Peking out from under our woolly hats

Beijing is not a stunning city, but it has some really world-class sights. If you came here to visit the Forbidden City, Great Wall and the Summer Palace, your trip would be well worth while. But... come at a warmer time of year!

When we were planning this trip, Martin said to me, "You do realise how cold it's going to be in Beijing?"
Um... not really, no. A bit above zero, right? Sadly Martin did not go on to point out that we might be "lucky" enough to get clear, sunny days with accompanying very cold evenings, or that the wind can cut through you like a cliche. We don't have winter coats with us so we are relying on layers - I'm wearing 5 most days. This works well for the bits covered by layers, but less well for hands (one layer) and face (zero layers).

Unfortunately this has probably coloured my view of Beijing a bit because it's just too cold to wander round finding the nice bits. I bet it's a great place to come in spring. There are lots of attractive parks and outdoor activities, although the city itself feels very grey - partly because it's a mix of traditional buildings (which are predominantly grey) and 70s blocks (mostly grey), broken up by the odd ultra-modern glass number.

Anyway, we started off with Tiananmen Square - it's very big, there's quite strict security for locals but apparently less so for Westerners as we are repeatedly waved through while locals are patted down. It's very big but the positioning of the buildings stops you getting a sense of one huge square. We also pop in to visit Mao, who is looking very orange under the lights and, though we are rushed through, much less impressive than Ho Chi Minh. Although I think Ho had just had his annual spruce-up whereas Mao is due for his next month. I wouldn't like it if you compared me, spruced up and ready to go at 9am, with me looking dishevelled shortly before bedtime after a long day lying down.

 We spent most of the first full day - over 5 hours, somehow, though it didn't feel it - in the Forbidden City. Which is amazing. And huge - over 1 million sq meters, 800 buildings, 9000 rooms. And packed with stuff. Just when you think you might be in danger of getting a bit bored of "same same"*, you turn the corner and find, say, a really cool 3-storey theatre with lots of ropes, trapdoors etc.

* Did I ever mention this phrase? It gets used all the time in Cambodia and Vietnam. We first encountered it when we saw T-shirts that say "Same same but different". You can buy these ironically identical T-shirts everywhere in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Up the middle are big courtyards and major buildings, such as The Hall of Supreme Harmony, whose harmony is spoiled a bit by all the people jostling to see into it.

Along either side are smaller buildings and gardens. Some are now museums - there's a gallery dedicated to fantastically ornate clocks from China and elsewhere - time your visit for 11 or 2 to see some of the ones with clever mechanisms being demonstrated in action.

 And you can also see all manner of imperial Chinese artefacts in a range of types and styles. Really good stuff for the most part.

 At the far (north) end is an impressive rock garden, augmented by piles of frozen snow. And when we exited, we nipped up a hill to a pagoda overlooking the Forbidden City - excellent view (below).

The next day we headed for the Great Wall. There are various sections - we opted for the most-visited part, at Badaling.* This is known for being over-crowded and full of pesky hawkers, but I'm pleased to report that neither was an issue in January - very few people are stupid enough to go then. Because it's cold. Icy, bitter cold. And the wind is evil. If I took my glove off for 10 seconds, in a windy stretch, I started to lose feeling in my hand. The wind can propel you up steep slopes. At one point it blew my hat off - I managed a brilliant catch behind my head.

 But it's worth it. We had clear blue skies and great visibility. I hadn't realised quite how much the wall undulates, very steeply in places, with little to no flat as it maintains the same height above the mountainous ground; or how much it twists back on itself into sharp S-shapes as it follows ridges.

* Another hot issue is whether you want to see restored, touristified wall, or more "authentic" wall. I think I'm happy to see wall that manages a reasonable approximation of how it would have looked in its prime. And if it's a little easier to walk on, in this weather, that's no bad thing. I have nothing to compare it to but really enjoyed Badaling.

The other issue about the wall is how to get there. Go on a cheap tour and you may find yourself being led on a succession of public buses. Even worse, you may be taken on a tour of lots of shops, and a hospital, before eventually getting to the wall. This happened to our German friend from Shanghai - apparently they diagnose various conditions and try to sell you Chinese medicines! I'm sure they would have had a field day diagnosing our many past health problems so glad we avoided that.

On the way back we stopped off at the Ming Tombs, where 13 emperors are buried. This is not a must see - the most ornate, Chang Ling, is in the style of the Forbidden City and has little of novelty (though it would be impressive enough if you hadn't already been spoiled by the FC).

Ding Ling is the only one that has been excavated, and is impressive in a rather foreboding way - you walk down many sets of modern stairs, and find yourself in a massive marble-lined corridor. There's not that much to see, and it's not ornate, but the sheer scale of the marble vaults is impressive. They feel more 20th century than, um, maybe 17th (I forget). Ideal setting for a creepy Doctor Who story.

On Saturday we headed for the Olympic Green. I must say, the Bird's Nest is much less impressive up close - a mess of grey metal strips with infrastructure showing through. The Water Cube fares a bit better.

Amusing to see the accompanying exhibit which bigs up everything as much as possible, e.g. More Olympic medals were presented in the Bird's Nest than in any other stadium in Olympic history, they used more environmentally-friendly light bulbs, etc... Still, I must admit that they did put up a lot of imaginative, well-designed stadia, so I won't begrudge them too much. (The Bird's Nest is now a big white elephant that doesn't provide much income - I think it's been used twice for sporting events since the Games - and they're using it as some kind of ski slope for the winter. Take note, London.)

We also took in two of the major temples. I think we've been a bit spoilt by the Forbidden City, because all the temples are in the same style. But I have to give props to the Lama Temple - just when I thought it wasn't going to impress me, it pulled out the tallest Buddha I have ever seen. Four big storeys. Norris McWhirter testifies that it is 18m tall and carved from a single block of sandalwood. Really neck-craningly impressive - it looks much taller than the building did from the outside. (Sadly no photos allowed, but in a novel twist, you get a free little disc of photos with your ticket - I must dig this out.)

The Dongyue Temple sounded great from the guidebook - it's dedicated to a Taoist Hades with rooms such as the Department for Wandering Ghosts or the Department for Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death - but in practice it's a lot of rooms of very lame statues with borderline illegible descriptions, and the temple buildings are fairly same-same.

We finished the day with drinks and dinner in Sanlitun, which used to be a famous bar area but was demolished and rebuilt for the Olympics. One side of the street is now expensive Western shops, and the other is identikit-looking neon bars - a Communist-approved area of perfect capitalism. Fortunately we avoided this street for a drink in the third incarnation of The Tree, and had dinner in Bookworm surrounded by books - both places had a bit of personality.

For our last day we went to the [new] Summer Palace, NW of the city, which is normally a park around an enormous lake. At the moment it's a park around an enormous frozen lake.

Like the Forbidden City, this is a huge place with beautiful buildings and some great treasures from imperial history, and again just when you think you've seen the whole range something new pops up (this time, a bronze pagoda).

The Buddhist Fragrance Pavilion is lovely and gives a great view over the whole grounds, and the Long Corridor is also a highlight, with over 1,000 painted scenes on its ceiling.

I spotted one from Monkey, as in Journey To The West for Damon Albarn/Jamie Hewlett fans (some are better preserved/restored than others, but the place is so huge that a restoration cycles must take years if not decades):

Just for my own reference, the mythical beast inside the gates is a Kylun. This info will be useful at some point to caption a photo.

 A Kylun

Once again, we spent most of the day here, and time flew by.

We tried to make it to the Temple of Heaven but got there too late so could only see it above the walls. It looked very good - we should perhaps have prioritised it above the Lama and Dongyue Temples. While there we were also attacked by pollution - big gusts of wind blew up a smog storm around us. This was the only time we really noticed pollution (you can see the odd chimney puffing out white smoke in the city centre) - air quality was otherwise ok.

Getting around is cheap - a flat fare of 20 pence on the newly expanded subway system (it can be a bit crowded and some of the interchanges take ages, so some journeys are slow. In practice we frequently had to change 2 or 3 times. But with traffic being bad you can see why it's popular, and it's modern and clean). Taxis are cheap but a touch confusing - some bright spark has decided to add 1 Yuan to all fares while petrol prices are high, but rather than include it on the meter you have to guess what's going on when the driver wants more money.

Some Chinese customs are less welcome. Jostling and pushing are traditional alternatives to queuing, and spitting is performance art. Generally the people we've dealt with have been more sullen and less polite or professional than their Japanese counterparts. Don't take this as a big criticism, though, it just reminds me of London...

My favourite site for jostling is on the underground - everyone dives for the doors as soon as the train leaves the stop before theirs, and there can be decent rucks for seats. At one stop a woman with a 4-year-old girl stood up to get off at the next stop but her girl stood up then lingered by the seat. Another woman who wanted the seat pushed her away!

In fact there's plenty of bad behaviour and little sign of a fearsome communist regime. The locals ignore No Photography signs and climb over barriers to be photographed on top of old statues. We haven't seen any signs of crime though, or the counterfeit notes that are apparently rife, and it feels pretty safe (though it's too cold to be out late!).

The food has also been a bit disappointing. Flavours can be nice, but as a general guide - if you like sucking tiny bits of meat off bone, order chicken; if you like bacon fat, order pork; and if you like oil, order vegetables. (If you like complaining, write a blog...)  Dishes arrive in an apparently random order but the rice is always last - confusing for those of us used to mixing rice with main courses. There are also some hilarious English menus - babelfish has a lot to answer for. Unfortunately I didn't get to write any dishes down as the waiting staff tend to hover while you read the menu, but my favourite dish involved cigarettes. (I assume it was a smoked meat, but who knows?)

Edit: I've tried to keep this entry pretty much as I wrote it at the time, but looking back, I think we didn't give Beijing as much credit as it deserved.  It's not quite full-on-tourist-ready but the top three attractions are world-class, as good as anything we saw anywhere, and I'm really glad we went.  At the right time of year (spring or autumn), it would be an amazing to spend, say, 5 days, and we're told that Shanghai is good too. 

I also forgot to mention the really cool courtyard hotel we stayed in, which was full of Chinese opulence in microcosm: