Tiananmen, Forbidden City, Huiling and Shopping
Today was ridiculously busy - we were up early to visit Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City with a local guide.
Tiananmen was walking distance from our hotel, down past the Supreme People’s Court - maybe ten minutes away. We had been picked up by a local guide at our hotel and her job was to tell us about Tiananmen and to guide us around the Forbidden City.
As we approached Tiananmen Square, we could see a lineup of people - Chinese tour groups, to be precise - in line to visit Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum. His body is in there, on display in a crystal coffin. Visitors can enter for free, but they must check any bags and cameras - apparently a woman once entered the room and shot the crystal coffin, therefore they are very cautious now. The line up was massive - Mao’s only open from 8:30-11:30 in the mornings, and for a couple of hours in the afternoon three times a week. Apparently some people arrive before the sun comes up to secure their spot in the lineup. The Mausoleum itself was massive - hard to imagine that it’s just housing one body. I also find it interesting that all the communist leaders on display (Ho Chi Minh, Mao, Kim Il Sung) have to be shipped back to Russia every year or so for preservation and body cleaning…
We were given about twenty minutes in the square to take pictures and to sort of wander around. We were approched by people selling just about everything - kites, Mao watches, postcards, water, little red books, picture books… apparently it’s illegal to sell things in the square for most of these people, so they were very cautious and careful, looking around before sliding their goods out through a sleeve or opening up their jackets. We did some hard bargaining - some of their starting prices were ridiculous. Tiananmen Square also had tons of bottle people - I think some of them were making a killing. Each plastic bottle gets someone ten Chinese cents - therefore ten bottles fetches a yuan.
We also continued our tradition of posing for pictures with Chinese tourists. I actually posed for more pictures here than anywhere else - so far we have averaged at LEAST one pose per day. In Tiananmen Square, in the space of ten minutes, I posed for at least a dozen different people. I was with Rob, so I think people were excited to be getting a two-for-one: two pale white blondes at once! We actually had a queue going at one point, telling people we’d be with them in a second as we posed for others. It was hilarious. We posed with kids, adults, families, teens, old people, school groups…
After meeting up with the rest of the group we made our way to the Forbidden City, a massive palace to the north of the square that used to serve as the residence of the Emperor. I could see how the Korean palaces tried to borrow on the Forbidden City design - the middle doors and aisles were reserved for the emperor, while in Korean they were designed for the king (the Koreans never had an emperor since they recognized the Chinese one). The Forbidden City was packed, however - I’ve never seen anything like it. Dozens upon dozens of tour groups in each courtyard, flags and umbrellas waving. I thought it was hilarious to see that the English language audio guide was narrated by Roger Moore of James Bond fame.
Impressions on the Forbidden City? It didn’t live up to my expectations - I found it quite sparse, not at all like the opulent and decadent palace I had been expecting. Some of the buildings, however, were under renovation and only a fraction of the compound is actually open to tourists. Even the Emperor’s living quarters were relatively sparse. The Garden near the exit was quite nice, although even that was small. There was also the stench of ramen in the air as hundreds of tourists clogged the small grocery store selling every flavour of ramen imaginable. I may have been disappointed by the Forbidden City due to the immense crowds present - I had really expected something more majestic.
After we were done checking it out, we crossed the road and met with a volunteer to go visit something called the Beijing Huiling, which is a centre for young adults with mental development challenges (I don’t even know what the politically correct wording is - George called it the “handicapped show”). It was a great couple of hours. They had prepared and cooked dumplings for us, in both meat and vegetable varieties, and we had some cool drinks. The goal of the centre is to help train and prepare clients for independence - the volunteer, Frances, told us that a lot of their clients have gone on to work for restaurants and fast food establishments (believe it or not, but cleaning tables or working at McDonald’s is considered an excellent job since it’s a Western company).
After lunch there was a performance of dancing and music - they played traditional instruments, sang songs and rapped. We were then brought into the workshop area and got to play with calligraphy sets - everyone learned their name in Chinese characters and got to try using the traditional ink and brushes to write stuff out on paper. Gerald told us that serious calligraphers will spend hours upon hours simply grinding the ink to get the perfect colour - I think we all got bored of the grinding after 30 seconds. Therefore, the results aren’t frame worthy, but more fridge worthy.
Most of us picked up some trinkets or art cards that had been made by the Huiling clients, before heading back out into the courtyard to play with traditional toys. I was a mess - there was this thing that the Shanghai acrobats had used, which is basically a spinning top of some sort on a string, and the goal is to get the music going. One of the guys would get the thing going for me, I’d be able to use it for about twenty seconds before it became tangled up or flew off at something or someone. Another one of the toys was something we also saw the acrobats using - a specially weighted cloth that you’re supposed to spin and keep even. My cloth also kept flying through the air. I’ve decided that my acrobatic aspirations are probably misguided.
We piled into some pedicabs (a guy on a bike hauling two of us around behind him) for a tour of the hutongs - traditional neighbourhoods that are rapidly disappearing. Anytime there was a bridge, however, we would have to get out of the pedicabs, walk over it and then climb back in on the other side. It was hilarious since we had no idea what was going on.
The pedicabs dropped us off at this spot called Lotus Lane, which was full of trendy looking restaurants and cafes. We stopped at Starbucks (I picked up some blueberry cheesecake… mmmm) for a bit as the group split up. George and the American boys decided to head back to the square and towards our hotel, while Jason, Rob, Emma and Fiona decided they wanted to find a supermarket and see if they could find and explore a bit more of the hutong. I, who hadn’t been shopping in months (Korea has neither my style or size) headed with Gerald, Margaret, Ruth and David to the Friendship Store which was located a short cab ride away (once we actually managed to secure a cab).
The Friendship Store is stateowned and has fixed prices. This gives you an idea of what the going rate is for something before bargaining on the streets or markets. Since the next day involved a trip to the Silk Market, this was important. I picked up some things at the Beijing 2008 official store - I had a bit of sticker shock, since this was official stuff, but it was worth it. I checked out some of the tacky souvenirs on offer to get a rough price, and also some of the postcards. The sets I’ve been paying 5 yuan for each were selling for 15 or 20. Also, the cheap little kites that you can get for 5 or 10 in the square were selling for 20. A very useful stop.
Gerald and I grabbed some supper nearby - Ruth, David and Margaret were going to head back to the Lotus Lane (we later discovered they paid over 120 yuan each - a MASSIVE amount since we usually paid 15-25 yuan per meal). While waiting for our food, someone kindly turned the television to CNN. It was mere hours after the London bombing and this was the first we had heard of it. It was also the best news coverage I would get until leaving for Japan. The Chinese news for the rest of my visit was more concerned with some dude from Taiwan “province” instead of terrorists in the West.
Walked to the subway and caught a train back towards the hotel. While on the subway we spotted some serious peasants - they had what are popularly referred to as the “farmer” bags, the one guy had a homemade tattoo, and they had little boy… we knew it was a little boy because the kid was wearing the crotchless and backless pants. These are apparently out of fashion in the city, but they’ve been designed so that whenever the kid has to use the bathroom they can squat right down and go anywhere. We saw it happening in Pingyao, and could have been caught in the spray if Margaret hadn’t yelled “watch out for the kid behind the pole!”. I also saw a kid walking around the Forbidden City with his pants around his knees as he made his way over to a staircase and peed on the banister.
Unlike Korea, however, no adults have been spotted urinating in public. Always a positive sign.
Tomorrow is a free day - plans include the Summer Palace, located outside of the city, followed by a trip to the Silk Market in the evening with the group.
