Asia > China > Beijing > Beijing > Articles > Beijing - Rich past still holds sway in capital of contrasts

It has been 20 years now since China first opened its charms to the world. Today, virtually everywhere in the Middle Kingdom - from mysterious Xinjiang in the remote west, to the frontier town of Harbin in the far north, and sunny Hainan Island in the deep south - the Chinese have dug out old tombs, dusted off long forgotten ruins, and preserved once ignored historical structures.

Travellers can now go far beyond the major cities to see the awesome gorges of the Yangzi, the towering peaks of Tibet, and even the high grasslands of Mongolia.

Yet, through it all, the city of Beijing is still the single most popular destination for the modern day Marco Polo. To visit China without seeing its stately capital is akin to touring France without pausing in Paris.

Certainly, Beijing is far greener than it was in 1980. Since then a virtual forest of trees has been planted along most expressways and major arteries, adding a welcome touch of green to the capital’s previously drab, dune-coloured appearance.

In recent years hundreds of hutung (alleys) have been torn down and replaced with large apartment complexes, housing estates and high-rise commercial blocks. The result is a vast metropolis encircled by a series of ring roads which seem to go on forever.

Just when one thinks one’s reached Beijing’s boundary, yet another volley of buildings pops up, giving the city the appearance of a sober, socialistic Los Angeles, sans palm trees and sports cars. The overwhelming majority of Beijing’s 12 million people still get about on foot, by bicycle or via the subway; and the city planners have made the latter two modes of transport relatively safe and simple for both residents and visitors. Virtually every major street has separate bicycle lanes running parallel with roads, safely set apart not by mere painted lines - as in Western cities, but by rows of trees or concrete dividers. Bicycles can even be hired by the day from most hotels.

Rather than being a metropolis of compelling charm or colour, Beijing is a city of great but limited historic sights. Its primary attractions today - the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall - are precisely the sane as those at the turn of the last century.

Having said that, Beijing’s vistas are indeed worth a visit, for this is an august city seemingly built by giants for giants. In the centre of it all lies the 99 acres of Tiananmen Square, said to be the largest plaza on Earth.

Here, on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong stood on the adjacent 15th century gate at Tiananmen (“Heavenly Peace Gate”). Stabbing his fist into the clean autumn air, he declared that the Chinese people had finally stood up (against colonialist powers). Here also in 1966 was the site where millions of Chinese massed in frenzied rallies to wave Mao’s Red Book at the height of the disastrous Cultural Revolution.

Mao’s massive mausoleum - which bears a suspicious resemblance to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC - is situated directly south of the Monument of the People’s Heroes, where unknown numbers of students were killed in the June 4th, 1989 massacre.

The embalmed Mao is on view to curious visitors, but check first for opening hours. Be aware also that this colossal single-occupant catacomb closes from noon till two every day; in China, death does not preclude the state-given prerogative of the mid-day siesta.

A two minute stroll north of the Square brings one to the fabulous but faded Forbidden City, so named because for centuries ordinary Chinese were prohibited under penalty of death from entering.

The Palace contains 800 buildings with reportedly 9,990 rooms. It looks, as the Americans tend to say, just like it does in the movies, meaning Bernado Bertolucci’s lavish 1987 film “The Last Emperor.” Most of the rooms are, alas, empty, their treasure taken away by US Marines just before China fell to the communists in 1949. Today the bulk of the loot can be found in the National Museum across the Taiwan Straits, in Taipei.

For most visitors, a simple one-hour walk through will suffice, but if history is your forte, Chinese university students well versed in the palace’s history stand at the Tiananmen Square entrance acting as freelance tour guides for a small fee.

If possible, select a girl rather than a boy. Not only is their standard of English nearly always superior, but they tend to stress the palace’s diverse human interest stories, whereas their male colleagues try to impress by quoting the number of square meters or the amount of marble that went into the structures.

“Is it any wonder they were such nasty people?” a pert Beijing University graduate asked with the slightest twinkle in her eye, after listing the physical requirements to be a palace eunuch.

To rest and recuperate from all that antiquity, visitors can head for the nearby Palace View Bar. Perched on an outside balcony on the tenth floor of the Grand Hotel, the bar overlooks the modern drama of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and a cat’s cradle of twisting streets.

In summer or early autumn, from late afternoon till early evening, the best time of day, one can hear the ting-a-ling of ten thousand homeward-bound bicycles mixed with a chorus of horn-honking. As the afternoon sun disappears behind the Fragrant Hills west of the city, a glorious golden northern light ignites the high vermilion wall of the Forbidden City and for a few unearthly moments, one can glimpse the ghost of China’s imperial past.

After touring the flag-filled Square and the Forbidden City, most visitors spend their second day exploring just beyond Beijing, at the Summer Palace, the leafy retreat of the murderous and much hated Empress Dowager Cixi (“Tsuh-shuh”). Set against the willow-lined Kunming Lake, it is the best place to see Beijing families at play. In winter they flock here to skate, while in the hot sticky summers they board small boats to paddle in the breezy sunshine.

The highlight of Beijing, and some say of China itself, is a walk along the Great Wall. Constructed over several centuries by various Chinese rulers at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the Wall runs intermittently from the East China Sea about 2,400 kilometres to Gansu province in China’s far west.

The Chinese propagate the parable that the Wall is the only man-made object which can be seen with the naked eye from the moon. As it can scarcely be seen from a jet at 7,700 metres, it is even less likely to be recognizable from the lunar surface.

One of the greatest “make-work” projects ever conceived, the Wall is, as former US president Richard Nixon so brilliantly put it, “a great wall indeed!” Its closest point to Beijing is at Badaling Pass, about 90 minutes by car or slightly less by train.

A dozen years ago, the pass was only partly repaired and stoic PLA soldiers manned the windswept turrets on either side of the pass.

Today, the Wall here has been painstakingly re-constructed (mainly using material from nearby houses which had often themselves been constructed from bricks taken from the Wall). There is also a plethora of guardrails, tacky gift shops and much tour bus congestion every day from 9am till dusk. To see the Wall as it once was, in isolated splendour, visitors should book a car to lesser known parts of the Wall which lie only 30-40 minutes further from Beijing beyond Badaling.

Everywhere in the Chinese capital improvements in hotels and restaurants and air services are apparent. For accommodation in particular, Beijing can’t be faulted.

The best hotels are now the equal of those in Hong Kong or Singapore, but with more reasonable room rates. Food served in Beijing’s government-run restaurants and canteens is still appalling and should be avoided, but scores of privately owned restaurants, cafes, and bars, both Chinese and Western, have opened and their standard is often excellent.

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