Beijing

(Thursday, March 3rd, 2016)

Admin: I uploaded the photos in this post before realizing that I had not captioned them. Rats. It takes about 2 hours to upload, and I decided not to redo. I hope the photos are mostly self-explanatory.

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On Tuesday I took a day trip to Beijing, mostly to revisit places I enjoyed before, and also to ride a bullet train.

Everybody knows Beijing, so I won’t write much for an introduction. Beijing is one of the largest and most important cities in the world, with a long history.

This week a general assembly of the Chinese government is taking place, so the area just west of Tienanmen Square was busy, and had some extra security as I walked past. From what I could understand, there are about 3000 representatives. China is a big and populous place!

Beijing is polluted. Worse than Tanggu or Tianjin. The weather had changed significantly overnight in this north China area, becoming unseasonably warm, which was fine by me. I am not sure if the warm weather was contributory, but I certainly felt the pollution. I have been nowhere in the US that feels like that, even industrial cities like Gary, Indiana. Many of my photographs show it. It was not a “misty day”. That’s not fog. Okay, enough of that, it isn’t where I want to focus.

The bullet train was really fine. One of the best parts of it is that I didn’t get the sense that people thought it was overly special. It is more expensive than the regular trains, but it is not expensive, even in Chinese terms. And there is not one “bullet train”, there are many bullet trains in constant use, going all over the place.

One thing, though. Unlike some trains, you can’t just count on “standing room” and just show up. It is all reserved seating, and tickets must be accompanied by ID, not just for us foreigners but for everybody. On Monday I showed up an hour early for the first of two morning trains from Tanggu to Beijing and was shut out. I didn’t feel too bad, there were many locals who were surprised as well. So on Tuesday, with tickets bought Monday, I was ready.

When I first saw the train approaching it was smaller than I imagined it would be, much lower to the ground. I need to go find my photos of European fast trains I’ve taken to see if there really is a difference. Inside, kind of like an airplane but with lots more room. Kind of like an airplane interior that movie studios use, tee hee.

Smooth, electric, quiet, and we were moving before I realized, slowly leaving Tanggu and then all of a sudden things are going by a lot more quickly than usual and when we came near a highway I saw that we were more than doubling the speed of the fastest cars on the freeway. There’s a display at the front of each car, and our car was traveling 287kph, just a shade under 180 miles per hour. The only feeling of speed is if you look out the window.

So we were in Beijing quickly. You could easily commute Tanggu – Beijing, 100+ miles, without much stress. There was wifi on board, places to plug in your chargers, and trays like on an airplane, but, again, with much more room.

I decided to spend the day walking, as the train station was close enough to my goals (Tienanmen, Forbidden City, some hutongs). I ended up with tired legs and knees at the end, but saw most of what I wanted to see. I also thought that the walk from the train station to the center of town would give me an opportunity to see some of “regular” Beijing, and I think I saw some of that.

The train station is close enough in that you are inside all the freeway rings around Beijing, which makes walking okay. I followed some main streets until I felt confident that I was near to my destination to take more chances on side streets, much quieter and more interesting.

I came upon a hutong that was being demolished in favor of a new set of luxury apartments. I was surprised that they would do that, but I guess all hutongs are not automatically historical, and not protected. This particular hutong was not in the “main hutong area”, so maybe that was a factor. Hutongs are neighborhoods with semi-connected buildings, extremely narrow accesses (bicycles being walked, no cars), and many ancient buildings. I think that “hutong” is a word that describes both the narrow “street” (really alley) and the neighborhood.

I also walked into an older market area, some shops for locals, and some obvious shops (and pitchmen) for us tourists. I was the only foreigner around, so I was often being pitched by two vendors at once. Choices! I disappointed most of them. I feel sorry for one guy in particular. He had a bag shop. I love bags – I could see myself as a bag shop owner. But I have enough bags. So I dawdled, looking, and he saw “big sale” in his dreams. I almost bought something just because.

I finally found my way back on track towards Tienanmen Square, past some government offices and some fancy hotels.

The way that I approached Tienanmen Square was from the southwest, using an underground walkway to get across a busy street. In the underground part was a security check as good as TSA. Looked at my passport. I guess they are careful about visitors to the square.

I really like Tienanmen. It is a huge area. I know about some of the history of course, and it is easy to imagine a million people in this area. The haze contributed to an even greater sense of vastness. I didn’t go there to look at Mao or to visit any particular building – only to stand in the middle of it and imagine how it must have been for several past events. It feels like an important place. Guards were out and about, sometimes marching, sometimes standing, making their presence known. They all looked young to me – maybe that particular duty is for junior members. They all certainly looked serious, and were armed.

I think I stood out as the odd foreigner. Four or five times folks asked to take a selfie with me, or have someone take our picture. Quite fun. They were very friendly, made me feel welcome.

I went across the street to the Forbidden City. The second time through, 12 years later, wasn’t quite as exciting as the first. Some of the superlatives are lost on me, but it is still interesting that entire buildings were reserved for the purpose of, in one direction, progressively vetting visitors before allowing them an audience with the emperor, and, in the other direction, preparing the emperor to receive visitors. Or something like that. Each next inner circle was defensible. “Inner circle”, nowadays, is a political or organizational term, but back then was a physical reality. I was impressed by the size of the place, the number of rooms, the ornateness, and the overall sense of a grand plan. I could imagine people bustling about, going about the day-to-day empire business.

I did see some extras that we skipped 12 years ago. We were 4 then, it was hot, and we didn’t need to see it all. One of the extras was an exhibition of old clocks. Seems the emperors in the 18th century had a thing for clocks. There were some pretty cool clocks in there, some as big as a room. You know a clock is substantial when it has, in the back, its own stairway to the upper sections.

After the Forbidden City, it was fun to walk through a few little hutongs nearby. The juxtaposition is radical. And, literally, these hutongs were “outside the wall” of the Forbidden City, with a moat and a 30 or 40 foot wall in the way.

Out of legs, I took a cab ride back to the railway station. One of those “did we just go all the way around the city to get straight over here?” kind of cab rides, but oh well. And whiz whiz back to Tanggu inside the bullet, this time in the dark, so even less sensation of speed.