Intrepid Travelers In China (6 of 6)

No visit to China is complete without including Beijing. Here we were awed by visits to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, now called the Palace Museum. Thousands of people pass Mao Zedong’s body, which is embalmed and lies in a crystal box in his mausoleum in Tiananmen Square, but the lines were too long for us and we skipped it.

Beijing, like Shanghai, has a good subway system, and lots of inexpensive buses, so it was easy to get around. The Summer Palace was beautiful, and huge. Unfortunately, the air quality was so poor the day we were there that the views over Kunming Lake were less than spectacular.

One of our favorite excursions was to the Temple of Heaven. Here the Emperor used to go yearly to pray for a good harvest. One of the buildings is surrounded by a rounded wall (called the Echo Wall) that is so precisely shaped that when Elaine stood on one side of the inner circle behind a building, and I stood on the other side behind another building, and she spoke quietly, I could hear her perfectly!

The buildings are round, beautiful and were constructed without nails. They are in a huge park where thousands of people go everyday to do tai chi, ballroom dancing, and play cards, chess and checkers. Because of the population density, Chinese people are rarely alone, and always are either working, playing or socializing with everyone around them. Everyone looks out for their neighbors, and extended families living together are common.

In every part of China the people were warm and welcoming. Even in this large city, where many foreign people visit, we were warmly treated by the Chinese people. They tried to give us their seats on buses, they tried to speak to us in English if they knew any, and small children smiled at us on subways, waving and blowing kisses to us as we stood in the car.

About 50 miles north of Beijing is the Great Wall. This 3750 mile long symbol of China was built over a 2000 year period and at one time was garrisoned by over a million soldiers. It still didn’t keep Ghengis Khan’s Mongol army from taking over China in the early 1200’s.

We went to a section that is infrequently visited at Mutianyu, where we hiked up a moderately steep path to get to it. We were supposed to walk 2-3 hours on the wall and exit at Simitai, but it was misty and raining off and on so we only spent an hour or so walking on the wall and taking pictures. Unfortunately, because we were the only people there, all the vendors followed us and we found this to be very bothersome.

The next day, which was sunny, we returned to the wall at Simitai, one of the steepest sections of the wall, and explored some more of it. It is truly an incredible experience to see such a structure twisting and turning its way across the mountains on the ridgetops, and think about what it took to build and maintain it.

In between visits to the wall, we stayed in a town called Chengde, where we visited two of the most unusual temples we had seen. One of them, called Putuozongsheng, is a smaller replica of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the home of the Dalai Lama. The other temple, Puningsi, had many prayer wheels outside it, and inside a Buddha-type wooden statue which was about 50 feet tall and had over 20 pairs of arms, each holding a different musical instrument. Both temples had beautiful grounds and intricate architecture, especially the roof lines and the carved figures on them.

After the trip to the wall, we ended our tour back in Beijing. This city, which used to be called Peking, is justly famous for a delicious dish called Peking duck. Air is blown between the duck’s skin and then boiling water. The skin is covered with a malty solution after which the duck is hung and then roasted in a fruitwood oven. The meat is eaten with chopped scallions, wrapped in a small, thin pancake which has been spread with a sweet bean or plum sauce. Yummy. We had this delicious meal, our group farewell dinner, in a small home courtyard which is used as a restaurant in one of the oldest hutongs in Beijing.

Hutongs are old neighborhoods where the single-story brick houses and shops are all connected together. Unfortunately, they are rapidly being torn down and replaced with high rise buildings that can house many more people. Just walking through this area to get to the restaurant was interesting since so much of daily life occurs out on the streets because indoor space is at a premium. You see people doing food preparation, cutting hair, selling birds, fixing bicycles, repairing cars, all out on the sidewalks and streets.

Later on we walked back to Tiananmen Square and were dazzled by the lights on all the buildings, amused by all the kites being flown and sold, and accosted by vendors to buy postcards and other tourist mementos.

The day before we left, we were shopping for a few gifts and stopped at a McDonald’s to purchase some little Ronald McDonald backpacks for my granddaughters. There, two teenage girls came up to us and shyly asked us in English where we were from, how long we had been in China, and what we thought of their country. We spoke with them for a short time and then, as they prepared to leave, one of them said, “I am so excited. I can understand you, and you can understand me!”

Needless to say, everything we learned on this trip was helping us to understand the Chinese people and their culture. Hopefully, the impression we left of Westerners was a good one and by visiting them, we have helped the Chinese understanding of the West in a small way.

China is truly an amazing destination.