Explorations in Beijing

I arrived in Beijing on Tuesday night, August 30. When I came up to the airport and started walking through, I noticed how similar everything felt. So many of the things I find in every airport, in every city everywhere were there in Beijing. Of course, there was a different feel to it all but there was also something very familiar about everything too. Cities are strange, the more I see the more I realize that there are certain commonalities between all of them and its a rarity to see very distinct character in a city. I did find it in Beijing but you really have to go looking for it. Cara met me at the airport and I was so very thankful for that. She navigated me back to her neighborhood.

We sat down at a restaurant after getting off the airport express subway line and arriving at her metro stop and had a quick drink and a snack and then walked to her beautiful apartment a few minutes away in the diplomatic residences right across from the American Embassy in Beijing. The bed I slept in was one of the most comfortable beds I have ever experienced and it felt amazing. Also I had my own huge bathroom and big windows and I was just so happy to be there. It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep, although just to make sure that I slept for at least a few hours, I did take some Tylenol PM to make me drowsy. I fell asleep almost instantly. I woke up early the next morning and was ready for me hike along the Great Wall of China, my first foray into Asia.

The next morning I woke up and filled up my water vessels, brought a few snacks with me, and headed out to the meeting point for Beijing hikers. I met an African-American lady from the US who was working for the company and her name was Millicent, but she asked to be called Millie or Mill. It was me and one other American on the bus so far and we drove to the other pick-up point at Lido Mall, and picked up about 12 other people. I didn’t meet any of them but we started our three-hour ride out to the trailhead for our hike, way out north and pretty far west of Beijing. We past two other points on the Great Wall and they were completely overrun with people, wall to wall tourists. We stopped for a break at one of the points and I was glad to be leaving pretty quickly. We then drove a while longer way out into the countryside, went up and up a winding, very narrow road and stopped at the opening of an apple orchard. Sure enough, this was our trailhead, although I will say that there was no trail to speak of and that was kind of a theme for the day.

It was an absolutely crystal clear day. Cara said it was completely unheard of to have a day this beautiful in Beijing and she mentioned several times how extremely unusual the air quality was for my time in China with her. It was consistently sunny and clear and the AQI never went above 50 which is absolutely crazy. We started our ascent up the side of the mountain and once we existed the apple orchard, there was a bit of a trail up but mostly we were just walking through forest and undergrowth. I was wearing capri pants that didn’t fully cover my shins and I was feeling the grass and small bushes scrape against them. Before it got too bad, the trail cleared up again and we were on the wall! The views were spectacular and I could see for miles and miles and miles. There were absolutely zero other people on the wall and, really, anywhere around us. The wall walk was beautiful. It was very steep and in places I was literally climbing. The part we were on was unrestored, crumbing, and overgrown but still easily walkable for those with some moderate level of fitness.

I kept imagining what it would have been like to be a guard on that wall in winter, or any time really. There were lots of lovey smelling herbs growing indigenously on the wall and around. I could smell them. I was thinking no wonder these guys got good at making tea. It would have been hard to get anywhere to get anything, so they definitely would have used what was around. And how hard it would have been to get water and food up there. We were in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain, and they built a wall on top of the mountain! It’s such an impressive feat of engineering. And it’s incredibly beautiful out where I was too. It was a fantastic hike on the wall. I wish we had been able to go a lot further on it. But we hopped off after too long and then we headed back down into the forest. My shins were taking a beating from all the scrub and grassy undergrowth on the way down. there was absolutely no trail. We did have a local guide with us who was brought along with a machete “to clear the overgrown parts” but he did literally nothing with his machete. I have no idea why he had to come. It was very steep going down and we all had to watch our footing. At points I was just sliding down the mountain’s dirt slopes, sort of like skiing and hoping I would come to a reasonable stop before gaining too much speed.

At the end of the hike I was pretty relieved and my shins looked pretty terrible and were burning a bit. I was very glad to get home and cleaned up. I ended up taking the subway back to Liangmaqiao and wandering back, sore and tired but really pleased overall with the day, to be greeted by Cara and Luke who were both home from work. We decided to go out and get soup dumplings at a nearby place and had a yummy meal there. Pork and mushroom soup dumplings, pork steam buns (baozi), vegetables, these delicious cucumber things with a vinegar and hot chili sauce on them that I couldn’t get enough of, and some cheap chinese beer. Excellent.

We got back to the apartment and I stayed up way too late figuring out where I was going to go the next day. I basically had to see all the major touristy sites in Beijing in one day. It was a tall order but I knew from previous experiences that I could do it.

I left the house the next morning at 7:30am and headed toward Tiananmen Square. I saw the famous portrait of Mao and the crush of red in the square, all the glorious monuments to the hardworking people of China, the people are the power, labor is the source of life and peace, etc. All these slogans were everywhere. It was really interesting to see it all in person. Then I headed into the Forbidden City. The buildings were ornate and beautiful but it struck me as a crumbing relic surrounded by a uniform and largely uncreative new culture. China really values its history, they talk about it all the time and they rely on it for tourism and in how they talk about their culture all the time. It’s a touchstone for their national identity, but it’s very clear to that the past things that were valued in the Forbidden City are not really valued any longer in China. When China builds, they build fast and cheap, they build without creativity and without beauty. They are always building new things and tearing them down and rebuilding because they don’t build things well and nothing is built to last.

I was left with the question: what actually is being built here? In the Forbidden City all the buildings are for harmony, beauty, peace, union, balance. In modern China, although they hate capitalism there is a sense of uniformity in greed and hunger to impress and dominate, subsume individuality in its population and become like a well-oiled machine as a nation. It feels very very strange. But the things that were brought to mind while walking through the Forbidden City were the things of ancient China. I have a certain fascination with the values of Eastern Religion. What is true about them? What is right and good about the way they value beauty and art, balance and harmony, healing and wholeness? They did a lot of things right and many tenets of ancient Chinese religion are not too far off from Christianity. I wonder where God is in all of that stuff. That would be a good question to pursue.

There is a lot of propaganda in everything too. Not that this doesn’t happen in America but they are just always trying to reinforce the greatness of China in its athletes and all the achievements of this incredible, and historically incredible, society. Another thing that I’ve found very jarring here, it started on the plane ride over, is that Chinese men are constantly clearing through throats and coughing up awful amounts of phlegm all the time. It’s loud and its super gross, and everyone does it. I am very thankful for the over-politeness that awaits me back in America in this respect.

After the Forbidden City I walked to Jingshan park and up to the viewpoint that overlooks the whole of the Forbidden City. They say there are 9,999 rooms in it, though there is debate about the accuracy of that count. I learned that the crane is a symbol of immortality, and I have a lot of questions about the rituals which all the bronze and porcelain vessels were used for in the time of the Ming and Qing dynasties. After Jingshan park I walked over to Beihai park which was fantastic. There was a dance exercise class going on, people were doing calligraphy on the sidewalks and a street cleaner was sweeping right over it, there was an epic game of senior citizen hackysack being played, groups of women strolling in the park together were singing. It was full of weeping willows and on a lovely lake with dragon boats and other pleasure craft that were colorful. It was also FULL of people. Cara had warned me that you can’t go anywhere in Beijing that is not crowded. She was right. You really can’t be alone or have personal space anywhere, and everywhere you go the crowds are like US crowds on the busiest holiday of the year, times 10. There are just so many more people doing all the things that people do in this city that everything is always overrun. It’s an exhausting prospect for me. I don’t know how Cara does it.

After Beihai park I was getting really really tired. My legs started to feel like jelly but i had three more things to see and I was going to do it all, dammit. So I went hopped on the metro and went out to the Summer Palace which was quite a ways away from center city Beijing. I arrived and took a short walk out to the expansive grounds on this beautiful lake. I saw more of the same kind of architecture that the Forbidden City offered, and that crazy marble boat that everyone is always talking about. Also the very very long walkway through the grounds at the Summer Palace with 250 different paintings on the lintels in the overhangs. There is so much attention to detail and craftsmanship in these ancient buildings. It’s beautiful. I loved the green and blue malachite and azurite accents on all the roofs. It looks beautiful against the predominant red.

I had to sit down a few times as I had already walked a few miles and was going to walk a few more. My legs were really tired at this point. I made my way back to the subway, which is clean, and incredibly easy to use. It’s just super super crowded. I got on and made my way down to the Temple of Heaven Park. That was another gorgeous green space, full of lawns and a grove of ancient cypress trees, and a rose garden, and some old buddhist structures that are landmarks in the city. I enjoyed walking around there. And after exploring for about two hours, I finished my tourism day at the Pearl Market. I was way too tired do engage with it at that point though. Cara had told me there was a good view from the roof so I went up there and sat and collected myself for an hour or so. I browsed the wares they were offering but nothing really caught my eye. I’m not a big pearl person and I already have pearl earrings I really like and wear a lot so I didn’t have much use for the market. I couldn’t get a hold of Cara so I decided to head back to the apartment and we would figure out dinner from there.

We ended up going to a fantastic restaurant called the Dali courtyard which is in the hutongs near Nanlouguhshian, and it was one of those places where you pay a set price and buy your drinks but you don’t have to order and food just keeps appearing in front of you. It was all delicious and we ate outside in the courtyard and had a really great time together. Luke was leaving the next morning to go back and start his job in the US so it was a great way to close our his stint in Beijing, although he will be back to help Cara with the pack out in October.

The next day, we said goodbye to Luke early in the morning and then Cara went back to sleep. I went for a run and then tried to answer a few e-mails. Cara and I started our Cousins Do Funky/Hipster Beijing Day around 11am by heading out to the 798 art district.

That was a really cool space. Cara said that creativity is largely dead in China but in the 798 district it feels a lot like Brooklyn. There are a lot of foreign companies represented there, lots of little strange shops and great little pop up spaces. Tons of art galleries, cafes, and photoshoots happening all the time. It’s a really cool place. There are raised walkways, similar to the Highline in New York City, and it’s just fun to meander the post-industrial chic spaces they have created out there. The food and the shopping were great and we found lots of weird, funky things. Then we took a taxi to the hutongs in center-city Old Beijing. We walked through these little alleyways and Cara was telling me how this was her favorite part of Beijing. She said it felt real and authentic and I got that. These were some original structures that had been there forever. It felt a lot like Mary King’s Close in Edinburgh. Tiny, narrow streets, crammed full of people and dwellings, and I wonder what it would have been like when this was the center of life in the ancient Eastern world. We had a great time wandering through the streets. I bought more little gifts and things and loved hearing more about Cara’s experiences in China. She said that each one of these little neighborhoods in Beijing has a “Neighborhood Watch” which literally spies on the neighborhood for the government and keeps track of what’s going on and reports it. They have a bulletin board and Cara said that she is always asking people about that when she interviews them for her job. If they are a part of that neighborhood watch then she will definitely deny them. It’s such a controlled society in China, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in it and abide by its stringent and confounding policies.

We strolled and strolled and got little snacks at street vendors. Cara showed me some of her favorite places, and we discovered some new ones. After we had a huge amount of frozen yogurt, we took a cab back out to near where Cara lives to a brewery called Arrow where we were waiting to meet my friend from American Councils, Doug, who now lives in Beijing. We had a great time with him, his cousin Nate and Nate’s wife Karen. We were all laughing and drinking and catching up. Nate and Karen had just arrived and they were super jet-lagged. I was starting to hit the wall and Cara and I were leaving for Mongolia the next day, so after about 4 rounds, we called it quits at 11:30, but Doug wanted us to hit up another bar. We declined but we did have a great time catching up. It’s so fun to see friends who live in foreign places. Cara and I headed back to her apartment, made granola and final packing decisions for Mongolia, and then we went to bed.