I had a very, very long day today, and I'm absolutely beat, but I'm in much better spirits today then I was yesterday. This was roughly my route, if the folks at home care to follow along: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl. Hope that link works.
First, my general impression of Beijing. What strikes me about the city is both the sheer size and the way the city was planned and built entirely by fiat. The city is simply not on human scale. Even many of the public spaces just totally dwarf the individual, and my walk from my hotel to the Drum and Bell towers felt ten times longer than they actually were. It is just not a city that lends itself to the pedestrian, and it seems to sprawl out endlessly from an arbitrary center at Tiananmen Square.
The design of the city also made a big impression on me. New York is an organic city, a product of a good natural location, a city that grew around one of the world's greatest natural harbor according to its own volition. Beijing, however, is highly planned. There is no river or natural landmark here, outside of a few small lakes. The city is rigorously planned, according to an ancient sacred order. The important buildings of the city are built along a north-south axis in the center of the city, and the city is organized around four temples located in the corners of the ancient city. Walking today, I got used to the simple rhythm of the city, east and west, north and south, all roads leading to Tiananmen. The design of the city really impresses upon you a feeling of being governed by rituals older than can be imagined.
Last night, I was kind of in panic mode. I ended up eating bowl of noodles in my room (yeah, half the way around the world for bowl of noodles) and falling asleep at 10:30. I meant to wake up at 7:00, but ended up waking up at 8:30, thanks to a fun physics fact. Not only does China have a different standard voltage than the United States, but the current alternates at a different frequency. Which usually means nothing...unless you're plugging in an alarm clock that uses that frequency to keep time. Oh well, I'll just buy a battery next time. In the end it didn't matter, because the fireworks here around New Year's Time start around 7:30 AM. Yep. Loud firecrackers, everywhere you go. And they go all day long. I heard fireworks everywhere today.
The hutongs have grown on me. They're still kinda stinky and unpleasant, but also kind of charming at times. Walking through the hutongs, I think about an observation I made last night that was so banal that it must be recorded: "China's kind of like Chinatown, only bigger." Yes...I think that's the idea. Once I got dressed, I walked through the hutongs from my hotel up to Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is massive, although not as wide open as I had thought. I was planning to see dead Mao, but the line was absolutely insane. Unfortunately, this is the New Year's holiday, which means that the Chinese are on vacation, travelling in big unpleasant tour groups (although some of these hilariously seem to require that all participants in the tour wear the same hat, even if that hat is a hot pink fisherman's hat). I was driven by a morbid curiosity to see dead Mao, but that wasn't enough to make me wait hours, so I decided to skip it. Tiananmen Square is absolutely huge, inhumanly so. Also, like all parts of Beijing I've seen so far, it is guarded by dozens of idle PLA soldiers or policemen. I also went to see if the Great Hall of The People (China's "legislative" house, a big piece of Socialist architecture, meaning that it's freaking huge and not particularly attractive) was open, but it wasn't, so I just walked by. I decided to go to the Forbidden City.
I spent most of the day in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is one of the few pieces of palace architecture that has ever had a dramatic effect on me. The series of gigantic gates and receiving halls impressed on me the rigor of the rituals of the emperor. China's emperors had a spiritual and temporal authority that is really hard to imagine, incomparable even with the popes. As you pass through each successive gate and cross each large courtyard before you even get to the emperor himself, you get a feeling of the awe the imperial power must have inspired - and also the wealth, in a way I didn't even get when in say, The Basilica of St. Peter. The Forbidden City is also, well, a city, sprawling for miles. I spent 4 hours there and didn't even see it all. Parts of it are breathtaking, especially the garden, and the collection has some pieces that are just stunning in their craftsmanship. I had a bad overpriced lunch there, but it's not like you can just walk across the street.
I had to make myself leave the Forbidden City after I found myself getting palace fatigue, and what's more, I wanted to try and squeeze other things in. I proceeded by foot through Beihai park, which was probably the height of my day. Beihai is one of the most lovely parks I have ever been in, a pine and slate lined lake shore, with a gorgeous bridge to a beautiful pagoda type piece in an island in the center. I was glad to walk through there for twenty or thirty minutes on my way to the Drum and Bell Tower. I don't know how much I have to say about the Drum and Bell Towers. They provide breathtaking views of the city, and they have lawsuit-ready steep stone stairs. The drums and bells reinforce the ritual order of the city.
From there, I hopped on the subway to the Olympic Park. The Beijing metro is real nice, super clean and state of the art. They have these sweet ticket taking things where you just put your ticket on the sensor and the gate opens, and then you feed the ticket to the machine when you exit. You need to transfer like a billion freaking times to get anywhere, however. I was a little disappointed by the Olympic Park. The stadium and the aquatic center are impressive, especially the stadium, with its dramatic lines and sweeping, airy structure. But at the end of the day, it's fascist architecture, in that it just dwarfs the individual and gives no access (although the stadium is transparent in a way that invites you in). The park especially is poorly designed; it's just way too big, with nothing but open space.
This city could use more public maps. Sometimes, like looking for this one restaurant near the Olympic Complex for dinner, you've got absolutely no bearings, even near tourist centers, and the panic and frustration of being lost in a large foreign city starts to set in. Luckily, I did find the restaurant, which was great because it was my first great meal in China and really improved my mood. It was a Uighur (Chinese muslims from western China) restaurant, and as anyone familiar with our Bukharian excursions can tell you, central asian food just can't be beat. I had some curried lamb and naan bread that just hit the spot. What's more, the staff was super nice (partly because I was one of the few people there), and changed my teacup a couple of times because they saw I was having trouble drinking out of it, and offered me a knife and fork. It helped to build my confidence because I was able to communicate pretty effectively in Chinese. And all this for 40 odd yuan, which is just about six dollars! Awesome.
So, I'm in a better mood now. The isolation here can be bitter, and I wish I had a friend to travel with. Beijing is still not a very tourist friendly place. There's English everywhere, but it can be downright incomprehensible, even in big tourist spots! It's as if they had me writing Chinese translations of the signs in front of the White House. Sometimes it really hits me that I'm all alone here, and can very easily get lost or messed with and then I'd be SOL. Also, to my surprise, the crush of people is really getting to me. It's weird, because I'm used to lot of people, of course. But Beijing really is ren shan ren hai, as the Chinese say: people from the mountains to the sea, meaning that it's just jam packed with people. Also, New York is more diverse, so you never really feel isolated. Beijing is pretty much entirely Chinese and so it feels more monolithic. Also, the smog is unreal, the spitting is so prevalent it seems like a public disease, and the Chinese have no great desire to learn how lines work, and prefer to just crowd the ticket booth. They like to crowd everything, actually; they're big on crowds. Also, a small pet peeve: I cannot count on two hands the times I saw Chinese tourists touch things that they were explicitly instructed not to touch and take pictures of things where pictures were explicitly forbidden. If they're not going to learn to value their patrimony, nobody else is; but hey, otoh, China isn't exactly running low on old stuff.
So that's Beijing so far, tough, but mostly good. Tomorrow I'll do the Temple of Heaven, and Factory 789/CCTV building and maybe some other odds and ends. See ya later.
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