met 2 other people the whole way, and no other foreigners or local tourists in the entire village, but it was a very authentic experience! For example, when we sat down at the local restaurant (where ordering was by way of pointing at what other people were eating) and a local youth who had already consumed a significant amount of alcohol by lunchtime clapped by shoulder and said in a perfect American accent “Hello my brother, welcome to Beijing!”. Unfortunately, this was the complete extent of his English knowledge, probably picked up from the movies, so the conversation quickly stalled, but it was a good start!
The second day we made an early start as we had 7.5 hours of hiking on the wall as it went up and down the various mountain ridges all the way to the furthest point of Jinshanling where we could catch our bus back to Beijing. Starting out in Gubeikou, we looked into the distance at the furthest peak we could see, and thought “That must be our destination, surely we won’t need to go any further!”. When we reached that point and realised we weren’t there yet, we did the same thing (i.e. looking out to the distance) again, and again – so I guess you could say we walked at least three times as far as we could see! The scenery was incredibly stunning, as we first passed through the Dragon Coil section at Gubeikou (the winding wall looks like the tail of a dragon) and then entered the restored Jinshanling sector. We had to make a bit of a detour between the two, since the middle sector was a restricted military area, but the path was relatively straightforward. The yearly Great Wall Marathon takes the same route, and there were red ribbons or arrows showing the way for the runners. Let’s just say we didn’t really envy the runners, a marathon must be hard enough even without the uneven slippery surfaces and the huge altitude difference – it was much easier to enjoy the scenery while we were walking! We didn’t meet a single person until we got to the restored Jinshanling sector – but even there we saw fewer than 50 tourists in total! After crossing the entire Jinshanling sector and having walked along 0,2% of the entire Wall, we were ready to call it a day (and not in the mood to start looking for the public bus which may or may not come), so we negotiated passage on a tourist bus that was about to return to Beijing – probably our best decision of the day!
Since we set ourselves a limit of 3 weeks in mainland China, and there are so many sights to see and such large distances to cover, it was soon time to head off to the next destination and pay our respects to the pandas in their home in Chengdu, in Sichuan province, which is also the home of the spiciest variety of Chinese food! Stay tuned for more.