T-minus thirteen hours and counting… or - Not everyone who wanders is lost………………….
I woke up in the sunny Beijing morning, and went to the breakfast I had been dreaming of the entire trip. And there it was, noodle soup, egg fried rice and a million and one other things that had been offered to us on our very first day, the buffet was massive and fresh but this morning, I was unable to eat it. I was well and truly in the grip of Chinese food overkill, and was only able to stomach a couple of paper cups worth of orange squash and the tiniest slurp of noodle soup before feeling ill. I had gotten up at my usual time of six thirty, and gone to the restaurant for breakfast, realised I was the only white face in there, and all the Chinese people were gawping at me like I had three heads, turned around embarrassed and went back to my room where Deidre informed me that we didn’t have to get up and meet till eleven. I was stunned - I had missed this vital piece of information and had gone to bed at three thirty, thinking - ‘oh my god I only have three hours to sleep’, when I could have carried on for much longer than that! But I was awake, so I faffed around with my bag for a bit, and returned to the breakfast room later on where I ate the meal I mentioned before (it would have filled a two year old - but I couldn’t manage any more) after breakfast I had the option of catching the bus early and going back to the silk factory or going back to bed, I don’t even need to tell you what I did.
Just after eleven, I got on Eddie bus for one of the last times. Today, we had been promised Tian’anmen Square and the Forbidden City, and I thought we would be going straight there. But no! we went to what would have been quite a nice restaurant for lunch. There was beer and sprite on the tables and soon the waitresses started bringing out the food, which had I not been in the grips of overkill, would surely have been nice.
As I sat down at the table the smell hit me. Chinese food. I think I must have turned a slight shade of jade, before sitting as politely as I could without having to rush to the toilets, from the now hideous (to me) smell.
After the food had been delivered, I sat abstaining, before realising I was ravenously hungry and couldn’t even bring myself to raise a chopstick to my mouth (I had become quite adept by this point). So as quietly as I could I got up and left the restaurant in search of (cringe) Macdonalds!
After half an hour of looking up and down the road for maccas (but not really wanting to leave the road for fear of being too long, and missing the group) I returned empty handed and stomached, and sat while the group finished their lunch.
After lunch we walked the short distance to Tian’anmen Square, and looked around. Tian’anmen Square is the largest city square in the world, at one end is a massive ornamental gate, which used to be part of the grounds of the forbidden city. To the left of us, the gigantic mausoleum of chairman Mao, which I would have loved to go in but, like so many things in Beijing this year it was closed for refurbishment for the Olympics, opposite were the governmental buildings, and at the far end of the square The forbidden city.
We kept a fairly tight group, but attracted the attention of every shadow going, who kept bugging the people on the outside of the group. By the time we reached the part of the square in front of the forbidden city we had attracted quite a crowd of people who all wanted their picture taken in front of a big group of white people. Some were trying to be sneaky and pretend they were taking pictures of something else, but most were lining up to have their pictures taken whilst smiling and pointing! It was weird but we had been doing the same thing all along our trek, so I guess this was karma.
We went through the underpass and into the first set of gates into the forbidden city, once through these gates we thought the shadows were behind us but no, they were here as well hiding their tourist crap in their coats, so as not to attract the attention of the police. On the left hand side of the first section that you enter is a large modern basketball court, which looks out of place to say the least. At the side of the path someone had left a makeshift bed with wheels and on top of this bed lay a little girl with leprosy, I guess she had been taken there to beg, and she obviously had no choice in the matter as she couldn’t walk, she just lay there, immobile, with people staring at her like some kind of sideshow, I felt so sorry for her.
At the end of this courtyard we went through a gateway into another courtyard with a massive gate, and this was the actual main gate of the city, the one where you have to pay, and that is where we lost the shadows. We walked through the tunnel of the gateway and out into yet another courtyard that had an ornamental moat running through it and crossed one of the seven carved stone bridges to the other side, where you go through another large gateway into the central part of the city where you come to a huge paved area in front of the first palace, this we were told, is where all the diplomats would congregate every day and kneel, rain or shine, waiting for an audience with the Emperor. The majesty of the place was almost intimidating with its gold tiled rooftops, that once upon a time would have been gilded, to shine in the sunlight. This palace sat on top of a plinth that was made up of five tiers of walkways where, we were told, they would set fires and burn incense so that when the emperor emerged it would give the impression that he was walking through the clouds from heaven to meet his diplomats, all this was created to inspire awe and fear and to reassure the people that he was, truly a deity. Dotted around the edges of the courtyard, were huge metal urns that a man could easily fitted inside, Eddie told us that these were fire urns that would have been lit every day to keep the soldiers warm. Kind of like massive radiators. On all sides of the courtyard were other buildings, a few housing the last few remaining treasures from the forbidden city, there was not much left. When Pu Yi was overthrown and expelled from the Forbidden City in 1925 some kind soul stole everything that wasn’t nailed down (and I mean everything) and had the whole lot shipped to Taiwan. So it is said, that the Forbidden City is the palace without treasures and that Taiwan has the treasures without the palace. I sincerely hope that one day the treasures are restored to the palace but like the Elgin marbles, ‘like that’s ever going to happen’.
Trough yet another gate into the living quarters the throne room still has its furniture and you can look through the doors at it - if you fancy fighting your way through a seething crowd to get to them, and there are huge intricately carved marbles of dragons writhing about, and large beautiful, sculptures of animals, the ever present lions, although gilded bronze rather than marble, the male with the world under his paw to indicate power and the female with a cub under her paw to indicate motherhood and nurturing.
Further on is the imperial bedroom that I think is a recreation and is behind treated glass so that you cant touch or take pictures, the bedroom is a fabulous creation of richly decorated red silk, a bit o.t.t. and definitely not IKEA, but hell, he was the Emperor so why not.
In the business end of the Forbidden City, there are no trees or plant life whatsoever, as the emperors liked to make people think that they could control nature - you can, weed and don’t plant stuff, but people were made to believe that plants were too lowly, and wouldn’t dare to grow in the presence of such a divine being. Out the back of the city however, where the diplomats did not go is a really pleasant tea garden where the emperor could enjoy his family and his wives and concubines could hang out and have cups of tea. This all sounds very nicey, nicey, but they were a cunning lot and would do anything, to get their son to inherit, or be chosen to inherit the throne including murder, so when the emperor was getting on a bit, he would find a good portion of his children, kicking the bucket before him, but when you have so many, you probably wouldn’t miss the odd one here and there.
After leaving the Forbidden city we got on the busses and went to the massage house, where we had all been booked in for a foot massage, I chose to opt out of this, as I don’t like people I don’t know touching me, and so soon I was sitting in a very plush waiting room for the others to come out. As I was sitting there, you could hear the slapping noise of people getting their massages and see little Chinese guys running about with buckets of hot water. After an hour of waiting and finishing my book, the others came out and we went to the busses to go off for our evening the first option was to go for a Chinese meal and go to see the acrobats, or the hard rock café. Feeling weak from hunger at this point I chose the Hard Rock, I figured I can see the Chinese state circus any old time, and this was the same thing. So although I would have liked to see the acrobats, my stomach won the debate and before long I was sitting with a huge, juicy, blue cheese burger and fries with mayonnaise, in front of me, and oh it was good. The burger was cooked medium and tasted divine, the blue cheese was piquant and not at all socky, the fries were crisp and delicious dipped in the creamy mayonnaise, I hate to say it but it was by far and away the most welcome, tasty meal I had in china, it was heavenly.
After dinner the group stayed and watched the band for a while, but I had had enough so decided to get a cab back to the hotel, just as I was about to get in this cab, a couple of the other girls joined me and I’m so glad they did, because we got horribly, horribly lost. We had all been given cards written in Chinese with a map on it to give to any cab drivers, giving directions to the hotel, which wasn’t easy to find as it was tucked away in the back of a complex somewhere. After about twenty minutes of driving round and round Beijing it became obvious that the driver didn’t have a clue where he was going, and we ended up in a rough part of town, if I had been on my own I would have been scared witless and having kittens by now, luckily I was with the other two girls and after switching off the meter, so that we didn’t have to pay any more money (we had started making we’re not going to pay for him being lost, noises) the driver started asking other drivers if they knew where the hotel was, three drivers and a cop later we started to see places we recognised and got out of the cab and walked the last stretch to the hotel.
We had to leave the hotel at 1.30am so there wasn’t really any point going to bed, so I just went up collected my bag, and had a kip underneath my hoodie sitting on the sofa.
The trip home was uneventful I mostly read and slept, but oh boy! Was I looking forward to being home, you know what it is like when you are tired, and have a long flight in front of you, you just want it to be over, the minute I got home, unshowered I rounded up my friends and went to the pub. China seemed like a distant memory, almost unreal, but here were my friends sitting around our usual table in our usual haunt, and they were real, and I was grateful to have them. Travelling has taught me a lot over the years, for instance, if you go to Africa you will get the runs, if you go to Spain they do not all speak English, they speak Spanish. If you go to Aussie and buy a crappy old van it WILL blow up on you the first day you are on your own. If you go to Thailand you will share a bed with humongous cockroaches (although you may not know it)! The thing that China taught me was to value my friends.
It is over a month now since I left China and writing my diaries has been a labour of love. They have brought back so many memories and from the good to the bad, the wall was a constant. I loved it and at times hated it, but it will always remain in my heart as one of the most awesome experiences of my life.
