The World's Best Xinjiang Diary Ever: Beijing (Thursday August 23rd

Wow, this is a fairly huge topic to cover. Where to begin? As I last left it, we were on the doorstep to the Templeside. After ringing the doorbell (which is quite an incredible doorbell: first it rings and then it says 你好！请开门。(Hello! Please open the door.) I want one for myself.) we were ushered in into the hostel. In Beijing, the majority (I think) or at least a large part of the population live in a certain type of housing called the hutongs. The Templeside is in a hutong. Hutong is a Mongolian word which could well mean ‘live together’ (this may have to be checked, I think memory may not be serving me correctly). Basically in the old Mongolian style of living, people lived in groups in small, one-storey houses, and then they would leave them and go and build elsewhere and so on. Mongolians believe that when you leave a place you should symbolically leave water there, otherwise that area will not be habitable in future. The Beijing hutongs are built under the Mongolian influence, and are sprawling and extremely complicated to navigate. Hutong in Chinese means alleyway. Staying in a hutong was quite an experience, not least because under the plan for re-construction of Beijing, the hutongs are to be demolished. This is a real shame because it is effectively destruction of the traditional Beijing way of life to replace it with a Western-style concrete and steel infrastructure, simply for the enjoyment of foreigners coming for the Olympics. Perhaps the Chinese have not realised that most Westerners would come to China to see something that they couldn’t easily find in the West anyway? In the hutongs, there is always something to see, hear and experience. And to smell. This was also where we first had to accustom ourselves to being stared at and talked about. Westerners, even in Beijing, are of huge interest to many Chinese. It appears that it is not enough to see Western faces on film, TV and in advertisements. Seeing one in person is this massively interesting event. Some can’t drag their eyes off us. They nudge their companions to alert them to our existence. Since arriving in China, we’ve had points, gasps and photographs taken (both openly and ‘surreptitiously’ and even some where we have had to pose with the Chinese). In Beijing when we were on public transport, or in a restaurant, or just walking down the street, we were the main attraction. How do white people walk? How do they talk? How do they eat? They always look into our bags to see what we carry around, and when we shop they always want to see what white people could be buying. Once when we were in a taxi we looked out of the window at the bus next to it and literally EVERYONE was peering into our taxi. Most Westerners just try to ignore the staring and pointing and don’t acknowledge it at all. They most definitely don’t do anything interesting! So, to make their day, I waved and stuck my tongue out at them. I may have made their lives. That early on even, we began to find it strange to not be looked at. God only knows how we’ll take being back in the UK where we’re just another member of the population and nobody stares at us! How ordinary and unimportant we’ll feel.
The Templeside was a traditional-style building. It has four blocks built around a central courtyard. We were in Templeside shop number 1, the original. Templeside shop number 2 is located not too far away. Both are run by the same family and their staff. We were never sure who was related to whom though really. Liam and I shared a twin room for our stay in Beijing. The Templeside shop 1 was really pretty and the courtyard was shaded from the outside summer heat and pollution. There was a family of white cats with two adorable kittens. The hostel also had a deal with a nearby restaurant to provide food to their guests, so most nights we ordered pre-set dishes from this menu. In the mornings, breakfast was included.
The first day in Beijing (Friday) we did very little. We arrived in the mid-afternoon and stayed awake long enough to eat some dinner. The next day we had big plans, which were quickly scuppered by my being hit by jetlag like a ton of bricks. I slept practically the entire day. Finally on our second full day (Saturday August 25th (what a long time ago!)), we went out to discover Beijing.
It was a really nice 30 degree temperature. Liam, being a skinny ginger (read: Scottish) of course thought it was too hot. (Note to Liam: I know you’re not ginger really. But still.) All the Chinese men roll their shirts up to their nipples (regardless of their figure) in summer, which is quite a comical sight. Why they don’t just take them off is beyond me – we can already see everything!
We decided to hit Tiananmen Square first, and navigate our way there on the bus. This was the first time we’d been on a normal Beijing bus. The number 22 which we caught from XiDan Aviation Building was, in hindsight, shockingly (but fortunately, considering our suitcases) empty. I held a grudge against the number 22 for a few days because I didn’t like the bus babushka on our first journey. However I have now come to recognise the greatness of the 22 in all its glory. I digress. So there we are, packed in like sardines. Now your average person would probably start to feel more than a little bit claustrophobic (a memory from my Year 10 Paris French exchange suddenly springs to mind. Two girls had to take taxis because the busy-ness of the Métro was too much. The Paris Métro at rush hour, my friends, is a calm and deserted mode of public transport. These girls would undoubtedly hit full-level hysteria on a Beijing bus.). There is NO room to move. Most people can’t reach anything to hold onto, but that is entirely okay, because the unmoving mass of people will hold you up should your bus driver brake unexpectedly (which they WILL, by the way) or swerve into the opposite lane of traffic (again, fairly guaranteed) or possibly up a kerb (yes, yes, regular occurrence), or hit an unlucky pedestrian (okay, I admit, I’ve never seen this one). It is on the Beijing buses that Liam and I coined the expression ‘Western concept’. This is when somebody attempts to take up more space than just their base body mass, perhaps by sticking out their elbows or putting shopping bags in the way. They will then be having a Western concept, because they have this bizarre notion that it is in their rights to have personal space and air to breathe. Silly. Liam and myself were, of course, guilty of being too Western in our concept of space for the first few bus trips. The bus would come up to a bus stop. It’d already be more full than the average British bus could ever hope to be. There would be 20 people waiting at the stop. The bus driver opens the door to let them on and we say (to ourselves): “There’s clearly no more room! What are you doing?!” It took very little time for us to be Beijingers in our concepts. There’s always room for more! We now take this attitude on all public transport, lifts and other enclosed spaces. We no longer can claim to have any sense of personal space. Look out everyone when we come back home. The main issue the British have is that they don’t let things get full ENOUGH. Yes, it is very uncomfortable when there are people standing all around you and you’re being all British and trying not to stick your elbow up their nose and not knock little old ladies over and so on, but when you pack an extra 50 people into those air gaps, then suddenly all decorum is out the window and you don’t have to struggle to stand up in difficult positions any more. The mass will hold you up. Heaven.
Well would you look, I digressed again. You may have to get used to my doing that. So we arrive at Tiananmen by bus. I enjoy having my nose in someone’s armpit for the entire journey. Liam by this magical thing called a sense of direction (yeah, I don’t have one) manages to get us off at the right stop. Now. How do we actually cross these 17 lanes of traffic to get to the square itself hmm? A lovely rickshaw man offers to take us, no doubt for about 1000¥. We can see the square from here goddammit! Finally we spot an underground crossing. This is the way most big roads are to be crossed in Beijing. Even the hardy Chinese pedestrian will not risk crossing over the top. In Urumqi most roads are crossed by bridges over the lanes of traffic.
Tiananmen is huge. Liam and I have another phrase, which is ‘a China moment’. Despite having crossed half the world and living in this country, most days we are just settled into it. However sometimes some things spark you and you suddenly think ‘my God, I’m in CHINA!’ These are amazing moments, because it is nice to know that despite being here constantly, we can still have moments of pure appreciation and happiness. Looking upon Tiananmen gives one a huge China moment. It is a site of great historical and political importance. Behind us to the south is Mao’s former place of residence. To the north is the famous Tiananmen gate (see previous post). Between the two is a huge square with throngs of people milling around. We walk over to the gate which is now sadly covered in scaffolding. Once through Tiananmen Gate, you reach the entrance to the Forbidden City. Well actually, no you don’t. You reach the entrance to a sprawling square surrounded by historical buildings, ALL of which is the entrance to the Forbidden City. Liam and I both stupidly and independently thought that this one square was the entire Forbidden City. With retrospect, I don’t understand how we could make such a monumentally idiotic mistake. Nor how we could not mention it to each other. (Until that night when one of us, I forget who, first admitted it. Cue hysterical laughter. As Liam said, you had to be there to get the intense humour of the moment. Or be drugged up on tea and MSG.) Anyway, so we’re walking around this square, both a little disappointed, when we realise some random young Chinese man has fallen into step beside us and is nodding along to our conversation. At the time this struck us both as quite strange. We are fairly used to it now. It turned out this man was an art student, and his college was putting on an exhibition in one of the buildings. Would we like to look? Now we’d been pre-warned about art exhibitions being a huge rip-off as the average Westerner feels that they should buy something after being treated so nicely, and everything is ridiculously over-priced. But obviously we both thought that that one square was it for the Forbidden City so we saw no harm in trying to find SOMETHING interesting to do. We ended up buying some indeed ridiculously over-priced artwork, which is now decorating our living room here in Urumqi. It’s really quite pretty actually. Next to accost us were three younger students who attempt to take us to a tea ceremony. Much as I would like to go to a traditional tea ceremony we had been severely warned that this was a bad idea because it’s normally even more of a rip-off than the art. We did get one good thing out of the interaction, and that was that they told us we had to buy tickets to get into the Forbidden City. What? We’re not IN the Forbidden City?
We bought tickets and entered the biggest non-city city in the history of the world. It was really interesting and we practically had to run to get out by closing time, which meant that we didn’t see it all by any means. We decided we’d come back on Tuesday and try to cover the bits we missed. Upon leaving the City we are met by hundreds of beggars and street hawkers selling Mao merchandise (particularly watches) and translated Little Red Books. One little old woman practically pushed her ill baby into my arms in an attempt to get money off me. I would have given her some actually if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was surrounded by tens of other people desperate to get into my purse. After we broke free and walked, I thought, out of ear-shot, I said to Liam that I might be interested in seeing a Little Red Book. A few street hawkers with the ears of bats then chased us down the street with armfuls of these books. We got away and then went into one of the two parks. One is BeiHai Park and the other is JingShan Park. BeiHai is apparently one of the best sites to see in Beijing. We accidentally went into JingShan instead. Actually it was a very nice calm park and we went up to a monument on the Shan (mountain) and took some aerial views of Beijing on my camera. We planned to come back to see BeiHai on Tuesday.
Sunday was really quite a waste of a day. It was raining and so we decided to just go out and see some of the shopping streets of Beijing. I really wanted to see a packed busy street, like you see in the media, where there are just hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people hurrying down the road. We went to a main shopping area but sadly I didn’t get to see my street. : ( We did however find an amusing store. It was five flights tall and absolutely packed full of fake merchandise, often with some brilliant Chinglish slogans. Since then we’ve realised that almost everything over here is more likely to be fake than genuine, but rarely do you find just one location where EVERYTHING in sight is fake. Copyright theft, anybody?
On Monday 27th we had to change hostels. There was a problem with our booking for some reason, and so we moved to the Templeside shop 2 for one night, to return to shop 1 on Tuesday morning. To get through the hutongs without damaging our suitcases we borrowed a little pull cart and were taken to the hostel by one of the daughters (or nieces? General staff members? Who’s to know?), which I suppose finally merited some of the staring we always got. After that we visited the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is particularly stunning, but also dangerous to those with heart problems, breathing problems, or who are generally not mountain climbers in exquisite physical condition. It was the summer residence of the various emperors through the ages, and practically every sign emphasized how the English destroyed the palace on various occasions, usually just after the Chinese had renovated it from the destruction of the previous English attack. My, how proud I felt. The whole day was absolutely hilarious, as Liam and I spent far too much of it collapsing from heat and exhaustion. Added to the food poisoning I had picked up in Turkey, I also fell off a foot-high kerb and sprained by ankle badly. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sightsee at all in Beijing but my ankle held up well. At the summer palace my ankle condition was obviously exacerbated which was unfortunate as we still had the Great Wall to go. We spent the entire day there until we had seen it all. One particularly nice bit of the Palace is Suzhou Street. Suzhou is a city in South-East China, near Shanghai. Basically it’s a model of an ancient street, and all the way down it are little stalls and shops (basically tourist traps, but still worth seeing). I bought my name in calligraphy from a very very old gentleman – done more beautifully than I could ever hope to reproduce – and also got up in an empress outfit and headdress and had my photo taken. Liam and I also got a keyring made from a photo of us. The photographer was pretty insistent that we were a couple despite our protestations to the contrary so the photo looks a little romantic. At the Summer Palace, as in most of the tourist sites in Beijing, there are several little museums and exhibitions. We were getting quite fed up of being surrounded by huge groups of ignorant American tourists already at this stage (sorry any American readers) and so when we were in an exhibition at the Summer Palace, after checking that there were no Americans in sight, we spent a good half hour mimicking and taking off their stupidity. As we came to leave, I watched as a museum attendant approached the ‘Chinese’ man who had been following our path around the entire exhibition and speak to him. To which he replied, “I’m sorry, I’m not Chinese.” in what was clearly an American accent. Whoops. I’d like to say Liam and I learnt from this but we didn’t. By this point it was about quarter to five. We were scheduled on a Beijing Opera trip at six and so we hopped on a bus home. We waited without a driver for a fair while and I bought a pea flavoured ice lolly out of curiosity. Never again. I had to run off the bus to throw it away and then back on again.
The bus journey took well over an hour and we ran into the hostel late. Fortunately we still got to go the opera, which is so far from what I knew to be opera. It is sung in a very specific way with high-pitched voices in an ancient dialect, with translations into ‘English’ and Putonghua Chinese for the spectators on screens at the side of the stage. There are very few props and so the props used have to demonstrate a huge amount of background. For example, a single horse whip can demonstrate an army on horseback and so on. Every performer was male save one single woman (who played the main character in the main performance), and every one was made up with either a mask or make-up of intricate patterns. Walking into the famous LiYuan opera theatre was like walking back into the west in terms of the audience. The Americans next to me found the singing style absolutely hilarious and laughed through practically the entire performance, which I found extremely disrespectful and rude. Two operas were performed; Farewell my Concubine, the introductory opera, which was very short, and Stealing Silver in Storage, which was longer and had more to it. Some of the acrobatics in the opera really impressed us, for example the main character standing in the middle of a circle of about 8-10 ‘soldiers’ who were throwing their ‘spears’ at her as she rapidly kicked them all back to their rightful owners who then caught them again. We wondered how the next night’s acrobatics could be more impressive than this kind of thing – if the acrobatics just in the OPERA were stunning, then why does acrobatics need a show of its own?

How naïve we were.

Photos!

Templeside hostel in a Beijing hutong.