| Touchdown | Temple of Heaven |
| The Summer Palace | Tianamen Square |
| Forbidden City | The Great Wall |
We flew into the imaculate Beijing Airport after the usual sleepless night on the plane getting there. We were greeted by the local guide, Gary who whizzed us into the heart of the city along the new highway. Beijing was sprawling, polluted and busting at the seams with people and some 9 million bicycles.
Touchdown
Immediately after we reached our hotel room we were defeated by the light switch, the air conditioning and the tv. No power ! After a few minutes frustration a maid who spoke a tiny amount of English showed us how, by inserting the room key into a slot beside the door everything worked ! Wonderful, I thought, thanking the maid profusley, I realised it was pointless talking in English. Very slowly (why do we Brits always think that if we speak slowly enough language is no barrier ?), I asked how she said 'thankyou'. 'Sangqoo', came the reply, also slowly. 'Ah ha', Chinese isn't so hard after all. As I cheerfully praised the maid with Sangqoo's, I heard my wife snickering from inside the bedroom. Then I twigged and asked the maid, 'How do you say thankyou in Chinese.. ?'
The Temple of Heaven is where the Emperors used to pray to their ancestors to bring good harvests. At the time of building, the religion of the emperors was Daoism (also called Taoism, meaning "The Way"). In Daoist belief, there is always balance between opposites, expressed most commonly in the Ying / Yang motif. The Temple of Heaven was designed in two parts, one part within a square and the other a circular wall. The different shapes represented opposites consistent with Daoism, the Earth (square) and Heaven (cirle).
What do you do when you're the Emperor and the heat in the city has gotten to be too much to bear ? Head for your Summer Palace of course. Situated within 100 hectares of private grounds, with a private mountain, lake and monastery, the Summer Palace is magnificent. This is where the concepts of Feng Shui are brought most to the fore. The designers here wanted to channel wealth and all things nice to the Emperor, using the two principle elements of their craft - stone and water. The lake at the Summer Palace has an artificial island in it built to control the amount of energy guided by the water (you can have too much of a good thing you know), otherwise the balance of Daoist beliefs might be upset. Finally, what do you do when you're Feng Shui'ed out ? Either watch a play performed in your personal theatre, or perhaps relax in your marble replica paddle boat - just the ticket !
Tianamen Square is at the very epicentre of Beijing. It is the largest open square in the world, and at it's centre is the Communist Party Headquarters. This is an immense building and is where President Jang Zhoumin hangs out with his buddies. While we're on the subject, let's talk about Chinese communism for a mo. There are about 95 million communist party members in China. That's more that the population of the UK but it's still not much compared to the 1100 million population. Less than one percent in fact. Even so, the communists hold sway over the country, but it is not a very tight grasp when it comes to city capitalism. In fact, if it was not for the red flags everywhere, you would find it hard to believe you were in a communist country at all. Everywhere you go in the cities of China, free enterprise is moving the country towards western style capitalism. Having said that, China remains largely an agricultural country. In the countryside, the collective farms can sell their produce to the government at a protected price, any surplus being sold in a free market. In effect, the government provides a method for the maize producing northern provinces to export to the rice producing southern provinces and vice versa. It is a remarkable fact that the country is self-sufficent in food, despite the enormous population.
Adjacent to Tianamen Square lies the Forbidden City. Why forbidden ? Well because this is where the emperor himself would live whenever he was in his northern capital (which what Beijing means). On the way into the city, you have to cross a landscaped river by one of three bridges, walking over one indicates chastity, another wisdom and the last one I forgot (let's call it 'Bridge of Amnesia' - the one I crossed). The buildings in the city lie along a central axis so you can walk straight through them, entering some of the most magnificently decorated rooms you can see in China. The emporer certainly had a lot of concubines too, a large part of the city is given over to their quarters. There are also many splendid gardens, which the concubines could enjoy except they couldn't walk round them. Not because of rules (like the one about the emporer being the only one allowed to cycle around the city), but because their feet were bound (that's a nice way of saying broken) and they were carried everywhere.
The Great Wall is a highly conservative name, it is fantastic. A feet of engineering that would not be possible today. Oh I don't mean the bricks and mortar side of it, but the will power and the co-ordinated effort of an empire to construct such a magnificent monument is unrepeatable in the twenty first century. Imagine Bill Clinton or one of his successors deciding 'Lets put a wall between the United States and Canada'. He'd be a laughing stock ! No, it couldn't happen now, and by that fact we can begin to understand the powers wielded by the emporers of the chinese people. Absolute power, absolute control, absolute paranoia. Despite his obvious power the emporer was scared to death of the Mongols. They were so blood thirsty a race that the chinese empire was moved to put the wall up. That and other walls around cities too, Beijing in particular had a large city wall for the same purpose.
History shows however, that the Great Wall was no match for human greed. Genghis Khan bribed enough wall tower guards in the same area to allow a large force to cross the wall before the alarm was raised. He and his men attacked and sacked Beijing (due to lack of money, the city walls were unfinished). After that upper cut from Mongolia, China wobbled back to its corner and the chinese emporers set up their headquarters in cities further to the south, notably Xian and Nanjing, the seats of power of many dynasties.
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