I heard Beijing described as the London of China, in as much as it is spread over a wide distance and has lots of fog – although Beijing’s fog is in fact smoky pollution and London never really gets foggy at all. By comparison, Shanghai is similar to New York as there are many more skyscrapers and the city is much more condensed (and presumably they have a baseball team full of wankers as well).
I only had a day and a half to explore, which is like having a week in London – clearly not enough time to do the Full Monty. Brent hooked me up with a decent hotel about a 20-minute walk from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. For 500 years, the Forbidden City was home for 24 successive emperors who lived there with their wives and concubines, with very little, if any, contact with their subjects. I chose to walk instead of getting a taxi in order to get a feel of the city. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bad idea as I arrived too late to get in. Therefore, I think it should be renamed the Forbidden-after-4pm City. The ten-meter high walls and 50-meter moat did, however, look impressive from the outside.
Now, most of you will have heard of Tiananmen Square. It’s the biggest public square in the world, but it was brought to the world’s attention back in 1989 when it was filled with an estimated 1 million protesting students. They were demanding democratic reforms from the government following a crackdown on freedom of speech. The government responded by sending in their negotiating team on tanks dressed as soldiers. Estimates vary, but the number of people massacred is in the thousands.
Walking amongst the hundreds, probably thousands, of people in the Square on Easter Sunday, it was hard to imagine the carnage that had occurred there. Families flew kites, tourists took pictures, beggars begged, and several extremely annoying students tried to engage me in conversation in order to practice their English and to invite me to see their artwork. One particularly toothy and persistent kid wanted me to hear him play the guitar. When I declined, the cheeky little git wanted to know where I was staying and when I would be leaving. I almost wished I had a tank. Just kidding.
As you may know, Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics in what must have been some world class bribery. If they introduce spitting and how-many-people-can-you-fit-on-one-bike competitions (the most I saw was 4, and they weren’t midgets) then I think China will get at least two golds. Subsequently, new buildings are going up quicker than Nasdaq in the nineties (but let’s hope they stay up longer). There was a massive new mall called Oriental Plaza, full of western stores and even a restaurant called BlueEye Fish and Chips. I shit you not. This is about as PC as having a shop called Charlie Chinks’ House of Dog on your street corner. What with the heat, the pollution, the innumerable bikes, the people, the traffic, mental taxi drivers and all that saliva, it should make for an interesting Olympiad. You just won’t find me in attendance.
My final day was spent at the Great Wall (this isn’t such an unusual experience as it sounds, as there is a Great Wall just around the corner from me in Bexleyheath: they do a fantastic kung po chicken). The day started off a bit sadly. On the bus I met some folks from Canada who informed me of the passing of the Queen Mum (God bless ‘er). I know she was older than dirt and had been unwell, but it still came as a bit of a shock. There must be something about me being on buses in strange places and royal deaths. I was on an old school bus in the middle of Alaska in 1997 when I heard that the French had killed Princess Di, and here I was in Beijing learning about another (I don’t remember where I was when Princess Margaret popped off but she didn’t really count, which, unfortunately, rather sums up her life). In the future I will try to limit my exotic bus travel.
We drove about 50 miles to the Wall. Unfortunately, we went to a very touristy spot that had been completely rebuilt and renovated in the 1980s, but it was still an amazing sight. I climbed up steep, steep steps for about 45 minutes to a watchtower, seeing the wall snake out over the mountains into the distance. It was rather tough going, but all those hours at the gym seemed to pay off. It was amusing to watch busloads of foreign fatties stagger out of their air-conditioned buses with their cameras and backpacks, get half way up the first of several steep sections, only to sit down in exhaustion. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are still there. (It’s interesting to note that I didn’t see any ‘Chunks’ – fat Chinese people – probably due to a combination of their diet and non-stop cycling and spitting.) The only downer was the number of tacky stalls and aggressive selling tactics of the vendors. Spotting my round eyes and pale features, they would get in my face to try to sell some piece of shit most sane people would never consider buying. But, of course, some idiots did. Next time I hope to go somewhere more remote and clamber over parts of the original Wall without being harassed to buy ‘I Climbed the Wall’ postcards/t-shirts/hats/key rings/dog turds/toothpick holders/certificates, etc.
I was grateful to make it onto the time machine safely the next day. Reaching an altitude of about 10 feet and seeing Beijing disappear from view under the smog, I was looking forward to getting back to 2002 and London. All in all it was a wonderful experience, both professionally and personally. China will certainly not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you have an open mind and the courage to try something a little bit out of the ordinary then you should seriously consider a trip east. And I know some cool gangsters.
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