Beijing: Come for the History, Meet the People
Beijing is a city that is steeped deeply in history – perhaps a history that you don’t know, but still a lot of history. If you go to Beijing, you’ll probably go with a wish list of places to see. But take my advice, and spend some time wandering around and meet the people.
When you arrive in Beijing, through the airport, the first thing you will meet (after a very efficient and not at all invasive security) is the chaos of getting from the airport to your destination. Public transit is efficient, but there are many, many scammers waiting to intercept you immediately and charge you far too much for the same service. Also, there are counterfeiters who will sell you “tickets” for your bus that are bogus. Even with police everywhere, the counterfeiters are brazen. one approached my directly in front of the ticket booth for my bus, trying to sell me a ticket. It may make you look stupid, but take the time to wait in line for the ticket booth to find out if you really need to get a “tax ticket” from the guys out front.
Although Beijing is embracing high rises, it is still a relatively flat, sprawled out city. The airport is a long drive away from the central train station, a terminus point for buses and taxis.
Once I got to the train station, I tried to get a taxi to take me to my hotel. I got one, who insisted on pay in advance. Once I got into the cab, I discovered that I couldn’t get out (this is a major thing to check for, and it is the first time I’ve gotten caught that way. I didn’t expect it in “Communist” Beijing.) It turned out that the hotel was just around the corner and I could have walked there as fast as the taxi got me there.
Taxis are reliable and relatively honest once you get away from the airport and train station.
The hotel that I stayed in was the Novotel Xin Qiao, not high end, but centrally located. Tiananmen Square (with Mao’s Tomb) and the Forbidden City (Royal Palace Museum as it’s called locally) were walking distance, as was the Temple of Heaven and Wangfujing Street. The hotel was also directly at a subway stop (I think it’s the Qianmen stop, but it might have been Chongwenmen).
My first taste of “wow, I’m in China!” was the south archery tower of Tiananmen Square. I walked there my first night. This huge white structure was lit up beautifully. On the same street as my hotel, the tower marks the southern end of what used to be the old walled city of Peking. the tower also acts as a beckon, guiding you into the heart of Tiananmen Square. Even at night (or maybe especially at night) Tiananmen Square is immense. The large, but not overly tall, buildings that line its east and west sides guide you north toward the southern wall of the Forbidden City.
The southern wall of the Forbidden City is host to a very large portrait of Chairman Mao. I remember looking at that and wondering if the Chinese have a strong sense of irony (it’s not a part of Korean humour that I can see). He’s the only “emperor” of China to not live in the Forbidden City and he’s the only emperor of China to have his picture on it.
How big is the Forbidden City (a.k.a. the Royal Palace Museum)? I spent four hours one morning wandering around it, staying until my feet hurt. I saw about 2/3 of it. Yeah, it’s big. Once you get to the very back of the Palace, there is a very good small gift shop. I bought a lot of Christmas presents there. I also had name chops made for my family. And now that the Starbucks is gone, it’s a little more authentic. One funny note, inside the Forbidden City there was a basketball court set up with those mobile nets and a team of police officers playing.
The Temple of Heaven is a large grounds with many temples maybe half a kilometer
south of Tiananmen Square. They have a staggered admission system whereby
you buy coupons and can use them to enter buildings. I think they do this
because many Chinese people use the grounds as a walking thoroughfare. The
cheapest ticket allows you to transit north-south.
One of the temples was called the Temple of Fasting. It was also (ironically?)
the most rundown temple I saw in Beijing. With the pending Olympics, it’s
worth noting that many attractions are closed or partially inaccessible due
to renovations. Even though the Temple complex was walking distance to my
hotel, I took a rickshaw bike ride back. the driver was quite friendly but
didn’t like posing for a picture after we’d arrived back at the
hotel. Rickshaws in heavy chaotic traffic are an experience worth surviving
once.
I think everyone who goes to China goes to see the Great Wall. There are many ways to go, although my hotel tried to convince me that the only way was to take their tour. I’ve written elsewhere about the Great Wall and how spectacular it is.
Wanfujing is the touristy shopping concourse that runs parallel to the Forbidden City’s east side. The main concourse is full of westernized shops and mall, but the real heart of it is between Wanfujing and the Forbidden City. The small, winding alleyways are full of vendors selling food and both gaudy and authentic Chinese crafts. This was where I found Mao’s Little Red Book in English and Chinese. There were Tibetan vendors selling Tibetan crafts, but what I was looking for, a Tibetan Prayer Wheel, is not only not for sale, when vendors understood what I was asking for, I was shooed away. China has been cracking down on Tibetan Buddhist monks, and apparently prayer wheels are on their list of forbidden items.
Wanfujing is crowded not only with tourists, but with locals who want to meet tourists. Actually, almost everywhere I went in Beijing someone would approach me and want to talk. Usually it was harmless. Sometimes it was helpful. Once I ordered a cup of lo mein (order by pointing) but when it arrived, it was a fish soup instead. People at another table saw my face and intervened to correct the order.
Once, in Wanfujing, I was approached by a couple of girls who wanted to practice their English. They started walking beside me and identified themselves as university students. We walked and talked and they explained some of the things I didn’t understand. Then they suggested sitting down for a coffee. They knew a place, just around the corner… If that set off an alarm for you, it should. It didn’t for me, the first time. Once we were seated, all of a sudden plates of food arrived. We hadn’t ordered them. The girls dug in fast before I could get either of them to ask the waitress what was happening. then I was presented with the bill – not the girls, but me. Yep, I ended up buying them dinner. I was lucky that that was all that happened for allowing myself to get duped.
The next time I went to Wanfujing, I was approached by a woman trying the same approach. She just wanted to practice her English. I don’t know if it would have ended the same way, but this time, when she suggested we get coffee, I refused to go where she wanted and walked to a mall food court instead. She kept trying to get me to leave, which really got my alarms going. So I bought and paid for my dinner. She stayed on my heals right until she saw that she wasn’t getting a meal out of it. Then she asked me if there was “anything else” she could help me with and left.
I’ve written elsewhere about my experience in a bar in Beijing. My
hotel concierge wrote the address in Chinese and a taxi eventually got me
there. The whole area, just northwest of the Forbidden City is along the
bank of a small lake. The area was nothing but bars and almost no tourists
anywhere (this is a good thing). Once I got past the pimp who wanted to sell
me “a woman, a young woman, a girl, a young girl, a boy, a young boy?” I
had a very enjoyable night with one weird conversation.
The whole time I was in Beijing, conversations would invariably turn to either
the Tiananmen Square massacre or questions about what I thought of Mao Tse
Dong. In this bar, a young man tried to convince me that people laying on
the grass by the South Archery tower were performing a silent protest against
the slaughter of students during the uprising of 1989. He wanted to know
what I knew of the massacre, if I knew stuff that he didn’t.
I wasn’t comfortable with the topic. I had been the editor of my student newspaper and a student of international politics at that time. So I was very interested and pretty well informed. My newspaper had done some protesting of its own. I had no intention of talking about this while I was in China.
A friend, who had been to China before me, told about seeing a protest in Tiananmen Square broken up violently by police rushing in and carting everyone off in a van. As much as I would have liked to talk to this kid about what I knew, I felt that I shouldn’t. Discretion seemed like the better plan.
Even still, that was a memorable night not just because of him, but also because of a dice game that a group of female students tried to teach me. One odd note, they all drink Heineken. But I was drinking Höegaarden, a wheat beer. when they asked why, I told them that Heineken was an old man’s drink. By the end of the night they had all tried my beer and a few switched. If Höegaarden sales have boomed in Beijing, you’re welcome.
Beijing offered one more pleasant surprise. The Tibetan Prayer Wheel that I couldn’t find in the alleys behind Wangfujing was for sale by the Chinese government tourist shop in Beijing airport -- but only to people (probably foreigners) who were departing the country. I had to show not just my passport, but also my ticket before I was allowed to buy it.
One place that I didn’t get to but would have liked to see was the Lama temple. It’s not far from Wangfujing Street and the north east corner of the Forbidden City.
