Beijing: Days 3 and 4

My school was very, very lucky last year to have a terrific exchange teacher from China. Na is an English teacher at home, but while she was at my school, she taught introductory Chinese. She and her husband Li are lovely people, and they live in Baoding, a smaller city fairly near Beijing. When Na heard that I was visiting, she and Li graciously offered to drive into the city and spend a day with me. When I saw Na in the lobby of the hotel on Thursday morning, she surprised me by saying that she had taken Friday off from school and could spend two days with me! Lucky me! I was feeling a bit worried about being on my own on Friday, and so I could just relax and enjoy her company.

On Thursday, Na and Li took me to the Summer Palace. I am so glad to have been. I think it is my favorite sight from the whole trip. It is a huge complex built around a beautiful lake to be an escape from the city’s summer heat for the royal family. During the Ming dynasty, when it was built, the Summer Palace would have been located in a suburb north of the city, but today the city has grown up around it. It is a palace, like the Forbidden City, with great halls, temples, and pavilions for the emperor’s public duties, but there are lots of buildings for the royal family to use privately, and they are set amid beautiful forests, meadows, and gardens. There are lovely, shaded walkways, and bridges where the family members could wander to enjoy the beautiful views of the lake. One of the most remarkable things about the Summer Palace are its outdoor corridors. Every beam spanning the top of the corridor is painted with a different scene. No two are alike. Apparently the emperor employed his 100,000 artists and craftsmen during the summer months, too. Another highlight is an area called “Suzhou Street.” One of the Ming emperors had visited Suzhou, which is a beautiful city in the south of China that is built on a river. He had become enchanted with its canals and footbridges, and decided to make his own little Suzhou at the Summer Palace. He constructed an artificial village along a creek on the palace grounds to look like a typical street in Suzhou. He even outfitted his little village with real shops and teahouses and residences so that he and the royal family could pretend to go out into the real world and trade and order shoes and have dinner, kind of like Marie Antoinette had a hobby farm so that she could play at being a milkmaid. Na and Li were excellent tour guides, explaining things to me and translating the signs into English. We had a wonderful day wandering and looking at this beautiful place.

After all of that walking, we were hungry. It was time, of course, to have Peking duck! Na and Li took me to their favorite place for roast duck, and it was definitely not touristy. Our meal began with steamed snow peas (yum), duck liver (double, triple yum), and duck feet (not as yummy). The duck feet had been deboned, boiled, and then covered with mustard sauce. They were very chewy and full of cartilage, but didn’t have much flavor. Li said that Chinese chefs don’t waste anything and to expect to be served the duck’s head as well. When the duck arrived, it had already been carved into thin slices. Na said that the chefs carve the birds very carefully so that each slice will have muscle, fat, and skin, the famous part. The skin really is as crispy as can be. It crunches audibly when one bites down on it. Na and Li also taught me the proper way to eat Peking duck. First, I took a thin, round dough wrapper with my chopsticks and spread it out on my plate. It looked like a won-ton wrapper, but it had much more flavor. Next, I took a piece of duck meat and dipped it into the special sauce. (I had an ah-ha moment when I first did this: we call that dark, savory sauce that comes in little packets with our Chinese take-out food “duck sauce” because it was made to go with this dish! Maybe you knew that, but I never quite put it together until now.) When I had put plenty of duck sauce on the meat, I dropped it on the middle of the wrapper and then added a few pieces of thinly sliced green onion. Using my chopsticks (and my fingers) I rolled the duck up in its wrapper, folded it in half, and ate it like a dumpling. Fantastic! I wish I could eat Peking duck in Atlanta. I’m sure that with enough practice, a good cook could come pretty close to making this dish at home, but getting the duck’s skin to darken and become so crispy and crunchy is a trade secret, and apparently very hard to do. I’m so glad to have gotten the chance to try it.

On Friday, I had a long shopping list. Although I had purchased some souvenirs with Lili in Shenyang, I still needed to pick up several gifts. Na and Li were up for it, and they took me to Wangfujing Street, which is just steps from my hotel. This street is closed to cars so that it is safe for pedestrians to wander along as they shop. At the southern end of the street there is a huge, beautiful shopping mall, where I didn’t have to do any bargaining. Li said that I should expect to pay more here for what I was looking for, but that I could count on it to be good quality. Paying a little more to not have to bargain with the vendors and to know that the silk scarf I was looking for was real silk is just fine with me. I actually enjoyed looking through the lovely stores and picking out some nice things.

Then, Na and Li took me to a nearby neighborhood that is an art district. The shops along these old streets were full of calligraphy, paintings, and antiques – real and fake. Li spent some time as a boy studying calligraphy and explained about the process of painting Chinese calligraphy and about all of the various brushes, bowls, and stamps an artist would need. We went into a shop that sells all of these items to have a closer look, and then we wandered into a gallery selling calligraphic works by famous artists. Some of them were outrageously expensive! There is a lot more to it than meets the eye, and although I still don’t like calligraphy as a decoration in my own home, I certainly appreciate it much, much more.

My last day in Beijing was lovely, and I had such a nice time visiting with Na and Li. It is sad to think that it may be a very long time before I see them again, and I will miss them. 

Beijing: Day 2

Today was a good day. I met Richard in the lobby again at 9:00 to sight see. First we walked from my hotel to Tiananmen Square, where I could see the National Museum, Mao Zedong’s Memorial Hall, the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and the Great Hall of the People. The only picture I’ve ever seen of Tiananmen Square is that awful, disturbing image of the tanks rolling across the square at the student protestors in 1989. The place was so crowded with tourists that it didn’t look anything like I imagined it. I decided to visit Chairman Mao’s mausoleum, and Richard said he’d wait outside for me and hold my bag. No bags or cameras are allowed inside. I stood in a long line that shuffled in an orderly, quiet fashion through two security checkpoints and finally into the chambers where Mao’s body is entombed. The people in the line near me were all quite solemn. Many of them carried yellow chrysanthemums, which they placed in front of a great statue of the Chairman in the first room. The line moved slowly into another room where the body was on display in a glass coffin. Mao’s face was well preserved, relaxed, and spotlighted in a weird, orange light. Many people bowed to him as they passed, and no one made a peep. No one’s phone rang, no babies cried, and no one sneezed. The Chairman is a controversial person, but China wouldn’t be the nation it is today without him, and I am glad to have seen his resting place and so many, many people who respect him.

Next, we crossed the street to visit the Forbidden City. This is a huge (and I mean HUGE) imperial palace that was built during the Ming dynasty. I thought that it had been built during the Qing dynasty, but I was mistaken. It is older than the palace I visited in Shenyang. Usually when a new dynasty formed, the emperor would demolish the old emperor’s palace and build a new, fresh one. I guess that when the Manchu emperor from the north saw the beautiful place left behind by the Ming emperor he decided not to, and I don’t blame him! It is a huge complex that covers 720,000 square meters and has 9,999 halls and rooms. Being the highest single-digit number, nine is very significant. Only the emperor was allowed to use it in designs. For example, there are nine rows of nine golden studs nailed into the palace doors. There are three sets of nine stairs leading up to the main buildings. The kings, lamas, and princes serving the emperor would have had to use smaller numbers. The Forbidden City is divided into an outer court, where the emperors would conduct political business, and an inner court, where the royal family lived. Although the outer court’s grandeur is impressive, I enjoyed wandering through the inner court more to catch a glimpse of what daily life was like. Some of the halls and rooms are furnished as they were during the end of the Qing dynasty, and they are sumptuous. The rooms are filled with beautiful porcelain, jade, sculpture, paintings, tapestries, clocks, and silks. I think being emperor was a pretty good gig. Richard said that some of the Qing emperors would have employed as many as100,000 people in the upkeep of the palace, and I believe it. It would have taken many artisans and craftsmen to build and maintain such a huge place. Although I could have spent all day at the Forbidden City, I wanted to see some other sights too, and after lunch we headed out.

Next on the tour was the Temple of Heaven. This is another huge structure constructed during the Ming dynasty. Situated in a lovely park, the Temple of Heaven was where the emperor would have conducted worship ceremonies that, at least from what I could gather, included elements of Buddhism and Taoism. The temple complex has rooms and pavilions for fasting and purification, prayer and meditation, slaughtering animals, and preparing sacrifices. The first of the three main structures is a large, tiered, white marble platform that looks like a wedding cake. At the very top of the “cake” is a smooth, round stone that marks what was believed to be the center of the universe. This was the spot where the shamans and priests would set up special stone pillars that represented various gods. In front of these special stones, musicians and dancers would welcome the spirits of the gods, and then the emperor would offer ritual sacrifices of incense, meat, grain, wine, gold, and jade. In the ancient times, women were not allowed anywhere near the temple grounds to keep them “pure.” In fact, the emperor and all of his entourage would have to abstain and fast (in the Pavilion of Abstinence) for three days to get rid of any traces of their wives, concubines, and mistresses so that their offerings would not displease the gods. For this reason, I took a special delight in standing on the stone at the Center of the Universe. Take that, chauvinist religion! The other main structures in the Temple of Heaven were built to enshrine the ritual stones when they were not in use. Amazingly, these were constructed without any nails or cement. They are marvelous examples of how advanced Chinese builders were during the Ming period.

As the afternoon wore on, the temperature outside climbed to an unseasonably warm 70 degrees, and the pollen and smog were particularly bad. Richard and I decided to see something indoors with the remainder of the afternoon. He took me to the Pearl Market. Once upon a time, the Pearl Market was a street where pearl vendors would set up shop to sell and trade their goods. It still has lots of pearl merchants, but the market is now inside a huge, five-story warehouse that also has dozens and dozens of other types of vendors too. There was a floor devoted to stationary and school supplies, another for gift-wrap and party decorations, one for reproduction Ming and Qing porcelain, and a whole annex for toys. Richard walked me to the door of the market and told me to meet him back there in an hour. I was on my own to barter and bargain with the merchants for souvenirs, and so I hardly bought anything. My feelings about bartering have not changed during this trip. It is still every bit as unpleasant and stressful as it was with Lili in the flea market in Shenyang. All I managed to buy were some toys for my niece and nephew. I did have fun wandering through the shops and looking at everything, though.

I decided that I wanted to take the subway back to my hotel, which really surprised Richard, but he agreed. Apparently, the traffic in Beijing is almost as bad underground as it is above. Sometimes the subway can be so full that one will have to wait for several trains to pass before he can finally climb on. Subway riders have to be as aggressive as drivers and really push and pull their ways onto and off of the trains. Fortunately, it was not busy when we were traveling. It was just before rush hour. The trains and the stations are heated and air conditioned, and are very safe and clean. Beijing will have twelve subway lines by 2020. I wish Atlanta would take a cue from Beijing. We only have four, and one doesn’t really count because it only has a few stops a few blocks away from the main line. We had to transfer trains once, but the ride went very quickly, and I said good-bye to Richard on the platform. I was nervous about being without a tour guide for the rest of my stay, but I wasn’t exactly impressed with Richard, either. He seemed very bored, and this is certainly not a place to feel bored.

That night I attended a Beijing opera; it was beautiful. Beijing opera is not like western opera at all. Most opera troupes perform in tea-houses, small theaters, or hotel ballrooms. I saw a performance in the Hougong Gildhall, a splendid, fully-restored tea house built during the turn of the last century. When the taxi dropped me off, I was skeptical. It didn’t look like much from the front, but as soon as I walked through the doors, I found myself in a beautiful courtyard that lead into a gorgeous, spacious tea room with an elevated, open stage along the front. An attendant led me to my seat at a table near the front where a steaming pot of Jasmine tea and a tray of snacks were already waiting for me. The musicians, all dressed in yellow, were seated on one side of the stage. The room, full of tourists from all over the world, was highly decorated with colorful paintings, intricate woodwork, and tapestries. When the opera, began the lights dimmed and noisy, percussive music music rose from the orchestra pit. The American family sitting at the table in front of me looked at each other in disbelief and crinkled their noses. I can understand how the sound could be shocking if one isn’t prepared for it. There isn’t a melody, exactly, and the actors kind of sing, but mostly shout. I think it’s pretty, but I had fun watching opera at Vicky’s house with her mother on CCTV chanel 11, which plays Chinese opera around the clock. The actors on stage wore elaborate costumes and make-up and performed acrobatic stunts and tumbling. I enjoyed myself immensely. After the show, there was a long line for taxis, and so I hired a rickshaw to pedal me back to the hotel. The night was warm and nice, and it was fun to have a look at the shops and streets at a slower pace. I hope I can see a Beijing opera again.