... in China

Adventures of the Anonymous Two in China (Beijing and Xi'an)

The flight was at 1.30 from Heathrow, so we could get up at a perfectly reasonable time in the morning. We collected the Mother who told us that she hadn’t slept all night as she had been so excited. She had also packed a picnic for the journey.

The whole day would be spent travelling. I think Boyfriend was perhaps more tired than he at first seemed when he managed to get on the wrong side of the road on the way to the Pink Elephant car park. With slow realisation, and no panic at all, he drove over the central curb to the correct side of the road, as we all sat in the car – confused, giggling and wondering what on earth had happened.

Despite the picnic, we had coffee and paninis at a café in Heathrow before going to the departure lounge

We were delayed leaving Heathrow – something to do with luggage being on the plane, but the owner not - and I was concerned about whether this would mean we would have a problem making the connecting flight in Frankfurt. Eventually, a man hurried onto the plane to the glare of the all the delayed passengers.

On landing at Frankfurt we hurried along to the departure gate for the long haul flight to Beijing.

At the entrance to the departure lounge our passports, visas and tickets were thoroughly examined before we were let in. Most of the waiting passengers were of Chinese origin. And we had plenty of time to wait – so we tucked into the now well-travelled picnic.

The plane to Beijing was a jumbo jet. Our seats were in the central block. The flight left at 4.30pm Frankfurt time and was due to land in Beijing 9.30am Saturday (local time). We would be on the plane for 10 hours. In other words, whatever sleep we could get during the flight was to be our sleep for the night.

For the first few hours we read. Then we were served something resembling dinner, and any alcohol we desired. Hot flannels were distributed, which were used for the only washing we did. This was followed by a couple of films – The Italian Job (the new one) and Hulk. Unfortunately I slept through The Italian Job – which was apparently quite good, and woke up for the latter part of Hulk – which was complete and utter rubbish.

The TV screens on the plane also regularly showed a world map with our intended route, and progress along it, as well as information such as altitude (36000 ft), outside temperature (around -65ºC), distance to go, ground speed (an average of 550 mph) and expected time of landing.

There was a German air hostess in one of the aisles who was incredibly entertaining – determined to serve stiff drinks to anyone wanting alcohol, and providing Boyfriend with one of the strongest G&T’s ever known, and later, with a huge Baileys.

We had left Frankfurt in the dark, but due the direction we were travelling and time zones crossed, we were only in darkness for a few hours. I couldn’t believe we were going to China. Despite being in a plane full of sleeping Chinamen, who later woke and gabbled away in Chinese.

After only a few hours of night time, and even fewer hours of sleep, the cabin lights were turned on, and the air hostesses started bustling around preparing breakfast – some parts of which we never did satisfactorily identify.

Before landing we were given health declaration forms to complete – obviously part of China’s SARS control.

Tired and stiff eventually we came in to land at Beijing.

Having passed through health control – which more or less consisted of handing in the health declaration forms, and joined the queue for passport control. There were several booths – some labelled Chinese Nationals, some in Chinese writing only, and we therefore had no idea who they were for. We lined up behind one titled Foreigners.

We were there for ages. Eventually we reached the head of the queue – our passports and visas were scrutinised, computers checked, notes made and finally the passport was stamped and we were in.

We collected our baggage – the advantage of being so long in the passport queue was that we didn’t have to wait for our luggage. It was waiting for us.

Making our way out to the main concourse of the airport we managed, among the throng and noise of people, to find Lily – our guide for the next 2 days. She greeted us warmly, and directed us to the waiting minibus outside.

The air outside was cold. A fresh sort of cold, and we were glad of our coats. We drove to our hotel. A toll motorway links the city with the airport. Beijing (which means Northern Capital) is a huge city consisting of a multitude of huge tower blocks – both residential and office buildings. The city was clouded by smog or fog or a combination of both. We asked Lily about pollution from the vast number of vehicles and she said that it was much improved now further to changes made by the Government. She spoke of the Government in glowing terms. The pollution was horrendous. And this was an improvement?  I have since found out that the city is one of the most polluted in the world. In the West we would still harshly criticise a Government that allowed a capital city to be constantly clouded with smog to such an extent. It was the first instance I had as yet come across of the communist system – the unquestioning support of and belief in their governing body.

Beijing has 6 ring roads, the inner one being just part of the grid around the Forbidden City rather than a road. With a population of 16 million and an area of 290 square miles it is an enormous city. Initially the city seems a shambles; bit is in fact a place of very orderly design, as shown my any map of the city which makes it look like a huge grid. The Forbidden City lies in the centre. This is ringed by the criss cross alleys of the hutongs, with larger, long, straight boulevards running through these. Beyond this is another outer ring of slightly more chaotic hutongs. In dynastic times the imperial family resided in the Forbidden City, officials lived in the first ring of hutongs and the social status of residents gradually decreased the further away they were from this inner area. This strict order of status no longer seems to apply. Instead, like many cities worldwide, there are a number of districts within the city – some wealthier than others.

There is also an Underground service, which Lily spoke of proudly. It consists of one line running east-west, and a circle line around the centre of the city. It somehow didn’t seem enough for a city of such magnitude.

We drove past high-rise flats that looked shabby. Lily explained to us that this was one of the wealthy areas and many people aspire to living in these flats. Between the tower blocks we drove past I could see a starkly contrasting primitiveness – shabby alleyways and tumbledown shacks where the less fortunate lived. Compared with that, I suppose the flats did seem noting short of luxurious. It all sat side by side, which highlighted the differences between rich and poor all the more. The differences between east and new found western lifestyles.

I was disappointed to see Pizza Hut and McDonald’s. It felt as though we were contributing the wrong things to their lives and culture.

The roads were huge, and bulged with traffic. Some of them had lane markings indicted, but this didn’t seem to relate in any way to whereabouts vehicles actually positioned themselves. Amongst this chaos, a multitude of cyclists diced with death, weaving their way through the traffic to unknown destinations. We passed a few accidents. No attempt was made by the authorities to close down the affected lane, or even cone off the area. The traffic just pounded on, trying to avoid the battered cars strewn across the lanes as best it could. Meanwhile the cars on the opposite carriageway had literally come to a standstill as rubber necking took on a whole new meaning – occupants having got out of their cars to peer at the damage.

To make things more interesting, in China there are no seatbelt laws. I wondered how many people died in road traffic accidents each year, but doubted whether the Chinese authorities bothered themselves with keeping such records.

We arrived at out hotel – large, clean rooms and English speaking staff.

We more or less dumped the suitcases, grabbed a camera and went back down to the lobby to meet Lily.

Our first destination was Tiananmen Square. On the way however, we passed a traditional Chinese pharmacy and decided to venture inside. The ground floor consisted of glass cases of remedies – which included a dried snake. We were led upstairs to a small room. Having been served with some Jasmine tea one of the pharmacists explained to us the uses of Chinese medicine, explaining that it was used to complement Western medicines. He also talked about the Chinese doctors, and how they were able to diagnose patients without the use of tests and machines, and their methods could actually detect physiological abnormalities before they presented to an extent that would be detected by Western technology.

Diagnosis is done by asking questions, looking at skin, eyes and tongue and taking a pulse. In classical Chinese medicine there are six pulses at each wrist. These pulses occupy three positions at each wrist over the radial artery, and each position has a deep and superficial pulse. Each of these pulses represents a different organ and in this way all twelve of the zang fu organs (visible internal organs) are represented by a wrist pulse. The character of the pulse indicates the state of health of each organ and also the balance between each organ.

We all decided to let the doctor examine us. Boyfriend went first. Within a few minutes he had diagnosed Boyfriend’s high blood pressure and arthritis and warned of possible future heart problems. This was substantiated further by a cholesterol level test on his return to England showing high blood triglyceride levels, which can be associated with thickening of the arteries. Equally rapidly he diagnosed my low blood pressure – it was referred to by the translator as not having enough blood.

I was stunned. The wizened Chinese doctor had only held our wrists – both wrists at the same time, looked at our tongues and asked a few questions. Admittedly it was only minor conditions that he was identifying, but it was more than any Western GP could have done.

Mother was also diagnosed with not enough blood, as well as potential osteoporosis. The osteoporosis was the only surprise – but that could have been an instance of the Chinese method identifying changes that Western medicine would as yet be unable to detect.

We were all prescribed 3 months of treatment. Due to the cost, Boyfriend and I opted for 2 months. I was reliably informed that my pills Dong Chong Xia Cao were made in Tibet, from ingredients that grew at 3500ft. They were large capsules filled with what looked like fine brown dust – very possibly from Tibet.

Suitably dosed up with medicine, we left the pharmacy and crossed the road to Tiananmen Square. Road crossing in China is a potentially terrifying experience. Pedestrians do not have right of way – even on a zebra crossing. The road we were crossing was about 6 lanes wide, and I was little unsure what direction the traffic would be coming from at any particular lane. I was also conscious of the fact that – based on our journey from the airport – vehicles wouldn’t necessarily be within the lane line markings. Added to this were cyclists, who again did not need to give way to pedestrians. The road was therefore crossed lane by lane, carefully, and with considerable use of everything that I could remember about the Green Cross Code. During one of our road crossing experiences we had a bus behind us and a bus in front of us while we hovered precariously on the white line between them. It was not for the faint hearted.

There were guards standing on the Tiananmen Square side of the road crossing. I am unsure of their function – whether it was to ensure the safety of pedestrians, or merely as part of the many guards on duty in the square. Guards certainly dotted the whole square, standing to attention in pairs – side by side, looking in opposite directions. I was unsure what they were guarding against. The great Chinese activity of flobbing is banned in the square, as is littering – both incur a fine - but I doubted that they needed so many guards present to monitor this.

The Square is enormous, and surrounded on all sides by railings. Formed as a side effect of clearing imperial offices that previously lined the processional way to the Forbidden City, it was created in its present form by Chairman Mao and his mausoleum dominates the centre of the square. Lily informed us that the square could accommodate 1,000,000 people, based on the fact that there are this number of paving stones, and assuming one person per stone.

There is an obelisk that commemorates the People’s Heroes, commemorating victims of the revolutionary struggle. Beyond this was the entrance to the Forbidden City. On the east side of the square is the Museum of Chinese History (which is regularly closed for refurbishment when history needs to be re-written according to the latest political environment). On the other side a huge column fronted, marble Government building commissioned by Mao – the Great Hall of the People. The whole effect was one of fascist demonstrativeness. A symbol of unseen power.

 

 

Other than its size, a vast desert of paving stones covering more than 40 hectares, Tiananmen Square is largely unremarkable. It is only made remarkable by its history. In 1989 after the square been occupied for seven weeks as a peaceful pro-democratic protest tanks rumbled through the streets, moving into the square from all directions, firing indiscriminately on unarmed protestors. Even as people left, armoured vehicles pursued them, and ran them down. In one incident 6 people were mown down, 5 died. The tank treads ran over the legs of the sixth and dragged him some way. Both of his legs were subsequently amputated, but he survived – and was ordered to keep quite about the fact a tank had crushed students. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed and it is unlikely a precise number will ever be known. Many relatives of the ‘disappeared’ have been jailed simply for putting up posters, making speeches or writing pamphlets, trying to find their relatives. Their sentences range from 10 years to life.

The railings now around the edge of the square provided no tank access. It was a foregone conclusion that none of the students who died here had their names on the People’s Heroes Monument. The incident was another demonstration of the contradictions within China – a democratic demonstration violently quashed by tanks and gunfire in a city that was undergoing capitalist-style reforms with shopping malls and foreign money.

The whole square was re-paved for the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. Perhaps tactlessly, this coincided with the 10^th anniversary of the massacre. I felt an unspoken awareness of what had gone on here; a part of the history that Lily was not referring to and it somehow seemed rude to ask.

 

It was here that I first noticed how immaculately tidy it was in China. No debris littered the streets. I saw occasional people, who had the appearance of beggars, sweeping the streets and there was a feeling of it being the people’s country and their pride in it meant they wanted to keep it clean for themselves and each other.

Tiananmen Square also had a few kite flyers. But these were incredible kites – glittering shapes at regular intervals along a piece of string so that once in the air it almost resembled a particularly ordered flock of birds.

We walked north through the square towards the Gugong, or Imperial Palace, known better by its unofficial title of the Forbidden City. Here the Ming and Quing dynasties insulated themselves from the masses and the City was off limits to most of the world for 500 years. Ordinary Chinese were forbidden from even approaching perimeter walls. The entrance to the Forbidden City – The Gate of Heavenly Peace – is hung with a huge portrait of Mao. Lily informed us that this was taken down and restored on a regular basis.

Whatever the Western view of communism and Mao in particular, here he appeared to be a loved and respected leader and I started to appreciate the intricate relationship of China with its politics. The people here emanate a tangible amount of pride and contentment.

In the West we are brought up to consider communism as wrong – a simple case of black and white, but the truth is actually far more involved than that. Much more grey. To remove communism from these people would destroy their existence, their whole way of life, and the foundations of their beliefs. It would not be the unquestionable improvement that we have been led to believe.

The Forbidden City is surrounded by a huge, man-made moat. The earth from this was used to build a large hill beyond the northern end of the City, topped by a pagoda from where the ordinary people could look over the whole length of the Forbidden City.

 

Five bridges cross this moat. The central one was for the Emperor, with the other four designated for his entourage according to their standing. Similarly there was the main gateway into the city – for the emperor, and smaller doorways either side for everyone else. The only time the emperor’s wife was allowed through the main doorway was on her wedding day.

 

All the doors in the Forbidden City are massive, several feet high and pimpled with large knobs – some brass, some wood – always in rows of 9 which the Chinese saw cosmologically as the most powerful odd number, representing both heaven and emperor.

Outside the entrance numerous sellers tried to sell us their wares. Mother bartered with one until she got two books for the price he wanted to sell one. They were very persistent. Simply saying no and walking away did not deter them. The sellers would chase after us, becoming more and more insistent, and often offering lower prices. The sight of Westerners, which seemed to be synonymous with money, often resulted in us being surrounded with sellers, half a dozen of them busying themselves with trying to get us to buy.

 

 

The Forbidden City is built along a north south axis, and is symmetrical. It consists of 3 great halls (Taihedian, Zhonghedian, Baohedian – each having a specific function) lined up one after the other, with huge courtyards in between, followed by the imperial living quarters, in all covering an area of 720,000 square metres with its 800 buildings and 9000 rooms. Although the earliest structures began with Kublai Khan during the Mongol dynasty, the buildings are essentially Ming and the layout dates to the 15^th century. The buildings standing mostly date to the 18^th century due to the frequent fires that used to occur in the city. In 1664 the Manchus stormed in and burned the palace to the ground, along with hundreds of rare books and paintings. In addition to this, the City has been extensively looted on two occasions during the 20^th century. It is therefore a miracle that anything survives at all.

 

 

The city is regularly restored by a permanent team, which takes 10 years to renovate the City by which time they need to start all over again. The buildings, which are all made from wood, are therefore colourful and well maintained.

 

The courtyards however are not kept in a similar state of repair, with many of the cobbles missing. All the halls and palaces are built on raised, rectangular, marble terraces, with marble steps on each side. In the centre of these steps were marble pavement ramps, intricately carved with clouds, mountains, sea and fish over which the emperor was carried in his sedan chair by the eunuchs.

 

These areas were fenced off and I was unsure whether it was still out of a respect for their overthrown dynasties, or simply to preserve the carvings. In imperial times, anyone who set foot on the carved areas would lose their life.

 

There was symbolism again in these carvings, the various symbols relating to longevity and such like for the ruling emperor. Many of the halls were decorated with brass dragons - the symbol of the emperor, and the phoenix which was the symbol of the empress.

Two enormous statues of lions – one male and one female, flanked the steps. The object under their paw can distinguish these – the male plays with a ball with the female plays with a baby. Again, there is symbolism in this. The lions being symbolic of imperial power, the ball symbolic of the emperor’s rule over the world and the baby symbolic of the emperors rule over people.

 

 

It seemed that nothing was done simply for the effect, for showing off, for being grand and demonstrating power and wealth. Everything had a deeper meaning.

Also dotted around were several immense incense burners, and you could imagine a time when the air was thick with their fragrance. There were also huge golden vats that used to be kept filled with water to put out fires. In demonstration of ancient civilisation ingenuity there was space beneath these to light fires to prevent the water freezing during winter.

 

 

The eaves of the roofs of all the buildings were decorated with animals, the number of animals symbolising the rank of that building. The most was 12. This was the hall in which the emperor had audiences, and signed documents. Now the halls were stark, and empty – with the exception of ornate thrones. The roofs were wooden and were decoratively painted, both inside and out.

 

 

I looked out over the courtyards below, and imagined them full of brightly coloured imperial soldiers. It felt strange to be standing there, where so many hundreds of years of history had been, and where until recently I would not have been able to be.

Lily frequently referred to the eunuchs who carried the emperor around as well as fulfilling servant roles and wondered whether imperial China had an unnaturally high number of eunuchs born. In fact, the eunuch population was achieved via surgery (referred to as the royal chop) rather than biology as a way of ensuring the authenticity of the emperor’s offspring. Not only that, but the removed organs were kept and carried around in bags held on their belts so that on death they could be buried as ‘whole’ men. As if castration was not already a high price to pay, the eunuchs had very low standing beyond the court - Confucianism held that disfiguration of the body impaired the soul, and eunuchs were buried in special graveyards. The people applying for the position of court eunuch were attempting to better their lives. Sadly, half of them died during the royal chop operation (which consisted of a knife and a special chair with a hole in the seat).

On either side of the large courtyards were buildings that served as storehouses – it has been said that a single meal for a Qing emperor could have fed several thousand of his impoverished peasants.

The imperial family lived at the northern end of the City. Here also were housed the emperor’s numerous concubines.

Qianqinggon, was the originally the imperial bedchamber. This is followed by Jiaotaidian and finally the Kunninggong where the emperor and empress traditionally spent their wedding night. The emperor had to spend the first three days of his marriage and first day of the Chinese New Year with his wife. One side of the palace consists of a large sacrificial room, with the wedding chamber to the other side. It is decorated entirely in red, and covered with decorative emblems symbolising fertility.

Although we did not see inside the buildings that constituted the imperial living quarters, the Forbidden City gave an impression of bleakness. It wasn’t warm or homely, and was perhaps too monotonous, too vast and too spread out to have the splendour of European palaces.

 

 

In its favour, what we were seeing was an empty city, which it would not have been when it was inhabited. Also, the authorities had not done what we are familiar with in the West in terms of dressing up the rooms the way they would have been in their hey day.

At the farthest end of the Forbidden City is the imperial garden. This is the only part of the City where there are trees. Within the City nothing can come before the emperor – not even trees, or the birds that these encourage.

The garden is very decorative, the paths made from coloured stones that have been arranged into patterns. Hidden amongst the trees are gazebos and statues. As it was winter there were no flowers, but a sign saying ‘Do not pick the flowers’ fronting an area of brown, barren soil implied that in warmer seasons there are flowers.

After a brief wander through the gardens we left the Forbidden City and returned to the minibus to drive to the Temple of Heaven. During these drives Boyfriend and I were now nodding off.

Mother had been asking Lily about herself and her family. She had been brought up on a farm in the country, living in a shantytown. She had a sister and brother but it is not uncommon for those living in small villages to have more than one child – partly because the Government is not necessarily aware of the fact and also because farmers are sometimes allowed additional children to assist with running the farm (and consequently feeding the people, in true communist spirit).

Lily had initially worked as a teacher before moving to Beijing and deciding to work as a travel guide. I was surprised that she had had the choice of where to live, and what job to do having thought that the communist system in China dictated these things, removing the option of choice. Clearly things had either changed, or the information I had been given by the Western media was at fault. It was an interesting thought. Mother on occasion told Lily things about China based on information she had read in England. Some of this information was unknown to Lily – which could be that the communist system had kept the people in the dark or that the information we were being given was in fact at fault. We have, after all, been lied to before in the West. We know that Government limits the details of certain stories or times the release of information to best suit them. Our democratic countries have always been critical of communism. It is therefore not entirely unlikely that we have been fed anti-communism propaganda and, as no Westerners could enter China until recently, we had no way of knowing if the information given to us was true. And perhaps never even questioned it in the first place.

In terms of propaganda therefore, the only difference between democracy and communism is that we really believe our system offers a greater freedom of unbiased information. Ultimately that makes us the fools.

Lily’s sister had married and had two children.  Rather than forcing abortions, it seems that the Government now exerts a fine for additional children. Presumably those who can’t afford the fine would have to abort. The fine is exorbitant and increased regularly.

The Temple of Heaven, completed in 1420 and conceived as a prime meeting point of heaven and earth, it was a place of worship for the emperors and was a forbidden area to other residents. It consists of a square walled area containing the round altar and long pathway to a circular temple area. Again this is part of the endless symbolism – square representing earth and round representing heaven with a distance between them. As the emperor was the son of heaven, and therefore the intermediary between earth and heave, the temple was used for important ceremony of the imperial court calendar.

The main pathway leads to the round altar consisting of three marble tiers – representing man, earth and at the summit, heaven. The tiers are composed in various multiples of 9. The tope terrace is bare – with the exception of hoards of tourists – a stone marking the centre, which was believed to be the very centre of the earth.

The linking pathway includes three marbled paths – a large central one and two smaller ones on either side. The central one is for the gods; the right hand smaller path is for the emperor and the left one for his courtiers. The pathway imperceptibly rises as it goes towards the temple ending up a whole metre higher than at its start, again a symbolic gesture of heaven being higher than earth.

An ornate gateway indicates the end of the path and entrance to the temple. The door through this had a large block running the length of the doorway at ground level, like a huge wooden draught excluder – as in fact had all the doors we had seen in the Forbidden City. Lily explained to us that this was to keep out evil spirits, which apparently can otherwise sneak in under your doors.

The temple is within a large walled area, circular. Apparently the walls have the similar effect to the Whispering Gallery in St Pauls, but here they are called echo walls. It was impossible to test due to barriers several feet back preventing access. Despite this, some people were leaning over the barriers and shouting, hoping this would have the same effect.

There was a small building on either side in which were kept the tablets used for prayer to the gods. The pathway continues straight ahead to the temple. The last three stones of the path are considerably larger, and apparently if you clap you hands on these stones you will hear one, two or three echoes depending on which stone you are on. Several dozen Chinese were testing the theory of this although the ensuing clapping noise almost certainly drowned out any echoes bouncing back.

The principle temple building, Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, is raised, and steps lead up to it. Made entirely of wood without the aid of a single nail, the circular structure rises from another three-tiered marble terrace, to be topped by three blue tiled roofs. 4 compass point pillars support the vault (in representation of the seasons), enclosed in turn by 12 outer pillars (for the months of the year and hours of the day). Inside it is small and dark, columned and decorative. The tablets are now kept in here. On the ceiling is a stone whose natural markings apparently show the form of a phoenix. It was used in the building because of this. There was an enlarged photo of this stone by the temple entrance. Mother thought she could make out a chicken but Boyfriend and I could see nothing at all in the pattern.

 

The existing building is in fact a faithful replica of the Ming original, which was destroyed by lightening in 1889.

We left the temple by the east gate, which led to covered walkways through gardens. At regular intervals in these walkways musicians played. Popular songs by all accounts as throngs of Chinese gathered to sing along. So many that they bulged out of the walkway and spilled onto the paths and grass outside. As did we, in order to get past them. It was a bizarre situation. I was unclear whether people came along deliberately to have a singsong or if they just happened to be out walking, and felt like joining in. The impression was certainly one of a spontaneous joining in, taking part in simple pleasures. It was a safe, friendly atmosphere and a real feeling of ‘the people’. I have never before seen anything like it.

We re-joined the minibus and drove to the hutongs north of the Forbidden City. The hutongs are alleyways that are 9 foot wide. As previously mentioned, these ones, being just beyond the Forbidden City, used to house officials and are more orderly than those farther out.

Due to the narrowness of these streets, the best way to see them and get a feel for them – other than walking – is by rickshaw. As Boyfriend and I clambered into the seat I wondered how the tiny Chinese cyclist would cope. Rickshaws are rickety and on occasion when the cyclist needed to go to the very edge of the alley, to let cars or other rickshaws past, I did wonder whether the gutter and uneven camber would turn us over. I was also stunned by the speed at which the cyclist went – although this did mean large amounts of cold air rushing over us, the blanket spread over our knees barely keeping the winter chill out.

 

We stopped in one street to look at the properties. The buildings were all painted grey – presumably not out of choice. Long walls of grey, in which were occasional doorways. Within these doors were tiny alleys or courtyards that led to the property itself. However, the doorway indicated the status of the resident. For example, a wooden doorstop signified a lower income to that of house with a metal doorstop. Also the carvings above the door were symbolic and used as an indication of wealth or job held. The number of steps leading up to the door also served to show your status. Finally there were posts jutting out of the wood above the doorway, the most you could have was four. This again indicated your wealth and status. Marriages could only take place between families of similar standing.

The properties here do not have lavatories and instead share a central convenience. Waking up in the middle of a freezing winter’s night to attend to a call of nature meant a whole different thing here.

Working people lived here. We were often passed by bicycles with large flat areas on the back, piled high with fruit, vegetables, cardboard, wood – all manner of things. Within the doorways we looked through there were always bicycles.

We travelled a little further on and stopped at one of the larger properties. We went through the gate into a reasonably sized courtyard, surrounded by little houses, one of which we went inside.

Despite the flimsy door, which can’t have provided much protection from the cold, it was wonderfully warm inside and smelled of home cooked food. There was no hallway as such, the door led straight into a large tile floored area, which seemed to be the living space. We were invited to sit down at the larger table by one of the walls. Two women produced steaming cups of tea within seconds – clear, lightly flavoured Chinese tea – before returning to their seats in silence. It was a four-bedroom house and all seven members of the family lived here. The four bedrooms led off from the central living space, most of them not even having a door. The kitchen was at the farthest end – tiny and obviously recently used, but compact, clean and organised. There was also an aquarium filled with fish – not because they were necessarily wanted as pets, but because fish represented prosperity. There was clutter to an extent, but with so many people in such a small space tidiness was essential. They had few possessions, but what they did have was nice, and proudly displayed.

The guide told us we were welcome to take photos, but it seemed rude. One of the men of the family returned home, and joined the ladies, sitting in silence at the end of room. Our teacups were re-filled as soon as we had emptied them.

The house was in silence, none of the TV’s, music and computers of the West. This was replaced with a quiet simplicity and contentment. I wondered whether they were really happy or just realised that it was futile to try and change their existence.

We left the family to their quiet evening. It was now dark outside and rickshaws took us on a ride along the river, either side of which bars and restaurants were decorated with lights and red lanterns. These were the only lights there being no streetlights. The hutongs were unlit as well, and all the alleys were now plunged into a darkness that the heavily street lit western world has forgotten exists. It was beautiful.

The minibus took us back to the hotel, and Lily directed us to a restaurant for dinner. Chinese mealtimes are quite different to ours and you would be hard pushed to find anywhere service food much after 9pm. However, it was only 7pm and the restaurant was filled with diners – Chinese diners. It was nice to be surrounded by local people.

We were sat at a table and a pot of tea immediately appeared – which was kept full for the whole of the meal (apparently it aids digestion). Having been fed so much on the flight over we had not bothered with lunch so by now we were quite hungry. Fortunately the menu was in Chinese and English, so we were able to order food with a reasonable idea of what might actually appear. In China all the food is put in the middle for everyone to share – there isn’t the Western approach of having a dish each.

The food appeared in a completely random order, and sometimes with a few minutes between one dish being and the next being brought out. I wasn’t sure if this was related to the order in which the food would normally be eaten, or if dishes were simply brought out as and when ready – not conforming to the Western system of trying to ensure the whole meal was ready at the same time.

Among other things we ordered special fried rice, fried noodles, spicy beef in pancakes, rabbit, mushrooms and aubergines. The special fried rice was delicious – filled with prawns and finely chopped vegetables. The spicy beef was also delicious, but I never properly mastered eating pancakes with noodles. The rabbit was served in tin foil. Boyfriend opened the parcel, which was full to the brim with lumps of rabbit meat and red chillies. I accidentally ate one, a small one. I won’t repeat the mistake. The rabbit itself must have come to a violent end, each lump of meat being filled with tiny bones as though the animal was bludgeoned to death and every bone in its body broken into a thousand pieces.

The mushrooms were beautiful shapes, but completely tasteless.

All in all, however, the food was delicious, although we had ordered far too much. China tends not to do puddings. And, rather curiously, they have soup at the end of the meal. We didn’t – not at this time knowing and also being far too full.

We walked back to the hotel, past the fruit seller on the street, through the subway where beggars literally threw themselves at your feet requesting money and, after having been up for 30 hours, descended into a much needed sleep.

We were due to meet Lily at 8.30 Sunday morning, so were up early in order to breakfast. Chinese breakfast consists of rice, noodles and various deep fried things. There was also full English breakfast and continental. Boyfriend and I had all three.

We met Lily and the minibus, and drove north out of Beijing towards the Great Wall. Just outside the City was a bronze statue of a man on a horse. Lily informed us that this was a monument to the hero of the Peasants Revolt. In a country where any sort of demonstration or revolt is harshly suppressed, I found it strange that the Peasant’s Revolt constituted heroism. The irony of this seemed to be lost on the Chinese.

Like many cities, beyond Beijing sprawl many small towns and villages. Most of these had a factory that was the source of local employment, and we could see tall chimneys belching out thick smoke into the already smoggy sky. The Government is trying to move more factories out of the city into neighbouring towns to try and reduce the pollution. Perhaps they should consider moving them further than just a few miles.

We stopped at the jade factory where men and women worked behind huge windows so that we could watch them. They were carving jade into what would be beautiful and intricate objects. This included a jade ball within which was another ball, and inside that yet another ball and so on, all of them moving separately. I couldn’t even begin to think how they had done it. The workers seemed oblivious of us, stood there, watching them. Their work was done under a constantly dripping tap. Their hands must have been freezing, but there was no complaint, no murmur, no cup of warm tea to hand. I got the feeling that China was currently cherry picking ideas from the West, and had opted not to select human rights. If these workers complained or became ill, there were thousands more who could replace them.

 

After seeing the workers, we then went into the showroom. It was enormous, filled with objects ranging from tiny earrings to immense sculptures and made from jade that varied between almost white, through to very dark green as well as red jade.

We were pounced on by the ever persistent sales staff. If we so much as paused at an item, they would be upon us. Boyfriend and I picked one object up (most of the pieces could be handled) and, having replaced it, continued to wander. A beady eyed sales girl literally came running after us saying that if we were interested in it, she could offer us a better price.

It seemed that China was quickly learning capitalism, but still needed to work on sales skills. I wondered whether they wished they had opened up the West sooner, now realising the amount of money we have, and are willing to spend abroad.

Most of the pieces were incredibly expensive, but Boyfriend and I did buy one of the incredible jade balls and some chopstick rests carved as turtles.

We continued onwards towards the Great Wall and I was filled with a ‘can’t quite believe you’re here’ sort of feeling. In fact, I had felt that ever since landing in Beijing. The flat land we were driving through suddenly became mountainous, no foothills, no initial gentle slopes. The mountains themselves seemed inhospitable with steep, jagged slopes that were reddy brown and reached as far as the eye could see into the ever hazy distance.

Then we saw the wall, sprawling across these mountains. The Great Wall was initially a series of separate wall, constructed by early rulers of separate kingdoms within China to separate rival territories. Around 220 BC the first man to rule all China, emperor Qin Shi Huang, ordered the construction of the Great Wall by linking up all these separate defences. The result is therefore a very zig zagged wall, and is not in fact one single line, but comprises a number of walls as off-shoots from the main one – these originally forming part of the earlier defences. The Great Wall therefore, links a number of circular walls.

The construction of these into the single wall of 6000km in length took around 10 years and it is said that 300,000 slaves, peasants and political prisoners toiled to build it. An estimated 180,000,000,000 cubic metres of earth was used to form the core of the original Great Wall and one of the building materials used were the bodies of the deceased workers.

Once built, the wall was used to transport men and equipment over the mountainous terrain it traverses. There are frequent beacon towers, and messages were passed between these either by horse riders, or in the steeper areas, by smoke signals. It was a hated symbol of brutal tyranny.

During subsequent centuries the wall was neglected and abandoned, and by 607 AD had fallen into disrepair. The Sui Dynasty began the task of reconstruction during which 1,000,000 labourers were forced to work on the rebuilding and more than half of them perished.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 AD) a concerted effort was made to re-shape the entire project and this time the wall was faced with bricks and stone slabs. The project took over 100 years to complete with incalculable financial and human cost.

The irony is that the 7 metre high, 7 metre thick wall, with its 25,000 battlements did not work. Successive invasions crossed its defences.

In 1957 the section at Badaling was restored as a tourist attraction, fitted with handrails to assist with the climb. It was here that we arrived. You can climb the wall in either direction. We opted for the more popular and more challenging, steep climb up into the mountains. On the other side, the wall meanders at a lower level.

 

The wall was about 9 foot wide in most places, sometimes narrowing to only 3 or 4 feet in others.

By the car park was a line of stalls. All the sellers were in silence until we got out of the minibus – and then they all started shouting, calling out what they were selling and how much for, returning to silence again as we walked away.

 

The part of wall that we were going to climb was very crowded initially. Apparently to be a hero, you need to climb up to 4 watchtowers. Lily had given us an hour and half. So we started to climb. It was incredibly steep. What made it harder was that all the steps were different heights; some only a few inches while others were a couple of feet high. Not only this, but many of the steps are also unevenly worn by the vast amount of human traffic that travels up and down them.

 

We frequently stopped to admire the view, and gradually peel off the many layers we were wearing. Boyfriend started to regret his large breakfast. After the fourth watchtower was a place where you could buy a Hero of the Great Wall certificate. Beyond this the crowds thinned out significantly.

We continued climbing, getting to heights where there was still snow along the side of the path. The ground slopped away steeply from each side of the wall, the mountain covered with leafless, stunted trees.

 

We looked at the path ahead. Each watchtower looked as though it was the top – until you got there, and saw another one in the distance, yet higher. After passing through 7 watchtowers we needed to turn back down. Just below the 7^th watchtower was a toilet block, which we all decided to take advantage of – my first experience of a proper Chinese lavatory. It was horrific. China has no respect for individual privacy. Consequently there were no doors on either of the cubicles. Not only this, but the entrance into the Ladies had no door – only hanging plastic strips. Mother and I took turns holding each others things while the other went. It was a hole in the ground with a raised rim of porcelain at the front serving as a splash back. The hole was enormous, and the tiles around the edge were filthy and wet as it was almost impossible to squat down such that everything went down the hole – instead, it splashed everywhere. Mother slipped on the tiles, and damn nearly went into the hole, which was filled with several weeks’ worth of unmentionable bodily outpourings.

They didn’t flush, and you needed to provide your own paper.

There were no basins, no taps.  It was a strange parallel – here, on one of the most incredible pieces of construction in the world were lavatories of primitive proportions. This was a fine example of the many contradictions within China.

It was only when coming back down that the real steepness of the wall was fully appreciated as the steps down disappeared below me almost vertically in many places. You needed a head for heights.

 

Some of the watchtowers had people on top of them, and we determined to find the way up. We wandered around the passageways inside and found the steps up. I have never climbed a chimney, but if I did it would be like going up those steps. They were narrow, high and fearsomely steep. I had to have my hands on the walls either side in order to manoeuvre my way up.

The view from the top was beautiful. However, due to the hazy sky we couldn’t see miles across the mountains.

 

Coming back down from the watchtower was equally challenging. Mother ended up coming down the steps backwards.

Back at the start Lily was impressed how far we had climbed, and considered us all heroes, and very fit. We clambered back into the minibus to the renewed clamour of the stall sellers and headed off to lunch.

During the journey we asked Lily whether she had been to England. She explained that in China you could only leave if you had a valid reason – such as work requirements or for study. Holidays abroad were rare, and could only be taken if you went with a tour group, and stayed with the group during your entire time abroad. Even then travel for the Chinese was prohibitively expensive as the value of their money (Yuan) was so low compared with European and American markets.

It made me feel almost embarrassed about the number of places we had been to – between the three of us we had more or less covered the globe. I hoped Lily wouldn’t ask too much about what other countries we had visited. Countries that she would almost certainly never see. The freedom to travel beyond China quite simply did not exist.

Despite this, she and other people we met didn’t seem to mind – or perhaps they didn’t notice - their limitations in choice. Things had changed and perhaps these few small changes had meant so much and made such a difference that the people hadn’t focused so much on the other restrictions in their lives.

As already mentioned, there was increased freedom to choose jobs and where to live. Also, as demonstrated by the number of sellers we had come across, there was an increased freedom for private enterprise as opposed to state run businesses, which was gradually increasing China’s materialistic urge. The Government receives most of its income from the profit of state run enterprises, whereas money earned from private enterprises was kept by the individual, personal taxes being largely evaded. This however is also changing.

 

But the process is gradual, and ultimately it felt like a superficial westernisation beneath a strongly communist governing body. I was also unsure whether all of these changes would, in the long run, be the best thing for China. Already their divorce rate is rising, and perhaps their current unquestioning contentment (or silent acceptance) will also start turning into Western restlessness and demand for more – more things, more money, more choice. You could see it all potentially going wrong. After all, a true communist government would only allow this ‘westernisation’ to go so far. Tiananmen Square had already demonstrated that. Lily’s freedom to talk to us, to tell us about her country, seemed to have come at a high price.

 We passed through shanty towns on the way to lunch that Lily said were similar to her hometown. The villages had a perimeter wall, and there were market sellers lining the streets, selling fruit, vegetables and other wares from trolleys on the back of their bicycles. The people were all poor, but surviving. I looked at Lily, clean, tidy, in new clothes and could hardly believe she had come from this. And she spoke of it with pride, rather than shame. It was almost as if she didn’t notice the difference in lifestyle, or perhaps just accepted it more readily. Or maybe she was highlighting the improvements in China that had allowed her to move on from such a life. A choice that she would not have had a few years ago.

For lunch we went to a huge restaurant within a Friendship Store. Lily informed us that it was primarily used by tourists, but she was bringing us here for this very reason, as the risk of food poisoning was low. She selected a few dishes for us – rice, mushrooms (again pretty, but tasteless), and other things that I can’t recall.

On the table was a complementary bottle of ‘wine’ with porcelain cups the size of a thimble. The size of these was all the clues I needed about what the drink was like. I found it undrinkable. Boyfriend and Mother however, rather liked it, and knocked back a few. Boyfriend held up the bottle and said that we must make a note of its name – Mother laughed as she looked at it, written entirely in Chinese.

Boyfriend and I also had a bottle of beer each. It had happened the previous night in the restaurant – they don’t see it as one bottle for me and one for him. Instead they open one, and pour a glass for each of us from that bottle. As we carry on drinking, we then move on to the second bottle.

After lunch we looked around the Friendship Store, which included a cloisonné factory. Again, we were able to watch people at work, creating the pieces. We bought several items, ticking all the names off our list of people to get presents for.

We returned to the minibus for our trip to the Ming Tombs.

There were 14 emperors during the Ming Dynasty. All but one is buried within the same 40 square kilometre area. The missing emperor is buried outside Nanjing. The site itself was picked due to the principles of Chinese geometry, which sited buildings to ensure that they would be surrounded by favourable influences.

The tombs have been well preserved due to their remote location. Only one of the tombs has been excavated – that of Emperor Wan Li (1573-1620). Part of the reason for this is the complex network of tunnels, which are deliberately designed to provide false leads, and make the actual tomb very difficult to locate.

 

We were to visit the tomb of Wan Li, which took over 6 years to build. When the emperor finally died his wife and sixteen concubines were also buried alive with him.

The tomb is built below ground in a great vaulted brickwork cavern, all grey. Apparently the original structure was wood, but workmen kept setting fire to it to delay completion once rumour spread that they would be interred in the tomb when they finished. So designs were changed to use stone instead.

 

The vault is entered from the top and we descended 57 metres to the bottom. The tomb consists of a large central chamber with further chambers to the right, left and back of this, and supports a hill above it. The right and left ones would normally be used for the empress and concubines. However, the emperor predeceased these women, and due to political turmoil at the time, requiring a fast burial, his coffin was placed in the end chamber along with both his wife and primary concubine. This was a rarity afforded to the concubine as she had borne the emperors first son.

During excavations of the tombs more than twenty lacquered trunks of jewellery, headdresses, gold, vases, jade and other trinkets believed to be required for the afterlife were all discovered.

 The construction itself is enormous, but I was surprise at the lack of any sort of decorativeness. It was bare and austere, with huge doors designed to lock from the inside when they were shut. A diamond door that led out was design in such a way so as to foil excavation attempts.

 

Outside, the tombs are set in peaceful gardens littered with statues. Stone chairs and tables were carved so that the chairs were all mini elephants.

Each tomb has a soul tower in which the emperor’s tablet is placed. This provided information about who was buried in each tomb. There were also temples for worship to the emperors. As these were made from wood, several had been destroyed during dynasty take-overs when tombs of the previous dynasty were traditionally ravaged and burned.

There were artefacts from the tomb in some of the surrounding buildings. Many of these were replicas, the Cultural Revolution having resulted in the destruction of some. There were also enlarged photographs of the excavation, including the state of the tomb when it was found, massively damaged by fire, and the inside of the emperors coffin, with his skeleton resting on layers of silks.

There was of course a system that applied to the Ming Tombs – emperors were not meant to build a tomb bigger than their predecessor. This, however, was occasionally broken.

The site itself is dotted around with virtually meaningless English translations on signs, one of which said something garbled about the environment and I took it to mean No Littering. Another requested No Scribbling on the Cultural Relic.

 

Of the things we had seen so far I was realising that China was becoming very proud of its historical places, or Cultural Relics. However, it seemed to have slightly misunderstood the concept to a certain extent in that everything was rebuilt, restored or replicated to look like the original, even if this meant that what you were looking at was more or less brand new as opposed to the remnants of the original. They hadn’t realised that Westerners do actually like ruins. The Ming Tombs area does include tombs that have not been restored, but tour guides don’t take their charges to these ones, almost as though they’re not as proud of them, even though these would probably have been considerably more interesting.

 

 

Having looked at the tomb we wandered through the gardens to the minibus, and headed back into Beijing.

The signs at the tombs and conversations we had had with Chinese people so far showed that they had en excellent grasp of English, far in excess of our knowledge of any other language worldwide. That said, I had noticed that the English seemed to have been learnt from American sources, as there were many Americanisms in their vocabulary. It was also interesting to listen to them, and identify certain sounds or combinations of letters that the Chinese just cannot get their mouth around and have terrible trouble pronouncing.

The translations we had seen were also interesting, and amusing. The best way to explain is that to us, Chinese symbols make no sense. If we tried to copy out a sentence of their writing, we would almost certainly make minor mistakes in the structure of the symbol, which would actually have a significant impact on the final meaning. Similarly, our alphabet is equally baffling to them; so many words had incorrect letters or letters in the wrong order. The other problem they encountered with translating to English is that each Chinese symbol (I think) seems to represent a sound rather than a word, and trying to translate a Chinese sound into English is bound to be fraught with difficulty. So it was easy to excuse the very interesting translations that we saw.

The reason I suspected that Chinese symbols were sounds was that Lily arranged for me and Mother to have stamps made with our Chinese name on. Before ordering it, Lily had needed to exactly understand the sounds of our names rather than the spelling. My stamp had four symbols and Mother’s had three. Hence my theory.

On the way back to Beijing we talked to Lily about Chinese tea. Such was our interest that she asked if we would like to go to a teahouse for a tea ceremony. Naturally, we said yes.

At the entrance to the teahouse were several attractive girls dressed in pink, traditional Chinese dresses. We were led through to the back, which was divided up into a series of rooms. In the middle of this was a water feature and with stone carvings. We were led into a room and sat down. In front of us was a table with a large wooden bowl.

The girl conducting the ceremony explained that before drinking tea, all the cups (tiny porcelain bowls) and tea pot (again tiny) are first washed with hot water. She then poured hot water over the items in the wooden bowl, which I later realised had a tube running from it into a bucket so as to prevent it from flooding.

 She also explained to us that in China the teapot has tea poured over it regularly. As this is clay, it will absorb the tea flavour and therefore enhance the tea you drink from it. To check the temperature of the water was correct, she poured it over the pee baby – a small terracotta baby that is kept immersed in cold water. When water is of the correct temperature and poured onto the baby, he pees. There was also a small cup with a dragon motif on, and again when the water was hot, the picture changes. I wondered whether the Chinese really used these things or if they were just gimmicks designed as western novelties.

 

We tried five different teas, learning how to prepare and drink each one. A couple of them required a certain degree of noise during drinking – the Chinese often make a noise eating and drinking, really tasting their food, in a way that Westerners don’t, considering any sort of masticating noise to be rude.

One tea actually involved a certain way of holding the cup. Another tea was first poured into a long porcelain cup before being poured from this into the teacup. The longer cup is then rolled between the hands to warm them while you smell the remaining aroma of the tea from inside it.

The ceremony was wonderful, very involved and cultured.

We returned to the hotel briefly and then went on to the theatre to watch an acrobatic performance. Curiously the theatre had no seat allocation, so we had to spend a few minutes trying to find three seats relatively near each other. The performance itself used vast amounts of loud music, smoke and interesting lighting. Mother and I have seen the Chinese State Circus in England, and what we saw at the theatre there was along the same lines. Incredible acrobatic feats and contortions – such as a girl on a unicycle on top of an umbrella, a man on a plank itself is balanced/rocking on a ball, with a contraption on his shoulders and another man on that again balancing on a rocking plank, who was catching bowls in a bowl on his head.

It was incredible, not just the skills, but the total lack of fear that they must have had in order to gain those skills. Mother later told Lily that maybe she should become an acrobat, because then she could travel the world with the Chinese Circus. Lily agreed that it was a good idea. It enhanced a certain feeling of sorrow for the Chinese, and their current condition of semi-freedom – neither one thing nor the other, unable and unwilling to go back, but unlikely to progress much further forward in Lily’s lifetime.

After a thoroughly enjoyable evening we returned to the restaurant of the previous evening for dinner. It was around 9pm, and consequently almost everything we ordered was unavailable. We ended up with fried rice, peanuts in soy sauce with coriander, a whole, cold duck sliced up with no regard for the bones that were in many of the pieces, spring rolls, something white that might once have been a fish and yet more mushrooms. The previous evening we had seen waiters dash upstairs with little fishing nets, presumably to make some unsuspecting sea life creature into a customer’s dinner. However, the fish that we had did not seem to have come from this source.

We returned to the hotel and attempted an early night, given that we had to be up for a 5.30am pick up to take us to the airport to get the flight to Xi’an.

Despite the previous night having provided recuperation all round, the anxiety of the early morning meant that some of us did not sleep well and were destined to spend another day of unimaginable exhaustion.

The hotel prepared a packed breakfast for us, which consisted of a rather curious mix – boiled egg, bread, beef, gherkin, cheese, pear and water. The water was checked during the airport security as no alcohol is allowed on flights. We said our goodbyes to Lily, who we would not be seeing again, and she gave us her e-mail address.

The flight to Xi’an was 2 hours long. We were fed again on the plane. Opting for the Chinese meal we were presented with rice in a gungy purple sauce that tasted of absolutely nothing. Perhaps we should have gone for the Western meal.

Much of China is mountainous, and we flew over several interesting mountain ranges – although much of it was barely visible through the fog.

After very little catch up sleep on the plane we finally landed at Xi’an. As we taxied to the Gate I saw a man on a trolley-backed bicycle on the runway. It could only happen in China. As we approached the terminal I saw vast numbers of bicycles, which seemed to be the preferred method of transport at the airport.

The terminal building was very new, having only opened in October. We were soon re-united with our bags and met up with Helen – our Xi’an guide.

 

She was very different to Lily, much more forthright and almost immediately announced that she was a member of the communist party when Mother started discussing beliefs with her. China is officially an atheist country – some people are Buddhists, but many are communists or Marxists. She also spoke candidly about the lies the Government had told, telling us that when she was little her grandmother had said that the children in America were starving and the implication that China was the best country in the world. When China opened its doors to the West she, and millions of others, realised the lies they had been told. Despite this, she was still a firm supporter of the communist system. It reinforced what I had already learnt about the Chinese support of communism. But, if you look at it in terms of communism being their faith, in the absence of any other religious belief, then it makes more sense. A devout Christian, for example, doesn’t stop believing in God just because something bad or inexplicable happens to them. There is no reason to suppose that the strength of the Chinese people’s belief is any less. It’s just that we don’t understand it. But that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.

Helen was remarkably quick at learning English while we struggled with only 3 Chinese words/phrases. For example, she once referred to Mother as being very considerable (instead of considerate). Mother corrected her – she practised saying the word a few times and from that minute onwards didn’t make the mistake again. It may seem small, but given that here, on day three we were still completely incapable of remembering the Chinese word for goodbye, it was remarkable.

Helen was impressed with the Chinese we did know – three words, which she referred to as being sentences. I wasn't sure if this was another instance of using incorrect words.

Helen also had a remarkable amount of respect for her elders. At one moment, Mother apologised to Boyfriend and I. Helen was almost moved to tears by it, commenting that in China, your elders are always right (even when they’re wrong) and would never apologise to those younger than them. During our stay in Xi’an she was certainly very attentive to Mother, ensuring her safety and well being at all times. Both Boyfriend and Mother however, actually doubted the sincerity of this, and thought it put on to an extent to keep foreign tourists happy.

Xi’an was completely different to Beijing, far less city like. The buildings were smaller, the streets bustling. We passed a motorbike with a sidecar. There were two men on the bike, and one in the side car, dangling his leg on the outside of it as he lay back talking on his mobile. None of them wore helmets.

Somehow in our chat we got onto the subject of Chinese lavatories. I had used the one at the airport. The room was clean and tidy, tiled and even having basins with running water but nothing could disguise the smell of a dozen holes in the ground filled with excreta. And again, the floors were splashed. I got the impression that Helen wanted to protect us from things like this, from real China. Perhaps she based this on an experience she had had with an American women.

The American lady was fat. Chinese people are tiny. The American lady had got into all sorts of bother that required Helen’s help, due to the need to squat – quite low – in order to use the lavatories. Not to mention the necessary bodily contortions required to then wipe yourself. Obviously, if Mother Nature’s call required a lengthy stay, then your thighs needed to be up to the task of maintaining your precarious stance for the duration. This was all too much for America’s large lady. I dread to think of the sort of assistance Helen was required to provide.

We went to the hotel – in order to drop off our suitcases and get together what we wanted for the day. The hotel was down a wonderfully dingy street. None of the staff spoke English. Helen explained that this was a luxury hotel, and waited while we were shown to our rooms. They weren’t dirty, but gave that appearance. The carpet was old and brownish; the bathroom was again a browny colour with uncleanable stains on the basin and round the edge of the bath where it met the tiled walls. The shower curtain seemed to be growing something. The taps hadn’t shone for a long time. The electrics were particularly dodgy. Boyfriend and I turned a few lamps on, and when I moved the TV an inch, some of them went off with a crackle. When we used our kettle later on it didn’t work and took several minutes off fiddling about in order to get it to do anything at all. Mother’s room had a vibrating floor. Because of the noise of this, she requested to be moved. In fact we all shifted about as her new room had a double bed and mine and Boyfriend’s had twins, so we swapped again. Mother later discovered that the shower in her final room had no showerhead, and the water came out with such force that it threw her to the end of the bath and damn nearly knocked her over. The rooms were close to what I had originally expected the standards to be in China.

There was another thing about the hotels in China – they had things such as mud baths and magic flannels, but these were not free. If you used them, you were charged. Among the chargeable bathroom items in Xi’an were two sachets – one called Man and one called Woman. The English translation on the back explained that the contents were used to clean the genital area to help prevent infection.

Boyfriend and I decided they were worth the money for the giggle of having them.

After settling in, we met Helen downstairs and headed off to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda, located in Ci’en Temple, which used to be a Buddhist temple. The temple dates to the Tang dynasty, 648 AD, when Crown Prince Gao Zong (Li Zhi) built it as a memorial to his mother. Monk Xuanzang, a famous Buddhist Master and founder of Faxiang sect of Buddhism, translated 74 volumes of Buddhist scriptures in the temple.

The pagoda was built at the request of the monk to protect the Buddhist scriptures. He designed it like a wild goose he had seen in India hence it being called the Wild Goose Pagoda. Originally built 5 storeys high, the pagoda now stands 210 feet high with wooden stairs leading to the top inside. Despite over 10 earthquakes in the last 1300 years that exceed 7 on the Richter scale, the pagoda still stands.

 

We did see a Buddhist monk, dressed in yellow, but artists now primarily use the temple. It was somehow far more alive than the Beijing temples – perhaps partly due to the residence of monks.

But also one of the incense burners was being used, kicking out clouds of scented smoke into the cold air, and people were lighting red candles, adding them to a mass of melted wax by the incense burner, outside one of the temple buildings that contained a huge golden Buddha.

We wandered back through the extensive, peaceful gardens, popping in to the art gallery as we passed.

Although not particularly hungry, having already been fed twice that day, Helen took us to lunch before going on to the Terracotta Warriors. As we wound our way back to Xi’an we talked about Chinese food. Helen told us that for her it was an honour to eat in the KFC because it was Western, and she felt privileged to be able to eat Western food. The West has given them more than KFC – almost every junk food chain you can think of has worked its way into the country. As China has such a varied and healthy diet it seemed sad that the West was starting to damage this, and particularly sad that the Chinese found it an honour to eat in these fast food outlets. The Chinese government does not try and stop its people eating junk food. It brings Western revenue into the country, and ultimately that is more important than the long-term health of the nation.

The restaurant we went into was bustling with life, filled by local Chinese. Unfortunately, we were led out of this to a quiet upstairs room, sat in cushioned wicker chairs around a glass table, with a multitude of serving staff. Many Chinese restaurants are based on this format, a fast and busy canteen style area on the ground floor, and quieter, more expensive dining on upper floors. Helen asked whether there was anything we didn’t eat, and then ordered us a set menu.

This was the first occasion where the chopsticks looked as though they had the potential to poison you from 50 paces. They even smelt of previous meals. Mother had brought clean chopsticks on the trip because of this very eventuality – but they were in the hotel. We tried to ask for different chopstick, but the waitress returned with forks. I dread to think where they had been – they certainly hadn’t been washed for some time. We all sat there, cleaning and polishing them furiously, gingerly using them to eat the cold meat on the table.

We were also served some prunes – I don’t know what tortuous cooking they had undergone but had very squishy and curious tasting insides, while the skin was hard and dry. We were each brought a bowl of hot noodles with spicy beef sauce on it, and all tentative use of the fork had to end. It was delicious, and warming. Then plate after plate of food was brought out, and stacked up on the table – including beef with potatoes, warm celery, and rice apple. It was endless. Just when we thought it was all over, an enormous bowl of soup was brought out which seemed to contain egg and sweet corn, among things.

Boyfriend and I tried it first. It tasted all right, quite innocuous really, but had the texture of runny snot. It even poured like runny snot. For this reason alone, it was completely inedible. The feel of it in your mouth was indescribably vile. We simultaneously pulled faces, murmured eeuugh, and commented on its snot like qualities. And then we insisted that Mother try it.

She protested, saying that now she knew what it was like, it would be very difficult for her to try it without thinking snot. She picked up her bowl, and as she tried to get some of the coagulated, slimy stuff on her spoon our current giggling and amusement gradually turned to unadulterated hilarity.

After a couple of goes, and with Boyfriend and I having to turn away, she did try some. And agreed with our view of it. On the plus side, given that the Chinese eat pretty much anything, this was the first thing we had been presented with that we were unable to eat.

When Helen returned she asked whether we had enjoyed the meal. We tried to explain to her about the soup, that the flavour was fine but the texture needed working on. I don’t know if she fully understood – you try and explain to a foreigner what texture means.

As we drove off, I looked at the city around us and wondered what British Health and Safety regulations would make of the country – bamboo scaffolding with workers at the upper levels wearing no harnesses and no hard hats, extensive road works on a bridge that was still open to traffic which ran very close to the workers who were not in a coned off area, lorries driving along laden with trees that were not tied down, vehicles pulled in at the side of the road because their wheels had fallen off.  Life is cheap here and there is no effort to protect it.

Before going to the real warriors, we stopped at a factory that makes models of the warriors – anything from a couple of inches high to life size.

A man there took us round the factory, explaining the process. They make the models black and very tough by pouring cold water into the kiln during the firing process. Miraculously, this doesn’t shatter the models. We saw the kilns, huge wood burning kilns. There was wood piled up around them and an incredible smell. That sight alone made the visit to the factory worthwhile. Managing to resist the sales pitch, we left empty handed. By now we were all feeling the exhaustion of the early start, and long day. I could barely keep my eyes open.

The terracotta warriors and horses are known as the Eighth Wonder of the World and listed in the World Cultural Heritage list. They were discovered accidentally by peasants in 1974 who were digging a well.

The warriors and horses were sculptured to protect the tomb of Qin Shihuang - the first emperor who united the 5 independent and warring states of China resulting in China’s first ever centralised feudal power which provided a solid base for the development of economy, politics and culture. The first emperor founded his capital in Xi’an, creating one of the greatest ancient cities in the world.

Construction of Qin Shihuang’s tomb began soon after he ascended the throne in 246 BC, aged just 13 years old, and took 17 years to be completed. The soldiers were built to protect his tomb, stationed in three divisions – east, west and central. The statues are life size, ranging in height from 1.7m to 1.9m, and were modelled after real members of Qin Shihuang’s army with clearly depicted facial features.

The army was also provided with weapons – which were real. The terracotta army actually held a complete arsenal of Qin dynasty. The weapons were made from copper and tin as well as rare metals. Some of the weapons had never been discovered before and demonstrated more advanced craftsmanship than had previously been thought. For instance, s bronze sword still shone after being buried for 2000 years due to the use of a special treatment to prevent it from getting rusty. Also, the arrowheads contained a high proportion of lead so that if the wound itself did not kill, the subsequent lead poisoning probably would.

Originally the figures were painted in bright colours. However, over the two thousand years they have stood guard this faded. Any colour left on the excavated warriors has faded since they were exposed to the air.

The emperor is actually buried a couple of kilometres away. A mound marks the site, but as no one knows where the entrance is or the exact location of the tomb, it had not been excavated. Apparently it is an underground palace filled with rare gems and other treasures, the ceiling inlaid with pearls to simulate the sun, stars and moon, the floors are said to be lined with bronze to keep out the water and mercury was pumped in to give the image of flowing rivers. In addition the tomb is apparently equipped with crossbows to automatically shoot at any invaders. It all sounded very Indiana Jones, and more along the lines of what I had expected the Ming Tomb to look like.

 

There are smaller statues and horse drawn bronze chariots in underground chambers next to the site of the actual tomb. No one knows why the terracotta army is so far away.

To ensure that no one could locate the tomb or reveal its riches, after it was built all the workmen were forced to remain in the underground palace, buried alive. It seemed that being a tomb builder in ancient China was not a long-term prospect.

 

Rows of long deep pits were built in which the army was lined up. These were then roofed with timbers over which mats were laid before being covered with earth. Subsequent dynasty take-overs have taken their toll – the site was located and pillaged, weapons stolen, statues destroyed and the tomb set on fire. You can see the black scars on the excavated tomb that indicates which parts suffered fire damage.

 

The excavations are protected by huge structures. The first hall we went into, where most of the army is displayed, took my breath away. The hall was enormous and ahead of us were several long pits, filled with statues. Some parts of the pits were filled with semi buried, broken statues, but most had been lined up, stood to attention. None of them held any weapons, but their hands were built so that weapons could be attached. Some were dressed in armour, but most wore simple tunics. The archers knelt, their arms positioned to hold a bow.

 

Large parts of the area remain unexcavated, partly due to the fact that the statues have deteriorated since being exposed to the air so there is a reluctance to excavate all of them. Archaeologists from around the world now work at the site, and current thinking is very much along the lines of leaving things underground for future generations, with improved techniques, to excavate further.

 

In another hall we saw dozens more corridors excavated to the top of the timbers, rows and rows of uneven ancient roofing, beneath which stood thousands more statues.

It was an incredible sight.

 

In the souvenir shop the peasant who first found the warriors while building his well, now an old man, was signing copies of the book about the site. We got him to sign ours.

By now I was barely able to stand up without falling asleep, so was pleased when we were due to head back. None of us thought of taking picture of it at the time, but at the gates that led out of the museum stood countless sellers. As the gates opened to let us out they swarmed around us, trying to force their wares on us. I suppose it was similar to a famous – or infamous – person, fighting their way through angry fans or the press. The experience verged onto unpleasant. They would not take no for an answer. It was a very physical approach that they took, grabbing hold of yours arms and shoulders, or quite simply barging into you or standing directly in front, blocking your onward path.

I found it particularly uncomfortable and a little threatening, which Mother couldn’t understand. The reason was simple – I have been brought up not to trust strangers, to be concerned about anyone who tries to grab at you or stand in your way, to be conscious of being a woman in a dangerous world amongst people who, at the very least, might steal your wallet. Although I knew that none of these people had any intentions of doing me harm (although they may very well have been willing to attempt pick pocketing), this message that has been drummed into me with increasing intensity for over half of my entire life has become instinctive. Always feel threatened. Always be aware of your surroundings. I was aware, very aware. And found it threatening.

We quickly became separated as we each tried to escape from the crowd. Helen stayed with Mother, and seeing Boyfriend over to my right, I headed toward him – even though this did involve back tracking slightly and having to re-endure the sales pitch of some people that I had already shaken off.

What I found curious was that they offered their goods to us in dollars. I wasn’t sure if this was because they wanted to have the dollars or if they assumed we were American, or even the dollars was the primary currency of the West. Either way, America had a lot to answer for.

Without wanting to stop and linger, we kept glancing back at Mother to check she was alright. She had stopped, and was surrounded by vast quantities of the sellers. We found out later that she had bought something, and bartered the seller down to an acceptable (and low) price. Helen had been very impressed, both with her handling the situation, and actually knocking the price down.

China does have a bartering system. Only government shops have fixed prices. Apparently when offered a price you should initially suggest half of that, and aim to get about a third off. If you are prepared to say no and walk away, more often than not the salesman will run after you offering a better price in order the get the sale.

Mother had already got this down to a fine art.

On the drive back from the warriors Boyfriend and I succumbed to sleep. When we arrived back at the hotel Mother went straight to bed. Boyfriend and I had considered wandering around the area, but also fell asleep.

The next day – Tuesday – was a free day. So we decided to set no alarms, and simply sleep for as long as our bodies needed to. Boyfriend and I woke shortly before 9am, and found a note under the door from Mother saying – 9.50 Gone to Breakfast.

She must have still been tired as she was clearly confused about the time. A few minutes later we joined her at breakfast. First of all we had to run the gauntlet of two waitresses who knew very little English, and seemed to want some piece of paper or something from us.

The breakfast was similar to that in the Novotel – rice, noodles, various fried things and steamed breads (these were totally white having been steamed rather than baked and tended to have a brown filling which we thought was fig or something along those lines, but never really identified).

Mother had already engineered a pot of tea. She hadn’t eaten before we arrived, having been sat at a large round table with several Chinese and just enjoying the noise of their eating.

There was a small table of ‘continental’ breakfast. On this were also jugs of drink – milk, coffee and squash. The coffee was cold (the Chinese do not drink coffee, so I let them off for leaving it to go cold). Rather curiously the squash was luke warm – having been made with boiling water. I didn’t mind – at least it meant the water was safe. A cockroach scuttled between the plates on this table.

Over breakfast we planned our day, which by and large consisted of wandering about and getting a feel for the place, but we did want to visit the Muslim quarter and mosque.

Mother needed to change some more money and we had to undergo a bit of an ordeal with the hotel to try and get these changed. The long and short of it was that they refused. However, with perfect timing, an American lad called Peter happened to be around. He was travelling China with a football team, and told us that the best place to change money was the Bank of China. He even led us out of the hotel, and pointed down the street to where we would find the bank.

We passed a couple of banks, but Boyfriend carried on walking to try and get to the Bank of China. Mother asked why he hadn’t stopped at the ones we had passed – he pointed out to her that they weren’t the Bank of China. The clue, apparently, was in the huge words on the outside of the building.

 

We arrived at the bank which operated rather like a supermarket in that you take a ticket with a number on, and when you’re number is called by a teller you go up. Hence there were no queues, just a few people sitting on the many sofas waiting their turn.

 

Suitably financed, we went on our way. The smog or fog or combination of the two was dense. We had considered going up the Bell Tower, in the centre of a roundabout just down the road from our hotel – but as we couldn’t see the top of it from the ground there it was unlikely that we would see anything from the top. The Bell Tower is central to the city standing at the intersection of the north, south, east and west streets which each lead to one of the four city wall gates.

The Bell Tower is a square structure, 36m high. It was originally built in 1384, but further west, and was moved to its present site in 1582. The whole tower is made from wood without the use of nails and was originally used for letting people know the time by the striking of bells – a bit like Big Ben, but without the clock face.

 

 

With the aid of a map and my GPS we headed towards the Muslim quarter. We needed to cross the roads around the Bell Tower. As these are huge, a circular subway runs beneath the roundabout. The steps out of the subway are ramped on each side so that the many people with bicycles can quickly and easily wheel through the system. It was a small idea, but quite brilliant. Unsure about exactly which subway exit we needed, we ended up on the wrong side of the road and therefore decided to negotiate crossing the road.

The traffic lights in Xi’an actually countdown the seconds until the light changes presumably to avoid people risking their lives unnecessarily, although this seemed a very un-Chinese concern. We also had a countdown when the Green Man lit up – a whole 10 seconds to cross the road. And these were big roads. Not only that, but instead of the Green Man being a static picture, he was a moving in a ‘run like hell’ motion.

The entrance to the Muslim quarter is under the Drum Tower, a rectangular building, 33m high built in 1380. There used to be a huge drum on the tower, which told the time in conjunction with the huge bell on the Bell Tower. Both buildings have withstood the many earthquakes that have visited the region, without a single crack appearing.

 We walked through the long tunnel that runs beneath the tower and entered another world.

There was a long, straight, narrow street, lined by leafless trees. It hummed with life and was made more atmospheric by the pervading smog. The pavements on either side were lined with shops and outside stalls, selling food, cooking food. The steam rising from these numerous places of food preparation added to the thickness in the air. There was poverty here, but it was an active poverty. Not the hopelessness of Africa or the loud criminality of England.

 

 

Children played in the street, safe, happy and almost unaware that they were poor, content to make toys from bits and pieces they found rather than begrudging that they didn’t have the latest toy or gimmick. They were remarkably friendly, calling out ‘hello’ to us, keen to practice their English, and running off giggling when we replied Ni Hao.

There was a smell too. Primarily coming from the huge variety of food being cooked in the streets, but also something else. China does smell – often in places where you don’t expect it to, suddenly and for no reason. You will be walking down a street and then it is as though you have walked into a bubble of stink. Pockets of smell. The smell of drains. Of their diabolical sewage arrangements. But there wasn’t that smell here – or certainly nothing that bad.

 

There were also men appalling crippled. One had wasted, useless legs, and pulled himself along the ground with the aid of two small sticks. Another, older man had an adapted bicycle with that was cycled with his hands and had space to put his knarled legs. But even these people seemed cheerful, stopping to chat to each other on their tortuous travels.

We went into some of the teashops, many of which had women inside cutting the tea, clipping the tiny leaves off equally tiny stems. The teashops were incredible. Jars and jars of tea, which you were welcome to take the lids off and smell.

 

In amongst all this were suddenly white, crisp, clean clothes shops that somehow seemed terribly out of place.

 

 

 

The guide book had said that getting lost in the Muslim quarter was not a totally unpleasant experience – and it was right. There was something to see at every turn, a new experience or unbelievable sight. We never actually did get lost, but could have wandered those streets for hours.

The food lining the streets was incredible – stacks of circular trays filled with the white rolls that were being steamed, pig and cow carcasses hanging on rails – on the pavement, cow and pig heads on tables outside shop fronts. On one street a man had carcasses lying on the pavement around him from which he hacked various joints – or lumps.

 

 

It was around lunch time that we were there – lunch starting at 11.00 and in doorways and under streets were crouched figures eating out of bowls.

There were further signs of the appalling poverty. A sheet of tarpaulin was attached to the corner of some walls along the street. Beneath this resided a whole family. There were also men searching through other people’s rubbish to find food, clothes and anything else that may be useful.

And the noise. Everywhere noise. Cars and bicycles going through the streets, horns beeping as the whole thing became clogged to a standstill, the calls and shouts of streets vendors, trying to sell their wares, the sizzle of food, the sound of children playing. In addition to all this there were loud speakers proclaiming (presumably) Muslim messages to anyone who cared to listen.

We found the mosque. It was set back from the street and was incredibly calm and peaceful. The girls there spoke to us, and giggled at our Chinese, running to hide as soon as a camera was pointed at them.

As we left the Muslim quarter we passed two old men who were burning a wooden chair on the pavement to try and keep warm. We wanted to photograph them, so bizarre was the sight, but they stopped us. Ultimately, they still had their pride.

Visiting these streets had highlighted how impossible it was for us to ever hope to blend in. With Western faces, we looked different. We were the ethnic minority. It was a strange feeling, knowing that you could never be just one of the crowd, another person just going about their business – the way were are able to when visiting vast numbers of countries around the world.

I had got cold during our morning wander, so we popped into a shopping mall to get a drink and warm up. We also used the lavatories (having learnt the word for it) and I was delighted to discover they had a ‘normal’ one. My delight soon ended when I realised that the state of the seat indicated that the Chinese didn’t really understand the concept of these, and clearly crouched over them as well.

 

Having perused our map over tea, we decided to head to the south of the city, and wander around the artist’s quarter. It was starting to rain slightly, but not enough for us to opt for waterproofs as we passed our hotel.

Xi’an is a surprisingly small city, so it was only a few minutes walk to the artist’s quarter, just inside the southern city walls. Mother, being of an artistic bent, was in her element. In more ways than one in fact, given that this was also the land of bartering. Let’s just say, she carried on shopping until physically unable to carry any more. It seemed rude not to – everything was so incredibly cheap, and even cheaper once you had knocked the price down. She came away with dozens of brushes, inks, ink trays, paper and art. Boyfriend and I got some paper weights and art. Boyfriend wished he also painted, just to have an excuse to buy much more. He told Mother to buy hundreds of brushes and sell them on back in England to make a profit, but, already laden down and wondering how it would fit into her suitcase, she decided not to.

 

By now the rain was getting heavier, and it was also getting dark. A school within the artists’ quarter must have finished for the day as we wandered back – there were hundreds of parents outside the gates, stood there with umbrellas or bicycles, and the noise of excited children. The street was almost overtaken by them. None of the bicycles had lights. And no one seemed to mind the rain.

 

The shopkeepers came out and swept the rain away from their entrance in an almost hopeless fight against nature.

We returned to the hotel – where a strip of carpet had been lain out in the tiled foyer to reduce the mess caused by wet footed guests. The carpet, however, was very wrinkled, and a porter had the thankless (and seemingly endless) task of taping it down to the floor.

After depositing our purchases, we were collected by Helen for an evening out. First we stopped off to look at the city walls. The intention had been to climb up them, and walk round part of it. We had decided not to do this during the day as the smog would have made the endeavour almost pointless from a seeing things point of view, and the evening rain meant put us off doing it now.

Instead, outside the city, we walked up to one of the gates, looked over the huge – still water filled – moat, and the massive gate equipped with drawbridge. Xi’an is proud of its city wall, and the full wall is still intact.

From here, we went on to the Dumpling Festival and Tang Dynasty Show. The whole event was held in the theatre, the front half of which was laid out with tables.

We had a glass of rice wine – warm, cloudy and semi coagulated alcoholic drink, peculiar tasting – and started tucking into the nibbles on the table. The dumpling banquet is exactly that – our waitress brought out plate after plate of steamed dumplings. By the end, we actually had no idea how many dumplings we had eaten. They were small – about 1 square inch and beautifully prepared. They aren’t anything like what we understand dumplings to be in England. Instead these were some sort of doughy stuff, like pancakes but sticky, wrapped around the filling. The doughy stuff was shaped so that it indicated the filling – such as a pig (complete with curly tail), pumpkin, chicken, walnut, fish and so on.

Apparently they are best when dipped in a mixture of vinegar, soy sauce and chilli sauce. I don’t know if it was the dumplings or the two bottle of Dynasty wine, but by the end of the meal we all felt decidedly sick. At one point Mother asked the waitress when the constant stream of dumplings would end – and we were promised that there was only one more plate.

What she hadn’t mentioned was the soup. Dumpling soup. Tiny dumplings were put into the bowl, which was left simmering on our table for the dumplings to cook. The number of dumplings you receive in your serving has a certain message, such as double happiness or good journey.

Thus replete, we settled back, as much as our stomachs would allow, to watch the show. This is based on historical events using traditional music and dancing.

 

 

 

I sensed a huge pride from the Chinese in their imperial history. The dances were beautiful, and the dresses generally consisted of clothing that had sleeves far too long, and the girls would swing their arms around in such a way so as to make huge circles from the excess fabric. There were also a number of musical performances – one involved a row of men playing percussion instruments and ‘competing’ with each other in an amusing way. Another was performed by a man who played some parts and quacked others. Quite literally, quacked. It was brilliant.

 

We were due to leave for Beijing in the morning, so retired to bed as soon as the show was finished.

The morning flight was not as early as the flight out had been. We came downstairs to check out, a simple process that turned into a bewildering ordeal. They seemed to spend time just chatting amongst themselves and on the phone and not actually get on with our check out. In the end, we had to just shout at them. They couldn’t understand a word of what we were actually saying but anger is universal. It was enough and they chivvied up a bit.

Rather curiously, at the airport a white-coated man took our temperature using a rather sci-fi ‘gun’ that he held near our necks for the non-contact temperature test. It struck me as odd because we had undergone no SARS checks on leaving Beijing – which is where the most likely source of infection would be. It was almost as if the plan was to try and prevent SARS getting into Beijing rather than trying to stop it leaving.

As the plane came in to land at Beijing I noticed a lot of snow on the ground. It transpired that there had been a heavy snowfall over night.

 

 

 

Now free to do what we wanted, we wandered along the street from our hotel to Tiananmen Square, the pavement made mountainous by tree roots forcing their way under the paving stones. A couple of students approached us, informing us that they were Marxists. They talked to us for several minutes, eager to practice their English. After the massacre, the students were too frightened to talk to anyone, so clearly the climate is changing. Their objective was to get us to come and see an exhibition of students work in a nearby building. Being free for time, we decided to have a look.

The gallery was in a building adjacent to the Chinese Museum of History. Apparently this is regularly closed for refurbishment, and on opening the historical information has been altered to suit the latest party line.

The quality of the art work was amazing and there were several 4 seasons’ sets. We also learnt that bamboo – which features in many Chinese paintings – is representative of a man’s strength and reliability, or some such nonsense. Mother and I thought this seemed a ridiculous notion but Boyfriend considered it an admirable representation. We had bought in Xi’an 3 artwork pieces containing bamboo which he was now increasingly pleased with.

It seemed to still be quite a novel for the Chinese to see westerners. Mother was aware of a woman excitedly tapping her husband on the shoulder, wanting to point us out to him.

We wandered south from the square, through the south gate and went into the narrow market lanes. These bustled with stalls laden with things that you would expect to carry labels saying ‘Made in China’. There was an enormous amount of noise, loudspeakers calling out the latest deals to passing crowds. It was enormously busy. The people running the stalls would reach out and grab at you, pawing at your arms as you past to try and get your attention or at the very least, get you to slow down and look at their wares. The combination of the crush and tactile sales techniques left little room for any personal space, and I found it increasingly claustrophobic and unpleasant. If you stop, falter or slow down the salesmen surround you, thinking that you must be interested. With a Western face you can never hide. You can never be just another passer by.

 

The red lanterns were topped with snow, and men were out cleaning the snow from everywhere – sweeping it off dustbins, and climbing out of first floor windows to clear the snow off narrow ledges. It was almost as though the snow was dirty, that leaving implied some sort of neglect or bad housekeeping.

 

Through these narrow crowded streets, bicycles and rickshaws forced their way. I noticed the brake system these bicycles had – the brake ran from the front wheel to the pedals along the lower part of the cross bar. To stop, the cyclist would either put his foot on this, of literally reach down and pull at it.

It was by now getting on into the afternoon. We decided that while in Peking (as it formerly was) we ought to have Peking Duck, and made our way to a restaurant recommended in our guide book.

It was a fast food, café style place. We went in and sat amongst the Chinese already there. A waitress came over to take our order for drinks and food. The only food available was roast duck.

Before long a dish of cucumber was put on the table, and we were each given a cardboard container of onions, greaseproof paper wrapped pancakes, a sachet of plum sauce and a tub of roasted duck.

 

It was delicious.

Having consumed it we were then given a cup of thin soup of unspecified flavour. Boyfriend tried it. And pulled a face. Mother and I giggled – yet more dodgy soup. Boyfriend ended up taking to it, but I found it too unpleasant tasting to drink.

We ambled slowly back to the hotel. Spying a narrow street between the shops on the main road, we decided to follow it, and get a feel for the poorer elements of Beijing. It was a cold and bleak alleyway with primitive housing, all surprisingly clean and backed onto hotels for wealthy westerners and tower blocks of blackened windowed flats that the alley residents could only dream of living in.

 

 

We passed a Kodak shop that Boyfriend claimed offered 1 hour film processing, based on the symbol, which looked like a man sitting at a table having a cup of tea while he waited.

Then we walked passed a cake shop and stood outside the window watching a row of girls wearing white coats and face masks, swiftly and beautifully decorate them, making patterns from crystallised fruit and shavings of chocolate. A long hair Chinese peasant was also stood outside, watching, physically salivating at the sight. He stood near us, smelling us, bouncing with excitement about god only knows what.

 

We were aiming for the supermarket that we had visited on our first evening. This time we were there earlier in the evening, and it was considerably busier. Thick plastic slats that were remarkably effective at keeping the cold out covered the entrance. The first part of the shop was almost like a fast food snack area – deep fried trotters and chickens. There were crowds of Chinese people here, purchase a quick after work snack. The smell was amazing, hot and spicy and unmistakably of animal origin.

 

Then we moved on into the shop itself which had separate areas for each different type of thing – one area for drinks, another for fish, a further one for dried food and so on. Each area had a separate counter and till. So, unlike English shops where you get all your shopping together and pay at the end, here you paid as you went round.

As we moved through the shop, the smells altered. Spices, fruit, meat and a very strong smell of fish. The fish counter had a tank of water behind it with some live fish in. On the trays (laid out on a table, no covering, no chilling) were the freshest fish I have ever seen, so fresh that some of them were still in the process of suffocating to death, their mouths opening, gasping for air or water. Although not squeamish, I found it hard to watch.

The meat counter had equivalent horrors – whole quails or chickens (including heads), trotters, lumps of unidentified meat as well as things that could only have been testes and intestines. It seemed that there was no part of any animal that could not in some way be presented as food. The sights and combination of all the different smells started to make me nauseous.

 

The following and final day of the trip it was snowing. Light, dandruffy snow. Our plan for the morning was to see Mao. At breakfast, the restaurant being very full, we were at a table with a Chinese lady. Mother asked if she had seen Mao. ‘Of course’ she effused, almost surprised that we could even ask.

In Tiananmen Square, the queue to see him was immense, but remarkably fast moving. There is no fee to get in. Hundreds of Chinese people were there and apparently his mausoleum is a place of pilgrimage for many.

Flobbing being banned in the square, there was a flobbing bin at the start of the queue. And by the sounds behind me, it was well used. As we filed forwards there was a kiosk where you could buy bouquets of flowers. The queue – as well as moving fast – was also very organised. We stood within our designated area, turning sharp 90º bends. There was no peripheral spillage, no curved corners, no mess of people.

We started to go up the steps into the mausoleum where a sign told us to keep silent and remove hats. The first room we went into was enormous, dominated by a vast white statue of Mao. In front of this was a trough where the floral tributes were left. The cynical part of me wondered if this was emptied, and the bouquets returned to the kiosk to be placed before his statue again and again. In bareheaded silence we filed around the edge of this room into a long corridor behind, and from there into the chamber where Mao lay. The room was dimly lit with guards stood to attention. The middle of the room had been separated of from us using glass walls, and within this glass room lay Mao, in a glass coffin. He looked like a waxwork

The guards tried to keep the crowd moving along. As it was, a man in front of me stopped, and, clutching his hat bowed numerous times, muttering something under his breath. When he finally obeyed the frantic calls of the guards, I noticed him wipe his eyes. Overcome by emotion.

I tried to think of anyone in the West who would have this effect, 27 years after their death. This enormous following and public interest or pilgrimage and the power to still arouse such emotions. It was a cold, snowy Thursday morning and literally hundreds of Chinese had come here to honour Mao. These weren’t tourists. They were the people who lived here. I could think of no one in the West who would ever achieve this. I found it hard to believe that Mao could.

Our next port of call was the Natural History Museum, a mile of so south of Tiananmen Square. The reason for the visit was that while studying our guide books we happened across the following a mention of human exhibits.

The main street heading southwards is large, busy, lined with shops and restaurants. If you know where to look, within some of these shops are entrances to an underground city built in beneath this part of Beijing.

To deviate away from the bustle, pollution and occasional, unexpected moments of appalling smell, as well as for general interest, we walked down one of the many hutongs leading off the main road. This led onto a network of tiny alleyways, only a couple of foot wide, and this space being impeded by boxes, bicycles and such like. Curiously it was also completely silent, even though the noise and flurry of a large main road and busy street were literally a few feet away.

We found the museum. It was a huge, grey building, set back from the road, with a dozen or so fossilised trees set out in front of it.

Finding the human exhibits proved to be rather difficult. We looked at the museum plan, which had a human section, and went there. The room consisted of a series of extremely graphic pictures of sexual disorders, and empty display cases. There had clearly been things in these cases, and we wondered if the human exhibits had been removed.  What was a little odd were the pictures designed to show the puberty development of boys and girls. Instead of having a picture of them just standing there, these photos seemed to have been taken from soft porn magazines. 

We wandered around the rest of that floor, but there was nothing. It was by complete chance that we decided to go up to the top floor. The plan indicated that there was nothing of interest up there. Instead there was a room full of bodies and body parts in formaldehyde. The storage was appalling. The lids were not firmly attached to many of the formaldehyde jars, and a huge ‘coffin’ in the middle of the room, containing a woman’s body, had condensation on the inside of the lid. As a result the liquid was cloudy, and behind the glass screens there must have been an unimaginable smell.

There were three whole people, a woman whose abdomen had been cut away to show her internal organs, and two standing men, who had been flayed – except for fingertips and genitals. The curious thing was that all of them had their heads covered. The woman was also wearing gloves and socks. It made the bodies seem the result of a ritual killing rather than death from some other cause.

 

There were also a number of children as well as foetuses. One child was the proverbial dickhead, being female but with a large penis growing between its eyes and out of its forehead. There was a child’s head, with all the flesh removed from its mouth so that it resembled some horrific permanently grinning monster.  There was a child’s arm, white, crumbling. Mother and I wondered if it was a burns victim. The information was all in Chinese – presumably not many westerners come to see this.

There were also pictures of abnormalities – Siamese twins, women who have also grown penises, and so on. Another oddity was that although these sexual disorders were shown on huge colour photographs, a picture of an enormously fat lady had her vagina blacked out. The fat lady caused amusement to the dozens of children who suddenly poured into the room. She was excessively obese by western standards, and for the Chinese, who are a nation of thin people; it was an amusing and rare sight.

We were surprised that the children were in there – and not at all bothered by what they saw. Perhaps this is why they are such a hard nation, by being exposed to such things as youngsters, not being protected from all the horrors that life can hold.

 Before leaving we went to see the aquarium. This was in the basement, and steps led down to it from the ground floor. Next to these steps were a series of fish tanks, with water cascading down from the tank at the top, through the middle ones, to the bottom. Except that large quantities of the water left the tanks, and splashed all over the steps. Miraculously the goldfish had managed to stay in the tanks.

The aquarium contained a series of small tanks, glass fronted and a wall behind, the water dirty. The paint on the wall was crumbling. There was nothing there, bar the fish, no weeds, no plants, no stones. No food. Many of the tanks were far too small for the enormous fish they tried to house. We watched an eel circling around, continually, wanting to obey his natural instinct to hide but having nowhere to hide.

 

Another tank had several fish in it, one of whom was probably soon to die as it couldn’t stay upright very well. It was enough to inspire feelings of animal rights in you.

We decided to use the toilets before leaving. These were in an outside building, gents on one side, ladies on the other. The smell inside the building was enough to alert me to the potential horrors.

There were a series of cubicles, the division about 3 feet high. No doors. Another lady was already in there. Having seen more of her than I had intended, I went to a cubicle further along the row. It isn’t odd for a man to do these things in full view of another man, stood next to each other. For me, it was the first time I had negotiated such things with a stranger to my left, not looking, but knowing what I was doing, aware of when I was standing and crouching down.

 

Mother, having somehow not noticed where we went and wandered off elsewhere, found us as we came out. I probably should have mentioned the details of the cubicle arrangement to her. Instead, she told me the experience she had endured when the party of school children poured in there just as she was getting down to business. In China there is no such thing as privacy, so they would think nothing of standing and staring. Wouldn’t think it rude. Fortunately, she seemed unscathed and rather amused by the experience.

 We headed off west, into the Muslim area, in search of the mosque. Here again were numerous side alleys leading to dark, narrow passages crammed with bikes and junk, and tumbledown dwellings, but it was different to Xi’an. Here it had a much greater feel of urban squalor. There wasn’t the bustle and friendly atmosphere. It was considerably quieter, people were dour faced.

At a bus stop a Chinese girl, admittedly one of the larger ones I have seen, but certainly not fat, was looking at the reflection of her bum in the window of a nearby shop, and patting her stomach as though this would in some way make a difference.

We eventually found the mosque – a large, bright green building. Unfortunately though, we couldn’t go in.

Now at a loose end, we decided to gently amble back towards central Beijing. We had made the decision not to visit the Summer Palace preferring instead to wander the city and get a real feel for the place – and also, we had seen a lot of imperial buildings.

It was still snowing lightly as we wandered north through the Muslim area. Partly to get out of the cold, partly because it was past lunchtime and partly because it was there, we went into a restaurant on the way. The restaurant was in fact closed – with a few remaining diners finishing their meals, but as we were westerners, they let us in. A Chinese person we spoke to back in England said that if spoke Chinese out there, then he was treated like any other Chinaman. If he claimed he could only speak English then he was treated with enormous respect. Perhaps it was based on the notion of westerners having money.

The restaurant obviously rarely had English guests – it was, after all, off the beaten track. The menu was entirely in Chinese (although there was a smattering of pictures to help us along) and the waiting staff understood very little English at all.

We ordered a couple of items from the pictures, and then dug out a piece of paper on which Helen had written some food items. This included the special fried rice we were particularly fond of, as well as a lamb dish. Boyfriend had also added onto this his own Chinese writing for spring rolls.

The waitress understood perfectly – even Boyfriend’s writing. The problem was that she then though we might not be able to speak Chinese, but we could read and write it, and hastily wrote down a few things (in Chinese) to show us. There was no way we could explain to her that we had absolutely no idea what she was writing.

Whatever it was the Helen had written down as being a lamb dish was incredible. Chunks of lamb cooked in something very spicy and served with a mountain of coriander. We also had our favourite rice as well as some very nice spring rolls. But the real treat was a salad. A glass bowl filled with green leaves, radishes, nuts and baby plum tomatoes covered in probably the most delicious dressing in the world. Despite eating pretty much all of it, we never fully identified what was in that dressing.

 Mother had some tea, and asked what sort it was. This in itself was an ordeal, trying to get the waitress to understand that we knew it was ‘char’ but wanted to know what sort, and no it wasn’t that we wanted another pot. Eventually we established that it was Wah char – or something that sounds like that.

Having feasted (by now the restaurant had turned off the lights and heating) we made our way onwards, and the waiting staff ran after us to return the tip we had left for them.

We continued through the hutongs, passing men sitting in the street playing board games, children playing, a building housing one of the public toilets that serviced the nearby homes. A bicycle went passed us, trolley backed of course. But on the back of this were a pile of skinned animal carcasses and a boy perched precariously on the end whose job seemed to involve lying over these to prevent any from falling off. How the entire nation didn’t suffer continual food poisoning I will never know.

We eventually came into the back end of the market streets we had been to the previous day, and decided to do a bit more shopping. My main concern in fact, was to find a loo, and a café area beneath one of the shops seemed to offer hope. There was indeed a ladies and a gents. One cubicle each, next to each other. Unfortunately the ladies was occupied, and my need being great, I decided to use the gents. In the meantime, the female occupant appeared and Mother went into the ladies. I heard great shrieks from the adjoining cubicle. It seemed that the previous occupant had had rather unpleasant diarrhoea and that this had quite literally splashed everywhere. As these particular toilets had no flush facility (surprisingly, some of the ‘holes in the floor’ do have a flush) the damage would only be washed away gradually by the future occupants.

Mother found it one of the more horrific lavatorial experiences she has had.

We found a tea shop - an amazing place, the shelves on the walls filled with large glass jars of tea. Mother asked for some Wah char, and the assistant poured 500g out onto the scales, then swiftly and expertly wrapped it up into a paper parcel. It was incredibly cheap. Once back home, she regretted not getting more.

It was getting dark now, and in the middle of the narrow streets, people had set up pots in which they were cooking (and selling) sweet corn and sweet potato.

Boyfriend was keen to get Stepchild the Elder and Stepchild the Younger stamps with their name in Chinese, and we found a stall where we could get this done. While waiting for them to be carved, Mother bought a couple of items from the stall. Boyfriend did as well, and started to barter with the girl. Mother let him know that she had already tried that, and the girl would not be budged. At which point Boyfriend then managed to knock down the price – the girl intimated she had dropped the price as he was a sexy man. Mother let forth and appropriate exclamation and then ensued a most bizarre series of purchases, of quite frankly anything, just to try and get the girl to accept a lower figure. While Boyfriend stood behind Mother encouraging the girl to keep the price fixed.  That morning Mother had bought another bag to take the burden of the vast amount of things she now needed to get home. The bag was now full with today’s purchases.

We briefly glimpsed Tiananmen Square by night, the temples not flood lit, but with strings of bulbs running over their roofs. It was cold, clear, bright and beautiful. A man was standing next to some railings, one leg on top of the railings doing some end of day stretches.

Back at the hotel we packed, and settled down for our last nigh there. The following morning the check out was completely painless, but getting a taxi to the airport was a little more interesting. There were dozens of taxis there, but they seemed to keep all sorts of stuff in their boot – leaving no room for our bulging suitcases. We rejected one taxi for this very reason and made it very clear to the porter that we did not intend to take two.

Eventually finding a vehicle that we could all cram into we headed out of Beijing to the airport.

Leaving the country was considerably more difficult than getting in. Having checked in our luggage we had to complete SARS contact forms, and hand these in. Then, before going through passport control we had to complete another form – which more or less summarised all the information already provided on our passports and tickets – and hand this in at passport control.

The thing was, just to make it additionally fun; there was no clue at all about any of these forms. The SARS one we did out of our own initiative. The repetitive permission to leave the country form was nowhere obvious, and almost everyone (us included) was turned away from passport control because we had omitted this form.

The flight was at 11.30. I hadn’t really appreciated that, with the global time differences, it would be 11.30 pretty much the whole back to Frankfurt. The sun would be there in our eyes, stubbornly staying at late morning, for the next 10 hours. I think we were served lunch three times. It was impossible to sleep as; being daylight the whole way, the plane never really ‘went to bed’ as it had on the way out.

We arrived at Frankfurt and changed planes. Clearly some sort of emergency was going on, as the German airport staff were stopping and questioning all the Chinese people as they left the plane – which had stopped away from the terminal so that no one could escape.

On the flight back to England we were fed again – a late afternoon snack. The sky was beautiful, pink with fluffy clouds and I watched as we went over the French coastline, across the Channel, and flew down the Thames.

We flew right over the top of London, which in this day and age of terrorism surprised me. It was amazing how much was recognisable from up there, St Pauls, the London Eye, Kensington Park, Battersea and so on. There were lights as far as the eye could see, in every direction that I was able to look. This was London, and it looked resplendent. It looked like home. It looked like somewhere I was proud to be. And I suppose that really that was all you needed. It didn’t matter what history you had or what politics you lived under. You just needed a pride in your country. And the people we had met were proud of China.

 

NOTES

The above is a true story. Some of the information about places visited is sourced from a variety of guide books. The author maintains rights over all other content.