Day 11

I arrived at the Beijing airport and grabbed a cab to the hotel. The scenery was much more interesting than in Shanghai or Nanjing -- large fields, horse-drawn carts, a long straight highway. Since there is no real skyline to Beijing (all buildings are relatively short), it was hard to tell if the cab driver was taking me to a hotel close to the center of town or not.

We eventually got on a freeway (which was also used by the horse carts!) but turned off before anything that looked like the center of town, although a large temple loomed in the distance.

When we started driving through some very depressed streets -- one story boxes built with stone or clay or something, I really began to worry. Then we turned down an alley, or hutong, where the standard of living was even worse! But then, almost out of nowhere, came this hotel. Small and inside pretty average, but from the outside and in the midst of that neighborhood, it seemed absolutely beautiful.

I dropped off my suitcase and took a cab to the CITS office, located in one of the hotels fairly close to the center of town. Unless you were buying train tickets, the place was relatively calm and uncrowded. I bought tickets for the Ming Tombs/Great Wall tour the next day and inquired about tickets to the acrobatics show, at which point the woman pointed out a theater on the map and told me it would take about 1/2 hour to walk there. So off I trotted -- but in the wrong direction! Twenty minutes later I was on ChangAn Avenue (thank god for pinyan). After getting my bearings straight, I decided that the best course of action would be to take in Tianaman Square and the Forbidden Palace first, and then attempt to find the acrobatics hall. So that's what I did.

I walked to the Square and took some pictures but opted out of the museum and Mao's mummified body (just as I had done with Lenin in Red Square).

The Forbidden Palace was really interesting, mostly because of its size and the number of buildings -- they just kept coming and coming. Also, it was my first real view of Chinese architecture -- the Pagoda-like style, painted, multi-layered eaves, and carved figures on top. And all the buildings are painted red (is this a recent development?). Many buddhas and the like -- temple, receiving rooms, another temple, and so forth.

Coming out of the palace on the north side, I crossed the street nad entered Jingian Park, which had a tall hill with a building on top. The climb up the steps was no simple feat, due in large part to the heat and humidity, but the view was marvelous. One could look down over the Forbidden City and all of Beijing. On my way down I was stopped by a Chinese man who wanted to show me a "very famous tree" in the park. It turned out to be a tiny little thing from which someone was hanged -- the last emperor maybe. But then, I'm told, it's not the REAL tree, but one just like it. The REAL tree was chopped down.

I was going to walk back through the city but being incredibly tired I grabbed a quick cab to the Beijing Hotel for a cold coke.

written by  shoshtrvls on August 11, 1987 from Beijing, China
from the travel blog: Around the World (1987)
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