Winter at the Summer Palace (or two)

Today was my last proper day in Beijing. Tomorrow I fly to Xi'an where I'll meet up again with Laura. She's worried that there may not be enough to do in Xi'an for the remaining time so it's possible we'll go somewhere else for a while, maybe even somewhere warm, but not, I hope, so warm that I need rabies shots; I'm deranged enough as it is. One good thing about being in the northg, and in winter, is that rabies is not an issue. But back to more immediate concerns, personally, I think I should be able to fill two and a half weeks in and around a city that's over 2000 years old and was the capital of such significant dynasties as the T'ang and Sui, as well as being right on the silk route and having a multi-ethnic population make up. Laura's friend Helen, whom she followed out to New Zealand and whom I've met a few times in New Zealand, is back lioving in Xi'an. I'll catch up with her while I'm there. She's a member of the Hui nationality, one of the largest Muslim groups in China and the major non-Han population in Xi'an. They are reknowned for their yummy food. You see Hui restaurants all over China.

Yesterday didn't warrant a post as I was at home most of the day, doing mundane stuff like washing, and ducking out to restock a few groceries, so that the place is more or less as Paul left it. Today though, being my last day, I decided to go and see the two Summer Palaces.

The old Summer Palace is an interesting place. It's a ruin of a whole bunch of European Baroque era and styled buildings that were burnt to the ground by the Brits and the French at the end of the second Opium War. They were pretty keen to torch the Forbidden City as well, but for reasons that I don't know, it survived. From what I've read, Lord Elgin, presumably the notorious tomb robber who stole the marble decorations from the Parthenon, was responsible for this particular piece of wanton vandalism too. Nothing was spared. Even decorative bridges across the little canals were all destroyed in an orgy of vindictive destruction. All that remains of most of it is piles of rubble, some of which has bits of carving on it. One or two bits have been rebuilt - a couple of bridges were rebuilt last year and back in the 80s, the labyrinth and the pavillion at its centre were rebuilt too, much to the delight of many Chinese people, young and old, who were having endless fun finding their way through it while I was there, also having fun finding my way through, I might add. I spent a lot of time in the park where the old Summer Palace is, partly because it was interesting, if also a somewhat sobering reminder of the level of civilisation Imperialism brings in its wake, but also because it was quite hard to find my way back out. The labyrinth was easy compared to finding a gate on the right side of the park!

Eventually I managed to backtrack my way to a path leading out and I started towards the new Summer Palace, just a couple of kilometres down the road. This is a complex built on a 1000 year old artificial lake, rebuilt by the somewhat mad, power crazed and totally reactionary Dowager Empress Cixi (Tsee-hsee) at the turn of the 20th Century after, you guessed it, being destroyed by the European armies, this time the armies of the Eight Nation Alliance that dominated China at that time. Cixi had the Emperor, her nephew, put under house arrest and reputedly had his favourite concubine drowned in a well in the Forbidden City for winning him over to the idea of some constitutional reforms. She backed the Boxers in their 1900 rebellion, and her intransigent adherence to absolutism is often cited as a key factor in the collapse of the Chinese monarchy, although I'm sure it was a bigger issue than one particularly odious individual. She spent the money that had been budgetted for the revamping of the Chinese Navy on the rebuilding of the Summer Palace and the construction of a marble boat, which can still be seen floating on the lake. The upper sections are wooden - marble would have made it too heavy - but they were painted to look like marble. The whole thing is a ridiculoous testament to the excesses of the monarchy. It reminded my of the Macedonian 'Pharoah' Ptolemy IV (or was it III) building his tesseraconter (40er, where a trireme was a 3er). An absurd project which resulted in nothing but an overblown pleasure boat for his trips in the Nile. Evidently Empress Cixi spent many happy hours in her equally absurd creation. Meanwhile, the Chinese Navy must have been singularly unimpressed, especially as they were soon after humiliated by the Japanese Navy in battle.

The whole garden is intended to recreate the environment of Southern China, with various bits inspired by the scenery of different southern locales. This includes a long causway which runs the length of the lake, and is interspersed with six different unique bridges along the way. I may yet regret my decision to walk the causeway. My hamstring had not given me any grief all day and I was thinking this might be my first day untroubled by that annoyance. But part way up the stairs of one of the six bridges, I felt a familiar sensation . . . At the moment it seems alright so here's hoping. I won't be doing a lot of walking tomorrow so it should have a bit more rest.

Well, next stop Xi'an, and as I indicated, I'm not sure how easy it'll be to do updates, but I'll do what I can.

Subterranean Homesick Blues . . .

. . . would be the perfect heading for today's entry if I was homesick. But I'm not. The other two bits of the heading are applicable though, slightly, because I swiped into the subway without really thinking, got half way towards getting on the train and realised, erk, I didn't hear the machine beep and I think the barrier arms were already open. I thought, I hope that doesn't mean I can't get back out again because I haven't officially swiped in. Um, yes, that is what it means. When I tried to exit the card came up as invalid. A staff member came over to investigate. They took my card away for ages before bringing it back and getting me to swipe in again before swiping back out. I must say the evil totalitarian officious rail bureaucrats were nothing but nice and friendly throughout the whole process. So it seems I won't be incarcerated for attempting to defraud the People's Republic of China of their two Yuan. That's a relief!

I kind of decided I couldn't come home from a visit to China without being able to say I'd seen a giant panda so I decided to visit the Beijing Zoo. It hadn't been on my 'to do' list but it's close, cheap, and is a world leader, not surprisingly, in the conservation and recovery of the giant panda. Cooler would be to go to the National Park in Sichuan Province and see them at the centre there (the chances of seeing a wild one are minimal) but going to Sichuan doesn't seem that likely. So off I went. I'm still finding this whole 'sun in the south' thing pretty disorienting. I've always considered myself to have basically no sense of direction, but I must have, because it's totally out of whack now that the sun is in the wrong part of the sky. But I got there in the end. And the panda bit of the zoo is pretty informative, with a couple of purpose built rooms full of information on the conservation programme and the animals themselves. They have a strrangely jointed wrist that serves as a reversible thumb does in humans and they use it to grab the bamboo more easily. If Philip Pulman had gone with that idea instead of an actual reversible thumb for the bears in the His Dark Materials trilogy, they might have been more plausible.

The rest of the zoo was pretty sad. It must be soul-destroying for the keepers when all you've got to work with is a concrete floored concrete box to stick your animals in. It makes you realise how much better Orana Park is, with less animals but something at least approaching humane conditions for them to live in. Still, it was a delight to see the looks on people's faces when they saw some animal they'd never seen before. And the parents playing hide and seek in the trees with their little (three to four year old?) kid was pretty funny to watch too.

I escaped from the zoo with some sympathy for the animal liberationists, if only they were over here, and headed to the Black Bamboo Park adjoining the zoo. I was going to pass through there on my way to the Summer Palace, built overlooking a 1000+ year old man-made lake. However, I found myself getting drawn into the atmosphere of the park and ended up wandering around it for ages. By the time I'd finished lurking in the park, it was about time to start heading back, since New Year means everything's closing early. I arrived back in the nick of time, being able to grab something to eat from one of only a couple of places still open in the food court nearby.

Two more days in Beijing. After that, blog updates may be more infrequent (what a relief I hear you sigh) because Laura's been unable to connect to the net at her parents' place for some reason, so it might require a visit to an internet cafe unless everything's been sorted by the time I get there.

New Year's Eve

I can't imagine I'll get much sleep tonight because all around it sounds like a war is going on. You could invade China on New Year's Eve and I'm sure no one would notice until it was all over. There are huge explosions like artillery rounds going off and 5 or 6 metre long strips of small fireworks that sound like machineguns. People just roll them out on the footpath and light one end. Every so often there is a whistle as some airborne device flies overhead. I went for a walk and watched some people letting their fireworks off. The women huddled in anticipation while one of the men sauntered over and lit it with his cigarette. When it all started, one of the women, in her early twenties I suppose but it's so hard to judge, clapped her hands together and started jumping up and down in excitement. Cynical and obviously far too jaded, I looked at her and thought, grow up woman, it's fireworks. OK, way better than any I've ever had in New Zealand, but just fireworks nontheless. Then I thought, "Listen to yourself. Who's having the better time here, me or her?" She was getting an enormous amount of pleasure from this display, and when a guy with his young (maybe 8 year old) son came along, she engaged with him straight away, even though I'm sure they didn't know each other. I laughed to myself and carried on watching the display.

In Hong Kong and other places in the south, big New Year parades happen, with dragons and stuff, but here in Beijing, it seems more of a massively overscale Guy Fawkes Day, as they were when I was a kid, when every family bought a bag of fireworks and set them off in the yard or somewhere. Like that only on a much larger scale and with way cooler fireworks.

Other than that, New Year in China is about family, so families go out to dinner at a restaurant for a big meal. I thought I can look like a sad bastard sitting in a restaurant eating alone surrounded by big family groups having a great time, or I can go to McDonalds and sit there amongst a bunch of other solitary types. So I did that. I knew the food would be crap and it didn't disappoint on that score. It did in terms of being even worse than I expected though. It's only maybe the second time I've ever sat down and eaten McDonalds. The other time was when Yashmin and I went to Wellington zoo. That could have been before we were even married; it was when Mirla was at Library School there, so 1987? The burger was bland and synthetic looking, feeling and tasting, the chips, sorry - fries - were cold and the drink was flat and too sweet. Why did I bother? Well you may ask, but it eludes me how a chain that sells such an overpriced and tasteless excuse for food could ever make it outside the USA. Surely marketing isn't that all-powerful? And yes, I am going to eat something else later . . .

I was in no hurry to go out this morning but mooched about until about midday. I then headed out to finish what I had started yesterday, going to look at the drum and bell towers. I'm half expecting to learn that there's some Chinese band somewhere playing drum and bell, claiming it to be a Chinese fusion of traditional instruments and contemporary drum and bass. Maybe there is someone already. The Chinese rock, pop and punk music scenes seem to be thriving - in Beijing at least. Anyway, you get a great panoramic view of the city from the bell tower, which used to be used to anounce the opening and closing of the gates amongst other things, and the drum tower includes a display of replica and original equipment, including a reconstruction of the lost water clock that used to be used for official time keeping, and a whole array of drums, since only one original has survived. They were worth looking at but I'm surprised to admit it; I think I'm a bit Minged out. I'm looking forward to Xi'an, where the stuff is more varied, not just the buried army (Qin, c. 3rd Century BC) but also T'ang and other period stuff. I'm not complaining about Beijing though, I've really enjoyed getting to see a bit of it, and I'll enjoy the next three days too I'm sure, especially as the forecast seems to suggest a bit of heat wave for the city - it's going to be six degrees, and only zero overnight. It was zero today when I left the apartment about midday and scheduled to reach three. I went out without my warm hat and was quite OK. Amelia was worred that I might die over here in the cold; I'm more worried that I might die of heat stroke when I get back, or worse still, decide I like the cold!!! It was suddeny really cold up in the bell tower though. About 30m up and the wind chill must have put it well into the negatives again.

I meandered back along the path recommended on the card, through a series of Hutongs, and ended up at an area where gentrification is seriously taking place. The "Hutong" was full of VISA signs outside trendy bars, and there were loads of tourists lurking around. I know I'm a tourist, but the last thing I'd want to do is go and find a bar full of Western people to hang out with on my trip to China. I know, I could have gone to McDonalds in Christchurch and eaten crap served to me by a young Asian worker too, but I don't make a habit of that. The area was pretty heavily populated with rickshaw operators too. When one started hounding me, I said no thank you, I was quite happy to walk. He quickly turned over his laminated sheet to show me the rates for a walking tour. Aaarrgghhh. I had to explain that I was quite happy walking by myself.

It was about 5 o'clock when I finally got inside, so stilll a reasonable outing.

I've thought of a last possible plan to maybe get in touch with the Beijing students Robyn and I taught a few years back, so I'll be putting that into effect tomorrow. I'm not going to hold my breath though.