Beijing
is turning out to be much more demanding than the river cruise. Our
day starts with the mandatory wake-up call at 06:30, quickly followed
by Death By Buffet at 07:00. Then it’s onboard the bus at 08:00,
and we won't be back until after dinner! Today starts with a visit
to the Pearl Market, followed by the Temple of Heaven and lunch at
the lake. Then we’re off to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden
City, followed by dinner and back to the hotel at 8 pm. Yikes!
The
Pearl Market is exactly that. Big market. Lots of pearls. Nuff
said. The Temple of Heaven, on the other hand, is a very cool place.
It sits in the middle of a VERY large park which is heavily used by
the locals, it’s a place for them to play games and fly kites and
knit and chatter and eat. We walked through an open arcade that was
at least a kilometre long that was full of people doing all of the
above. Well maybe not kite flying, but everything else at least
twice.
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| The arcade in the park, Temple of Heaven. |
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Where do you do Tai Chi with a sword?
Anywhere you like! |
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| These guys are playing for blood. |
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| Writing with a mop? |
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| These folks are playing hacky-sack with a bird-thing. |
Finally
we got to the Temple of Heaven. It was about 30C and we had 40
minutes to explore the place, 30 minutes of which was spent in a
shady little shop that sold cold soft drinks! The Temple is about
400 years old, has been rebuilt umpteen times (people seem to like
burning it down), and is the place in which the local
Flying-Sky-God-People bless the harvest every spring. Seems to work
more often than not, as they are up to 1.4 billion!
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| The Temple of Heaven |
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| Much more popular today - The Snack Bar! |
Lunch
in the park was in a restaurant in, of all things, a park. The
restaurant has a glass wall that looks out on a beautiful setting, it
was very restful allowing for the fact that every place in China
sounds like the inside of a turkey barn what with all the shouting
that passes for normal conversation, it had air conditioning (!) and
the food was excellent as usual.
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| The lake from our restaurant. |
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| A pretty little gazebo. |
Then
we were off to Tiananmen Square. It is the largest square in the
world and is rather daunting on a hot afternoon. All of the main
access points are via tunnels under the main streets which have
security setups similar to an airport. We got about halfways through
a ten-minute wait and found out that the new Chairman was making a
surprise visit that afternoon, which meant that we were officially
out of luck. Rats. Charley, not to be put off, led us around for a
bit until he came up with an almost-crosswalk on a busy six-lane
street that was only mildly suicidal and quicker than you can say
Mao’s Your Uncle we were in!
Needless
to say we couldn’t even scratch the surface of the place in an hour
but we got the Cook’s Tour, we rubber-necked, and our feet have
officially smooched the square. The place is so big, and so full of
buildings and monuments and things, that it’s really hard to get a
photo that does it justice. One new thing that was really cool; they
have just finished putting in two 100’ x 12’ high-def digital
video screens (outside, at ground level) in the square, and they show travel
videos from around China.
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| Now THAT is a heroic statue. |
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| The People's Flowerbed. Really cool topiary. |
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This guy keeps people from stealing the monument.
So far, so good... |
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| Happy tourists. |
Then
it was on to the Forbidden City. This place is huge, which is why
they don’t call it the Forbidden Village or the Forbidden Town I
guess. The towers at the entrance are each the size of a good-size
castle in Europe. Many of the buildings in the public area are
accessible, and then there is a private city behind everything where
the nomenclatura hung out. We had to walk through that to get to our
bus, it was probably a mile or more. Big place. The private area
was large enough that when one of the emperors had a number of
squabbling concubines (we’re talking knife-in-the-liver squabbling)
he was able to keep them and their retinues in separate parts of the
City so that they never saw each other. That big. We toured the
enclave of the Dowager Empress and Charley gave us the lowdown on how
a poor-but-beautiful concubine managed to get knocked up by her
Emperor whence she got an immediate promotion, then soon after the Emperor
died and her son was too young to rule so they made her a Regent.
Things kept going her way and at the end she ruled China for many
years. I can’t even begin to tell you about Chinese history,
partly because I don’t know any but mostly because it’s a huge
story about a society that is much more byzantine than the
Byzantines. Chinese history makes the Europeans look like a bunch of
yokels squabbling over a pork chop. I pretty much gave up trying to
keep track of who did what to whom and just laid back and enjoyed the
ambience. Many of the buildings have been converted into museums,
and house truly world-class collections of lacquerware, carvings,
statuary, etc.
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Someone built a garden out of stone in the back forty.
Probably five acres…. |
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A glimpse of the moat which surrounds the city.
It's wide enough that small craft warnings apply. |
When
we finally collected ourselves at the bus it was late, we were hot,
and it was time for dinner. Charley gave us a big warning about
hawkers and panhandlers and pickpockets in this area as it is a
chokepoint and a nice place to pick off gwai lo, but sadly there were none at
home that day. Did I mention that the bus has a beer cooler?
Electric, right beside the driver, holds about two dozen beers and
water, a buck a bottle. I love this country.
Anyway,
dinner was great as usual. In the morning we were all hot to explore
the hotel pools and spa, but now our feet hurt so much from about 10
miles of walking that all we want to do is bunk out in preparation
for tomorrow. The Wall!
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