WE ARE unleashed into the city on our own today. The lovely thing about our travel company, The Russia Experience, is that it specialises in semi-independent travel, so you are not part of a big group and you can build in free days to do what you like.
It is always great to have a good local guide, like Sally and Jessica, but you sometimes feel that you are being shown the city as they would like you to see it, rather than as it really is – warts and all!
After a long, leisurely breakfast, we went out with the aim of going down to Tiananmen Square.
The parks in Beijing are all full of old people enjoying the fresh air and doing Tai Chi or playing Mah-Jong and as we walked down through one park, we saw an old man painting Chinese characters on the pavement in oil. He encouraged us to have a go and although he didn’t speak any English, we were able to make our characters look a bit like his and it was all good fun.
We walked a bit further and two Chinese girls stopped us and chatted to us in English and it turned out they were art students and they had an exhibition in a nearby building, so we followed them.
There was some lovely work on display and I did purchase a painting of cranes on silk for approximately £10, which they carefully rolled up and placed in a stout box, so it should be safe to travel in my suitcase for 5,000 miles overland.
We continued on our walk to Tiananmen Square, where we saw the famous portrait of Chairman Mao – though we decided against visiting his mausoleum (big queues!).
Above: Chairman Mao’s painting at the edge of Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
I was only 14 at the time of the Tiananmen Square riot in the late 1980s, but I remember the incident well. There is little to remind you of the student deaths here now – indeed today it is full of students meeting each other and gossiping, as well as the brightly-coloured Olympic displays, which are just being dismantled.
We wandered off to the Quimen gate end of the square, then headed towards the hutongs nearby.
Hutongs are tiny, ancient alleyways packed with doors, which open onto a collection of rooms and spaces that can house up to 20 families. There are no bathrooms in these homes – instead there are public toilet and washroom blocks in every street, which everyone shares.
Although these living spaces seem cramped, the people living here seemed quietly contented with their lot and the hutongs themselves seemed very clean and tidy – in many places there were even flowers and vegetables growing on trellises or in pots, as well as pigeons and budgies in cages.
One family beckoned us into their home as they sat down to lunch and although not one of them spoke more than a few words of English, they were happy for us to look round and to take their photos.
Above: Nikki talking with a family in the hutongs, Beijing.
A little further on, we stumbled upon Lui Li Chang (aka Antique Street), which was full of beautifully painted buildings. It was there that a young man with a charming three-year-old boy said he would take us on a tour of the hutongs on his motorised rickshaw, so we agreed.
He took us on a great trip and showed us family houses with the Chinese sign for double happiness on the doors; a gorgeous boutique hotel called the Spring Garden Hotel; an old bookshop; the mosque and much more.
Each time he stopped, he showed us a card with the name for what we were seeing printed in English, but his little boy was a delight and he spoke quite a few English words, including ‘hello’ and ‘dog’.
When we had first got on the rickshaw and asked the young man how much, he didn’t appear to speak English, but had indicated three. Nikki thought it was three yuan, I thought it was more likely to be 30 yuan, but it turned out when we reached Tiananmen Square (he wouldn’t take us to where we wanted), it was 300 yuan each.
We didn’t have that much on us and I suddenly realised that was more than one of us would pay for the Great Wall tour, so we gave him 350 yuan and left. He didn’t call the police or try to come after us and although I felt a bit awkward about it because the tour had been a lot of fun, we agreed he had done quite well really because he had received about £30 for an hour’s work.
Nikki was unimpressed with the way he had taken us behind a barricade to ask for money, so no-one could see what was going on from the busy street.
Sitting down in a nearby cafe with a cool drink, I reflected that the hutongs had been a real eye-opener in more ways than one, but what had struck me most was that although the people in these ancient villages had looked poor to my Western eyes, I had not heard any crying children or raised voices, even though I had been wandering round for several hours there.
What a contrast to our country - walk along any street in Britain during the daytime and you are bound to hear arguing, screaming and shouting within the first ten to 20 minutes!
We headed to the shops in Wanfujing Street and it was there that I noticed several boarded-up areas on the edges of the streets. The boards featured Olympic designs and looked very attractive, but on closer inspection, I realised they were hiding old hutongs, many of which had been partly pulled down.
I had heard the traditional hutongs were fast disappearing to make way for roads, business parks and high-rises and that many had been removed in time for the Olympic Games. I can only wonder at what happened to the inhabitants – where are those families now?
We walked back to our hotel from Wanfujing Street, freshened up, went to a nearby restaurant for another cheap and hugely satisfying dinner and then popped back to Red Wall Hotel to pick up our opera tickets.
The concierge bravely stood in the road in the growing darkness for about 15 minutes to hail us a taxi and then we were off to the Liyuan Theatre, which turned out to be inside a hotel and was attended by scores of mostly Europeans – the most we have see since this trip started.
The opera wasn’t quite as Nikki and I had expected, but it was thoroughly entertaining. Chinese opera is quite stylised and the first story was called Goddess Of Heaven Scattering Flowers and was short, but sweet, with one lady singing about her long journey and doing a ribbon dance.
The second story was called Eighteen Arhats Fighting Wu Kong and was a section of a very long tale about the adventures of the Monkey King. Although there was some singing in the first few minutes, much of the opera was wordless and instead involved lots of very acrobatic and amusing fighting.
What was particularly funny was how many Arhats tried to take Monkey’s staff – didn’t they realise it was magic and according to folklore it would only obey Monkey? The actor playing Monkey has a very expressive face and I found it very funny. I know they do acrobatics and variety shows at the Liyuan Theatre and I suspect it’s the same cast, so they are a very talented bunch. As with everything in Beijing, it’s very colourful too.
We caught a taxi back to Red Wall Hotel and walked into the lobby just in time to see the Chinese astronaut being launched. All the hotel staff were really excited and I believe he is the first Chinese astronaut to attempt a moonwalk/spacewalk.
Our last full day in Beijing. We woke to the most stunning blue sky. Because it is a flat, dry northern city on the edge of Mongolia, Beijing has beautiful skies and I am told they are bluest in the freezing air of winter. China’s old euphemism for itself was Tianxia: ‘All beneath the sky’ – and on a clear day like today, what a sky!
After a leisurely breakfast, we left the hotel in search of the Lama Temple and the Temple of Confucius, which looked close to each other on the map. It was a bit of a walk through the busy streets, but we soon found the Lama Temple.
I already feel as if I have been assaulted by colour on this trip, but the Lama Temple was another jaw-dropper. The moment we entered the courtyard I was hit by a sense of reverence and serenity – and I’m not even particularly religious, never mind Buddhist!
The majority of Chinese people are Buddhists and in front of every highly-decorated hall, local people were lighting incense and going through their prayer routines and the whole experience was fascinating.
Above: Local people praying at the Lama Palace, Beijing.
The temple buildings were once again a myriad of red, gold, blue and green made familiar by other Ming Dynasty places, but it was what was inside them that was so extraordinary.
In every hall there was a young monk in black robes with a red sash, or occasionally an older monk with a yellow sash, requesting that people don’t ‘burn incense or film’ in the halls. I would have liked to have taken photos, but I didn’t dare in case I enraged the Buddhist gods.
I don’t know how many deities there are in Buddhism, but they were all there. Each hall had three deities in it and there were halls and halls and halls of them to look at. Each deity had piles of fruit and cups of wine in front of them.
Just when I thought I had seen everything, there was one hall with a massive Buddha in it, followed by a second hall with an even bigger Buddha in it. The second Buddha is in the Guinness World Records book as being the biggest Buddha in the world carved out of a single (sandalwood) tree and he is more than 18 metres tall (over 60ft)!
There was also a hall with a massive throne occupied by a very lifelike model of a Lama, plus a display of hundreds of little golden figurines of different deities, which was fascinating – I just wish I knew more about Buddhism.
Afterwards Nikki and I sat in the courtyard for a few minutes and it was just so peaceful – an extraordinarily uplifting experience and a real world away from anything I have ever felt.
We crossed the busy road and followed a narrow lane to the Confucius Temple, which although beautiful, was a complete contrast in terms of feeling. I don’t know much about Confucian thought either, but a very informative museum display showed us that he travelled a lot and tried to persuade people that the key to life was to achieve a balance between different people and between humans and nature, which sounds like an excellent idea to me.
Confucian sayings include: ‘Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you’, and other moral, but sensible statements. I think I rather like the Confucian way – it’s seems to be more about believing in yourself and your ability to do what is right.
After the two temples, we continued walking to Beihei Park, which is a large green space and lake in the centre of Beijing, where attractions include the White Dagoda on Jade Island and many temples.
We strolled down the banks in the sunshine, stopped at a lakeside restaurant for juice and ice cream and generally admired the beautiful buildings and scenery.
We even saw some mandarin ducks on the lake. A mandarin drake is renowned for his fidelity, as well as his colours. He mates for life, which is why wedding presents in China traditionally include a pair of mandarin ducks.
The top part of Beihei Park near the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower is rickshaw city with hundreds of rickshaw drivers offering to pedal you round the nearby hutongs (known as Beijing’s Hutongs). Although pedal-power is authentic, I think we got a much better insight into traditional hutongs yesterday, when we were south of Tiananmen Square.
In the southern part of Beihei Park, you can feast your eyes on more temples and watch people having dancing or exercise sessions, or practising Tai Chi. The Chinese seem to love nothing more than being outside in the fresh air.
From Beihei Park, we went into nearby Jingshan Park (also known as Coal Hill Park), where you can climb to five temples on top of the hill, which give you the most spectacular views of the city.
From the highest temple, you can see from the Forbidden City just below the park right across the modern city and to the mountains beyond. Anything within the second ring road is the old city, while the third, fourth, fifth and sixth ring roads are all in the new city.
Afterwards, we returned to the hotel for a brief rest, before venturing down to Donghuamen Night Market for some street food. In this famous market, the licensed traders cook a wide range of food and it is a classic place for a young Beijing lad to bring his girlfriend for a night out to shock her with his gastronomic bravery by eating scorpions, crickets, grilled snakeskins and other unusual treats on offer.
I couldn’t face the fried scorpions and instead feasted on squid, chicken pancake, fried dumplings and a strange greenish juice with dipping doughnuts, which may have been bamboo juice and was very refreshing.
Whilst eating, I noticed a painfully thin young man in the shadows on the edge of the night market. After a while, I realised he was reaching into the bins in search of scraps to eat. His look was unforgettable when he realised I was watching him...
Someone tried to hand him some yuan, but he turned away, too proud to accept charity...
It is a sad thing to see someone starving in a city so buoyant after the Olympics, when everyone’s mind is full of the closing ceremony and every English person is clapped on the back by Chinese people saying: “Good luck, Britain”, and “London 2012, it’s your Olympics next.”