Trans - Siberian Part 4 - Beijing (iii)

Tourism

The road to the tube

"Day 4 Peking International Youth hostel, Beijing China
Friday the 7th of December 2012, 17.55

Quite woozy.  Waking from mid evening sleep.  Still not entirely awake as of yet.

Today.  Well, China is definitely insane.  Its quite impressive, but its definitely insane.   Up about 8 or so, needed to collect my trans-mongolian ticket so couldn't join Jonas and the other two in the Forbidden city - but I thought I'd be relatively quick so would meet them later.  This was not to be, albeit mainly because of my foolishness and the scrap of drawing above (There is a fragmentary pencil of a corner of roof above this paragraph) 

I was going to get a taxi but a half formed plan to rent a bike lodged itself in my head, so I walked on with an eye out for such a rental place - didn't see one and ended up walking to the relatively distant tube stop.

Right next to it was a small park with two old ladies waltzing to classical music, another old woman waltzed alone.

Chinese Dancers

So I got the underground to my destination, down near the train station where the buildings where massive, square, and glassy - here for the first time I saw Christmas trees , crude imitations of western Christmas songs were being pumped into the air as this 'modern' part of Beijing sought to adopt that great western holiday - at least the American side of it.

Here the roads were all motorway sized so crossing was  difficult - I scaled an atypical thoughtfully placed pedestrian bridge, at its apex a legless armless beggar with a melted face sat.  Unnerving.

Beyond the 'World Supermarket' skyscraper, was the building with the address I sought.  In I went - past a security guard who hardly glanced at me, through a tiny black marble lobby to a tiny black marble lift waiting hall.

Ticket Office

I needed room 313 so into the lift I shuffled with some business folks.  Up to Floor 3.  Took a left out of the lobby identical to the one downstairs, and walked down a narrow ill lit corridor, past offices, small businesses, and business men and women sitting bored in front of computers, until, there was my door - 'ease travel'.  A tiny 2x6 metre space with two desks against a wall. There was a fat man who continued to type without even a glance me, and a woman who urged me to sit on a tiny leather sofa, squeezed up against the wall, before I'd uttered a word.  - She didn't even ask me my name, she just produced my squarish ticket - we compared its passport number with mine, and I was off - back down the lift and out.

A short subway ride later found me back at Tienanmen Dong station - as I left a man started to engage with me in English.  He said he was from Xi-an and walked with me towards the Forbidden City - naturally he was trying to scam me, lead me towards one of the extraordinarily expensive 'Art Shows' that Lonely Planet had warned me about.

Its bloody annoying actually - every single Chinese person I've met who speaks English has tried to con me - be it an art show or a tea ceremony, to which a group of young women in Tienanmen square tried to lure me too later on. Each of these scammers would start with "Hello, where you from? You in China long?" then proceed swiftly into "We go get tea now, okay?" You come along, okay?"  Bloody transparent it is too.  The women in Tienanmen square, 3 of them, went down the whole "we are tourists too" route, and when I proved slow to bite, summoned over a younger prettier tout, albeit with too much pink blusher.  They explained the situation: "He from Ireland, first time Beijing, tourist, he comes for tea" thereby quickly allowing her to wade into the fray "You come for tea? Yes? We go drinking tea? Come? Come for tea?"  No! No I do not want tea! I flailed away from the frustration, but of course within seconds another bunch of women swooped in to give it a go.  Iron filings to a magnet. Annoying.

 Anyway.  I'm getting ahead of myself.  I walked on past Mr. Art Show trying to remain polite and right into the idyllic gardens surrounding the Forbidden City.  The sound of old men going "Hoooaaaaa" reverberated from the trees and surrounding walls as they slowly moved through Tai - Chi exercises amid the naked trees - they sounded so rage filled, almost like they were roaring out their frustrations at the thick wide walls.

Once I'd battled through more touts "I'll be your guide! Give me a little money! Think about it!" I got into the first of the 3 massive courtyards.  Its pretty amazing, the sun was beating down and the space was wide and free of vehicles while the architecture - divine.  Unreal really.  Classically Chinese as the world can instantly recognise, but so vast , you could spend days wandering the courtyards and fastnesses beyond the courtyards.

Me in the First Courtyard

Imperial rock collecting.

At the back of the complex: the imperial palace gardens - temples and twisted trees. The Emperors seemed to have had a passion for strangely shaped rocks, and so there were a lot of these, atop plinths, carved into creatures, stacked to create landscapes torn out of traditional Chinese paintings - like some wood cut print of a hill - with a temple perched atop.

All Mad.

The Chinese have really had a bad time of it over the centuries - their rulers all eccentrics, - The Emperors, for example, locked away in their Forbidden city with their concubines and Eunuchs - breaking the backs of the people to generate enough money to keep their idiosyncratic lifestyles afloat.  

All mad, though aesthetically, infinitely more beautiful then today's Beijing.

But all this, for one mans pleasure.  Difficult to digest.

Pogo Stick man. An American

One of the many avenues inside the FC

As I sat in a courtyard to draw the roof of one of the many buildings, I spotted my three friends enter the courtyard through the door I had myself passed through.  I called out, laughing, but they did not hear.  I watched them as I hurriedly finished off a few details on my drawing and then took off after them - but they had vanished.  They had been mere steps in front of me, at the top of a flight of stairs, but upon surmounting it myself found that they had disappeared into the crowd.  And it wasn't that big a crowd.  I was mystified.  

This spoilt my visit really.  I had been fine on my own, but now the thought of company drove me to wander fruitlessly and hurriedly through avenues I surmised they had followed - but they had not - my peace of mind had been disrupted, I had been quite serene wandering amid the throng of Chinese tourists until this chance half encounter.   But now I felt weary and foolish.  The cold returned all of a sudden and with it any desire to linger and explore this vast red walled space, and so with that I left the Forbidden City.

I walked out along the frozen moat, buying a corn in the cob from a man there.  Right by the man, atop the frozen water, was a great scattering of corn debris, so, surmising that the custom was to eat your corn very very quickly, I attempted to do the same.  However, continuing on I found, at a normal dining distance from that first seller, a second debris pile.  Foolish.  

Frozen Moat to the City

Mao and Fan

I finally made it outside the Forbidden City, Mao's old womanly visage staring benevolently down and across to Tienanmen square.  Soldiers standing to attention.

Had to cross another motor way to get to the square itself - underground this time, funneled through x-ray machines like at every station - but here it was more serious with pat downs and soldiers standing on what looked like pizza boxes, I assume to appear taller.

Entrance to this central square is strictly controlled, which makes the whole Soviet Building bounded thing seem fake and removed from the city.

Its the biggest square in the world, it was Mao's idea, its intentionally bigger then the forbidden City, the idea of the thing is to represent the sheer scale of Chinese Dominion.  

The road between the Forbidden City and the Square

 The government works hard to prevent any kind of popular demonstration or gathering.  Dominated by Mao's Mausoleum (closed for the day - I guess he needs maintenance) it also holds a monument to an unknown soldier and two vast cinema screens showing off China's current accomplishments, i.e. Trams, International Bridge Tournaments, Cranes, Happy Children, very Communist, very Overbearing.

Tienanmen Square and me

All the guys trying to rip me off, as I mentioned earlier, kept me from lingering too long - not that I'd want to, the whole massive desert of paving stones kind of gave me the creeps.

Sluggish march back to the hostel where I fell asleep. For too long.

Here I broke off, with a brief note that I had to fly in order to meet Tom and Johan, I had arranged to meet them at 7o' clock this very night the last time I had seen them.  This was now 20 minutes away.
It was the next day before I managed to record any of the happenings of the night.  But here it is anyway.

Met the lads at 19:00 then headed on towards the lakes.  Ended up at a fairly crazy junction over a river, a sort of frozen canal with neon everywhere, all in Chinese of course, night life with blaring music and hawkers attempting to lure one in.  Though not very successfully.

Beijng's canal bound Soho

 In the middle of all this neon an old Chinese man lent over the canal's edge with a long pole, its end nestled in the ice, he was holding fairly steady, there were no swift movements.  He then pulled up the pole to reveal that it was in fact a trident with a fish skewered on its end.  Not sure how he broke the ice or caught the thing, considering he wasn't moving his pole in any discernible way.

 We went into one bar with a band.  Lots of neon, overly expensive drinks, groups of tiny sofas clustered around tiny tables as the band played.

The Band

Johan and Tom

Me

 Skinny little singer, keyboard guy with a bleached blonde beatles do, the guitarist was a fairly heavy set guy wearing a red top and blue braces, like Mario, but monster Mario.  The drummer meanwhile was dressed like a trucker, peaked cap and all.  This eclectic lot had one groupie who jived in front of them whilst the rest of the bar sank further and further into their little sofas by the radiating neon columns. 

 Next Bar.  Across the bridge, 2 people singing, one at a time, a guy and a girl.  The bar was a small one yet the sound system was turned up so high the speakers continually peaked.  No one was bothered by this so they carried on deafening us.  A large man stood to sing a traditional Chinese piece, deep and sonorous and, thanks to the sound system, foundation shaking.

Eventually we found a nice place round the corner '361 bar' or some such. Posters of the Beatles on the wall,       'Let it be' and 'Yellow Submarine' the singer accompanied himself and his guitar with whistles into the mic, but he was at a good level, sound wise, and the atmosphere was very 'hip' 'underground' 'nice'. Good bar.
Good conversation too. Religion, politics, Che Guevara, Fascism, Hitler, China, etc.. Good guys to hang out with. Tom is off on the trans-mongolian in the morning.

Restless sleep. Phone call from from some Chinese number at 2am. Textfrom Mom shortly after.  Attacked by doubts which I managed to diffuse."

So ends my second day in China.  Again.  Lots of stuff happened.  As you can see I'm trying to use as much of the diary as I can, mainly because once I get onto the train it won't be much help at all.  Basically, this daily transcription of events will probably come to an end once I get on the train.  I think.