What I like about you (from the other side)

Only one day left until I leave Beijing, and already the apartment is getting echoey. I’ve given away a bunch of stuff, and packed other things. The movers came yesterday and took away many boxes – I’m really glad I didn’t have to do it all myself.

Before I left Seattle, I made a list of things I thought I would miss and not miss about the city, so now it’s time for the same list about Beijing.

Things I will miss about Beijing

• My friends.
• The food, both in quality and price. And it’s cool you can have roast duck without planning ahead.
• The ancient culture that is never far away.
• Ease of transportation. Between my bicycle, the subway, and buses, getting around is generally quite convenient, even with the ridiculous traffic.
• The chance to practice speaking Chinese with native speakers every day.
• How amazing it can look after a good rain.
• The sense of freedom you have when you don’t have to worry about crime.
• How cheap things are if you’re looking for cheap things.
• Having someone come clean the apartment twice a week.
• The challenge of trying to think of ways to explain English words and expressions.
• The vibrant music scene and all the great bands here, plus the ones I haven’t discovered yet.

Things I will not miss about Beijing

• The quality of the air, and I’m not just talking about the odd odors that sneak in occasionally when the breeze changes direction.
• The bone-chilling winter temperatures.
• The energy-sapping summer temperatures.
• The Great Fire Wall.
• The ridiculous traffic.
• Office politics.
• The hideous desk my landlord provided for my computer.
• The hassle it can often be to deal with seemingly simple things like electricity, mobile phones and internet.
• Having to register with the local police station so they know where I am.
• The feelings I have on the occasions when I do think about politics.
• Never really understanding what’s going on, even when I think I do. Not that this is necessarily different from the situation in the US...

In a very unusual bit of luck, I have never really experienced one of the famous Beijing spring sandstorms, so that didn’t make either list.

Final note

I created this blog when I found out I was coming to China, and now that I’m leaving, I’m not sure what I want to do. In the interest of keeping it to its topic (not that I’ve stuck to it strictly so far!), I don’t really want to continue writing about my life as it involves things other than China. However, I still have lots of China experiences and pictures I haven’t shared, so there’s material for many posts waiting for me to have the time to take care of it.

Chinese time machine #5

Moving back even further – though not a lot – we come to 15 February 2009. It was clear and very cold in Beijing, but I chose to venture out to Daguanyuan (大观园), which I’m not even really sure how to translate. The English maps give it as Grand View Garden, which will apparently do.

One thing about this place that is unique among all the places I’ve visited in China is that it is not old, and not only is it not old, but it was built as a set for a TV series. It’s hard to explain the cultural importance of the book called 红楼梦 (Hong Lou Meng, usually translated Dream of the Red Chamber) to the Chinese. It is one of the Four Great Novels, and you probably would be hard pressed to find a single Chinese person not familiar with it on some level. In the 1980s, China Central Television produced a series based on the book, and instead of filming it on soundstages, they built an entire compound designed to match every description found in the book of the place where the main family lives. It’s the story of a prominent family in decline, so grandeur is called for.

Here’s the front entrance.
Yeah, it was February, so prepare yourself for lots of pictures with bare trees.

At Ұ55 (US$9), the ticket is a bit on the expensive side compared to a lot of Beijing sights.

There are many buildings arrayed around various water/ice features.
Helpful signs tell you what parts of the book involve the buildings, which character lived there and so on.
As you can see, they did a very good job of imitating the style of construction you see at the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and so on.

Inside some of the buildings are figures dressed as the characters.
Most of the major characters in the story are women.
This compound within a compound is the nunnery where Miaoyu retired to a Buddhist life.

Here’s a view across the largest lake.
I’ve never before seen a sign that said “Keep off the lake” – though of course while it’s frozen solid, the meaning is correct. The Chinese is a little more verbose, and says that the ice is not safe, so please don’t go on the lake. I presume they change the sign once it’s not frozen.

Since the family in the story was highly placed in society, they had some special buildings made just for occasions when the emperor would visit.
Any resemblance to the Forbidden City is no coincidence.

Inside one building is a bunch of Red Chamber memorabilia.
These are photos of actors who have played the various parts in various productions of the story, not just the 1980s series that was filmed here.
And this kind of tree...
...is called a “Dragon Claw Tree.”

Some visitors are not impressed by elaborate buildings.
And for a price...
...you can dress in period costume and have your picture taken.

As I promised, you’ve seen lots of pictures of bare trees. It seems that such a situation is intolerable.
So the staff has provided some trees with a little help.

I guess there’s a new version of Red Chamber currently in production, and they had some promotional posters of the new cast.
I’m hoping that for the actual filming, they will have more authentic hairstyles.

There you go. I think about when I’ve visited Universal Studios, and it’s kind of hard to imagine sets like this ever being built for an American production.

Daguanyuan is in the Xuanwu (宣武) District of Beijing, not a long taxi ride from Changchunjie Station (长椿街站) on subway line 2. It is certainly not on the short list of Beijing places you must see unless you are a Chinese literature buff or maybe interested in TV production, but it was interesting, and I’ve already seen the things on the short list. There is also an underground theater at Daguanyuan where they show a computer animated 3D short feature that involves a dream in the Red Chamber. A character falls asleep and drifts through various scenes somewhat resembling events in the book. Or so I’m told – I haven’t read the book yet.

Chinese time machine #4

Set the Wayback Machine for 1 March 2009. In Beijing it was one of the first relatively nice days of the year, weatherwise. As I often do on such weekend days, I picked one of the places around town that I haven’t seen yet and went to find out what’s there.

This time it was 恭王府 (Gongwangfu, usually listed as Prince Gong’s Mansion on the English maps). It’s near the central lakes area of Qianhai and Houhai, off in the hutongs.
Unlike many buildings from Imperial times, it has a humble entrance.

It being a rather nice day, lots of people were outside, and many of them also chose this place to visit.
It has the usual assortment of buildings and courtyards fit for royalty.

There are many items on display from the old days.

I almost hate to waste storage space with such a silly picture...
...but I kind of liked the way they tried to disguise the fire hydrant as a potted (plastic) shrubbery.

The best part of the compound is in the back.
There’s a large garden with several little lakes.

This little one...
...is made in the shape of a bat, rather like the traditional Batman symbol. The image of a bat decorates almost every spot at Gongwangfu that can be decorated. That’s because the word for bat (蝠) and the word for good fortune (福) are pronounced exactly alike, fu (with a rising tone). So bats are considered very lucky in China, but I’d have to say it seems a little strange to see them everywhere. Seems kind of like Dracula’s castle.

Here’s one of the Matching Hat Brigades.
It’s a big tour group. They can often be seen following around a guide with a megaphone and a flag. Do you suppose an American tour group would be willing to wear matching hats?

Here is one of the most popular parts of Gongwangfu:
Inside this artificial hill is an artificial cave, and carved on the wall is a big 福 done in the calligraphy of Emperor Qianlong (I think it was Qianlong – it usually is). People line up to pass single file through the cave.

This pavillion at the very back...
...is decorated with a bamboo theme.
There you are. Prince Gong’s Mansion. I’ve skipped over a lot of the history you can learn there, partly because it was a couple months ago and I’ve forgotten it already. They had lots of old photographs of European ambassadors visiting officials and royals in this place during one of the periods where foreigners were welcomed.

No reservations, part 6

Back to part 5.

2008-10-09

The final installment of my Shanxi trip.

The first thing we did when we arrived at Datong was hurry to the ticket window to see what was available to get us back to Beijing. We managed to reserve seats on the 11pm train that night, giving us one full day to see the city’s sights. When we left the station, we were assaulted by a bunch of men who had scruffy old taxis, offering to take us to the famous places for exorbitant prices. We listened to them for a while, then went into a noodle shop for breakfast and to use the restroom to clean up. Two of the drivers hung around outside the whole time, watching us through the window.

When we left, we brushed past them and asked a local woman what city bus to take to the town’s bus station. At the bus station we found that there was one leaving for Xuankong Si, known in English as the Hanging Temple (literally the Chinese means Hanging from the Sky Temple), which is around 70km away. At least I thought that’s where it was taking us. After leaving the bus station, it went to another place in town where a whole lot of other people got aboard, to the point where they were sitting on little stools in the aisle.
Yeah, it was raining.

We got to a little village an hour later, and the bus pulled over to let us off, where a guy in a little car was waiting for us. The bus took off one direction, and we headed into the mountains.
Once we got to the place where we could see the temple, the driver pulled over.
I thought he was just letting me take a picture, but he pulled out a brochure for Hengshan, another famous site a bit further up the road, which he said was much better. He would take us there instead of, or in addition to the Hanging Temple, for a price. There was much arguing in Chinese. When I was asked for my opinion I said I didn’t think we had time for anything else since we only had one day. Eventually the driver gave up on that and agreed to wait for us while we saw Xuankong Si then drive us back to town. At least I thought that was the deal.
I think the word “precarious” was invented for this place.

The ticket costs ¥60 per person, for which you get some lovely misspelled English.
There are lots of stairs to climb, and I had to think that maintenance here must be a nightmare. The day will probably come when visitors will no longer be allowed to enter the temples, as the wooden supports get older and older.
Given their location, I suppose it’s not surprising that the individual temples are tiny.
The stairways are very narrow and steep, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to a person with a fear of heights.
When we were done, we found our driver hanging around waiting, and got in the car. He drove us back down to the village, and then pulled over and turned off the engine. He said we had to wait a minute.
There must have been some sort of miscommunication. He kept checking his phone for a text message, and we sat there with rain tapping on the roof for ten or fifteen minutes before he made a call. Then he started up the car and we hurried off to a little bus station. He let us out, we gave him the money, and we got onto a bus for the ride back into Datong.

As we went along, the weather cleared and we got a chance to see some of the countryside.
The houses have an interesting style here. Aside from the terracing on the hillsides, the landscape reminds me a lot of Eastern Washington.
Once, we were all startled by the bus driver slamming on the brakes.
There was a big truck passing a horse drawn cart.

Here’s another moment on the trip.
That’s one of those three-wheeled trucks loaded down with onions. It’s being passed by a car while another truck comes on. This happens all the time, and the oncoming truck will just drive on the shoulder for a bit.

We eventually got back into Datong, and the bus driver told us where to wait for a city bus that would take us to the Yungang Grottoes, which are not so far outside of town. We stopped at a little noodle place for an inexpensive but pretty tasty lunch, then caught a bus.
Yungang means Cloud Ridge, but luckily for us the afternoon was pretty nice, if not especially warm. It is another World Heritage site. Most of the carvings were done between 460 and 525 CE, which makes them about the oldest things I’ve seen in China, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter (discounting dinosaurs and such). Only some parts of the Roman Baths in Bath, England are older.

Entry is ¥60 per person.
There are 45 numbered caves, with the entrance at Cave 6.
A few of the bigger caves right near the entrance still have the wooden structures framing them. These structures date from 1621.
The carvings inside range from elaborate and colorful to weathered beyond recognition. This is inside Cave 6, which is too big to capture without a large industrial strength flash on your camera.
The caves range from really huge to tiny niches. I think they were mostly natural features that were just taken advantage of by the sculptors. Most of them at one time also had wooden structures outside to protect them, long since victims of rot or fire.
Here’s one that’s interesting for what’s not there.
One of the holes – I think the second row on the right side – is missing its Buddha, but it didn’t weather away or fall down in an earthquake. It’s been removed and now sits in a museum in New York. That’s according to a bit of a guide talk that was translated for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s one in the British Museum in London too.

Here’s one that hasn’t been carted away, the giant of Cave 20.
You can’t really see it from this distance, but the pupils of his eyes are large round black stones that have been set into the sandstone.

Many of the open areas of rock are carved with little tiny niches, each with its own tiny Buddha.
It’s areas like this that lead to the published total of more than 51,000 Buddhas carved here.

Here’s one that’s rather severely weathered, leaving it with a sort of zombie look to it.
After making the trek down to see Caves 1-4 at the other end, we decided to return by an alternate route after a little rest by a pond.
It was getting near to sunset, and we’d seen all the caves, so we took the bus into town. We had dinner at an interesting little hole in the wall not far from the train station. It was small but full of people, so we figured the food must be good. That turned out to be true. I really got a lot of stares from the patrons, especially a group of five older men sitting at a table with several empty baijiu bottles. They kept calling out “Hello!” to me. Someone asked if I was Russian. The one waitress was so busy trying to service all six tables at the same time that it took quite a while to get food ordered, and then we had to ask repeatedly for plates, glasses and so on. Gradually the old guys trickled out the door until only one was left. When she tried to present him with the bill, he said one of the other guys was supposed to pay. They discussed it for a while, then he just got up and staggered out the door. The waitress and one of the cooks followed him, trying to get money. I don’t think they ever did, but I also think the guys are from the neighborhood, so maybe they’ll eventually pay, at least if they ever want to eat there again. We had quite a long wait until our train, so we took our time, and talked for a while.

Back at the train station later, it was a repeat of our previous routine. We waited at the front of the line in a big waiting room full of people with big bundles, and when the time came, rushed to find the conductor. We had no luck at all on this trip tryingto get beds, but at least we had seats reserved. So we spent the night trying to get comfortable, surrounded by people sprawled in every available spot of floor space. Our seats were close to each other, but not together, so we couldn’t even talk to each other. One time when I left my seat, I returned to find a guy sitting in it seemingly asleep. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Zhe shi wode.” That’s mine. He moved along without any complaint. It was cold onboard (unheated like all the other trains), so I kept my coat and stocking cap on all night, sleeping in short spells with futile changes of position in between.

It was 5:15am when we reached Beijing. I was dead tired and badly in need of a shower. Of the five nights away from home, only two were spent on solid ground in a bed, and only one of the other three involved a bed at all. If I’d known it would be like that, I wouldn’t have packed all those extra clothes.

Anyway, it was certainly an adventure, and gave me a taste of what it’s like to travel the way ordinary Chinese people do. I didn’t keep a close tab on my budget, but I’m certain my total was under US$200 for the whole thing, transportation, lodging (hah!), souvenirs and incidentals. But don’t expect me to write the next edition of China on $20 a Day. I’ve been more detailed about this trip than previous ones because I want to give readers a sense of how different it is to get around here once you get outside the metropolitan areas. And if anyone has any ideas on how to improve the train system, especially the ticket purchasing process, please do something about it!

Ride the Black Dragon

Everyone told me that going to Lijiang for three days was foolish. It’s too little time, and there are so many things to see. But three days was all we had, and I figured three days was better than none. If we liked it we could go back some time for a longer stay. It’s certainly on the Should Revisit List.

However, next time I go there will not be at the end of August. It’s the rainy season, and as you saw in the previous post, rain it did. But as I said before, it was the only time we had, so we made the best of it with umbrellas and raincoats. At least it wasn’t too cold.

One of the places in Lijiang that was on my list was Yulongxueshan, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. From pictures I’ve seen, this beautiful peak rises above Lijiang in a most picturesque way, but due to the weather we never got so much as a glimpse of it. Hutiao Xia, Tiger Leaping Gorge, will also have to wait for another time.

Next on the list was Heilongtan, or Black Dragon Pool. I asked at the hotel, and they said it was only about a fifteen minute walk, so we set out under grey skies on Sunday morning.
The entrance to the park is quite lovely. At first we thought there was no one at the ticket booth, then I saw a couple of ladies having their breakfast inside. At ¥80 per person the fee is quite steep compared to Beijing attractions – you could almost see both the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace for that amount. We probably could have walked in without them noticing us if I hadn’t gone up to the window. Ah, well, our contribution to the park’s upkeep fund.

Not far inside is the Green Bridge, which spans a waterfall.
Then you get to the Pool itself.
According to the signs inside the park, the Naxi people who live in the area have a very strong attachment to water, with much of their religion focusing on rivers, streams, and lakes, so this spot was quite important to them. In addition to the big temples, we saw a few little impromptu shrines with incense burning where creeks flowed into the pool.
Instead of dragons or lions like you see in Beijing, the roofs here are often decorated with fish.
It often pays to look up.
For a while at least, the rain held off.
Where there is water, there are bridges.Speaking of more formal temples, there is this one.
Its construction had something to do with an ancient king named Mu who ruled in the area. Today, the inside has a memorial to a more recent leader who died only a few years ago.
I like the way they’ve given the statue a rain poncho. Or maybe they just like things colorful.

One last picture before we move on, since the place is so darn photogenic, even when the weather is crummy.
After walking all the way around the lake, we made our way back to Old Town and ended up back at the Rembrandt Café for more Naxi potatoes, maoniu chuanr, and Yunnan coffee to recharge our batteries before hitting the shops in earnest.

I think I’ll call this a complete post, neatly covering a single topic, and finish up our all-too-brief Lijiang trip in the next one.

Pictures by D & I.