Our Air China flight from Hangzhou touched down at the huge new Beijing Capital Airport early Thursday afternoon. Beijing has several of the top tourist sights in the country and there’s plenty here to keep visitors occupied for a week or more, but we had only three days. Top of our list was the Forbidden City, the enclave of several former Emperors of China, their families, and the thousands of workers and hangers-on necessary to support their lifestyles. A lot of renovation and paint work have been done here over the past few years and the place is looking great. We spent a few hours on Friday with a million or two other visitors walking through building after building and courtyard after courtyard as we made our way through this grand site.We also strolled through nearby Tiananmen Square, and Dick and Lee Tuan filed past the body of Mao Tse Tung in his mausoleum. The queue to the mausoleum snaked around the Square for about 5km but was mercifully fast-moving. Every 10 metres or so, attendants shouted instructions and quoted rules through megaphones. No skimpy clothing, no flippers (thongs), no cameras, no phones, no talking in the mausoleum, no large handbags etc. NO LARGE HANDBAGS!! Lee Tuan had a very large handbag, which from that point on we squashed in half and did our best to make look like a purse. But we were sprung barely a few steps from the entrance, with Mao’s body almost in sight. Having visited here before, I offered to be the evictee and was sent scurrying, handbag over shoulder, across the enormous cleared area in the centre of the Square, under the watchful gaze of a million eyes from the queue. What’s that westerner done to get thrown out?, I could hear them all thinking as I slinked my way towards the perimeter.
The crowds were even bigger at the Badaling section of the Great Wall of China on Saturday. We hired a car and driver to take us there, and a Guide also came. Actually, to call her a guide was a misnomer as she was quite useless. It turned out that she had never been to Badaling (the most visited section of the Wall) before, didn’t like walking, and was uncomfortable with heights. She was horrified when we told her how far we intended to walk and she kept trying to lead us off the Wall and back towards the car. She also continually asked other tourists for directions. We knew the place better than she did and constantly had to look out for her to make sure she didn’t get lost. Finally she said she could walk no more and we agreed the place where we would return to pick her up when we had finished.
On our way back to the Jade Garden Hotel in the city centre we stopped briefly at the Olympic Centre in the northern suburbs to admire the Birds Nest Stadium and Water Cube. We ended the day with a stroll through one of the few remaining Beijing Hutongs, old winding residential alleyways that were once mainstream but which have now been almost entirely replaced with wide avenues and modern apartment blocks.
One of our favourite places in Beijing is the Temple of Heaven Park. This sprawling, serene, manicured park is a magnet for local families and visitors and contains some great tree-lined avenues and structures, including arguably the most beautiful building in the whole of China, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. Originally built in 1420 during the reign of Ming Emperor Yongle, the building has been redesigned a few times since then. These days it is a round structure covered with a triple roof clad with azure glazed tiles and topped with a golden sphere. We came to the Park on Sunday and spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering around. A young man introduced himself and asked if he could walk with us for awhile to practice his English conversation. Surprisingly, unlike most of his fellow students, he aspires not to be a businessman or international banker, but an artist.
And of course no visit to Peking would be complete without a Peking Duck dinner, which we enjoyed on the top floor of the Silk Market immediately after I had been tricked yet again by the cute but wily sales assistants in the clothing shops below.
