CHINA REVISITED 2010
Impetus
There are manifold reasons or excuses to do a China revisit, i.e., to experience a Yangtze River cruise, view the Shanghai World Expo and not the least of which was to visit the two living siblings of my father, my aunt who lives in Hong Kong and my uncle and his wife who live in Shanghai and to see what changes transpiredif any, since three years ago in some of the places previously visited.
Overview
Our first stop isBeijing, the capital and Washington DC of China; after four days we flew to Xi’an for three nights then on to Chongqing for one night and took the Yangtze River Victoria Jenna Cruisefor four days then disembarked at Yichangto catch our flight to Shanghai where we stayed for four nights then to Hong Kongfor four days, the last leg of our trip. We spent half-a-day in Macau by ferry boating from Hong Kong. Passports are needed each way for visitors.
Beijing
The City and Tiananmen Square
Chang’An Boulevard, “Long Peace” in Chinese, think of it as the PennsylvaniaAvenue, is the main avenue of Beijing, immediately in front of Tiananmen Square; it can be as long a route as you want it to be it or it could be shortened depending on where you start and end. It is the road directly before Tiananmen Gate and to the North of the Square. At its full stretch, it starts from Shongjustun District to Tongshu District. It is historical, it is where military parades on important celebrations are held, it is also the site of the 1989 students’ protests,and it is the route taken by the hearse of Zhou EnLai on January 11, 1976 on its way to the cemetery, which was lined by 10 kilometers of 4-5 ft deep mourners on both sides of the boulevard, some gathered there two days earlier. The Gang of Four, led by Jiang Qing, an actress who became Mao’s 3rdwife tried their bitter best to have their local mediaunderplay the funeral coverage and directives were issued to this effect; they discouraged the public from showing up, banned the use of black arm bands and other small silly maneuvers,but still the masses came, they mourned, they cried, and they bade farewell to a leader they all beloved and revered.Recall that Mao was already feeble and ill at this stage and later died in September of the same year, and his wife and her gang were ready to seize control of the government. She hated Zhou and vowed to fight his ghost even after his death. In the meantime in Shanghai there was a 37-minute gun salute and traffic lights stayed red and traffic stood still for the same period of time.
Our hotel is about a block or a broken U-turn away from this historical boulevard so that we passed it by car a few times during our stay.Beijing has changed since our first visit;maybe my perception is also colored by where we stayed the first time which was less central to the city. There are now more modern buildings, and these can be separated from the traditional ones by their pagoda-like roof tops. On the right are all of the important Central Government buildings and to the left are the new high risers, condos and private offices which must have sprouted the last three years and generally have a crew-cut roof.At nighttime the lighting effects of the buildings which are stylishly lit but understated make for a near perfect picture of a beautiful cityscape. Other buildings of note on this address are the Great Hall of Hope, ZhongNaiHai, National Museum of China, National Performing Arts and the PeoplesBank of China. The Beijing railway stations are situated underneath and we walked through the underground passage to get to our car. The Tiananmen Square is still as vast and flat as it was and Mao ZeDong’s annually renewed portrait (now I am told it is every three years) is still keeping an eye on it.(See travel section on prior visit.) I was told that the students protest in 1989 never made it to the Square which was then heavily guarded and they mainly stayed on Chang’An Boulevard during the peak-time of their demonstrations. Remember the
pasdeuxdance of an advancing tank and the brave young demonstrator shown repeatedly on TV?
The Worship of Heaven
China is an agrarian country and since ancient times the people believed that Heaven controls everything from above because it canthrow down thunders, lightnings and rains and can cause famine if there is a drought, it can destroy crops if there is too much water resulting in floods, so it came to pass that a good harvest is solely dependent on what Heavenpleases to send. Consequently the worship of Heaven and the sending of prayers and supplications for a good harvest is equally an ancient ritual practiced by the lowly peasants to the mighty Emperors. It is for this reason that China built many places of worship, namely temples which also became places to honor, worship and pray to ones’ ancestors. The most famous of these temples is the The Temple of Heaven in Beijing, a must visit place if one is in the City and is in fact listed in every tour menu and is second in popularity only to the Great Wall. Since Milan and I are the only ones in all segments of this trip, with a docent and a driver,(except for the Yangtze River Cruise where we joined a composite of tour groups)we had the flexibility to spend more time at areas of personal interest and have a one on one discourse with the guide and hence end up with a better appreciation of the Temple, as would happen subsequently in visits toother cities. As related later, there are also some drawbacks with this arrangement.
The Temple of Heaven
This awesome temple is distinct for its vertical tapered three-tiered perfectly circular dome with a pointed spire, the only one of its kind, which reflected the Emperor’s Crown.Its dome is supported by 24 circular wood beams, representing the 24 lunar terms and the circular wall is equally awesome in its rich, albeit with the expected red dominance of gaudy artistic colors, style and adornments. It was built by Zhu Di or simply JongLe(1420), the third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty on the 18th year of his reign, and since has been enlarged, refurbished and rebuilt throughout two dynasties. For instance the exterior colors of the three-tiered dome used to be blue, gold, and green in that order were changed by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, (the last dynasty which ended in 1911,) to all blue, again to reflect Heaven’s significance. Actually JongLe was the fourth Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, but because of the Chinese disdain towards the number 4, he moved his reign back a notch. I guess if you are the Emperor you can do anything, including moving the clock backwards. The temple became the TempleofworshipofHeavenandPrayers for good harvest by the Emperors of both dynasties who paid pilgrimage annuallyfor this purpose. In fact it is called, what else, the Altar of Worship for Good Harvest.
The Temple, which sits on 273 hectares of land, was opened to the public as a park in 1918, and it is the greenest of parks because of its well-maintained 60,000 trees, consisting mostly of 35,000 cypress trees planted in the 14th and 15th centuries by theMingandQing dynasties. In 1998 it was listed in the UNESCO World HeritageFoundation by the organization committee.There are many smaller structures of historical significance within the park. These include The Vault of Heaven where the tablets of the god of Heaven are stored, and its three glazed arched gates. The Echo Wall is of acoustical interest because of its seamless circular wall around the Vault.(Incidentally there is a small echo wall on the way to GrandCentralStation in Manhattan, just before the Oyster Bar, a Manhattan landmark, which some tourists know of, but not all newly transplanted New Yorkers.)
The large open airCircular Mound Altar (consisting of three levels with nine steps separating each level) to the south of the Temple is also of great interest because it is here that the Emperors worship during the winter solstice. At the top third circular terrace of the Altar is the Heavenly Stone Center where an official stands and reads aloud the prayers during the ceremonial worship. The words of pleas to the god of Heaven resonate loudly and are heard from afar. This stone center is a favorite photo shoot among visitors.
There is also the Fasting Palace built during the reign of JongLe where the Emperor fast before the ceremonies and an annex to the building wherehe meets his ministers before the fast. What makes it unusual is the building is beamless. There is Butcher Pavilion where the animals are slaughtered before they are offered at the Burning Stove Altarwhich is within view from the Circular Mound Altar. An aerial view of this entire complex outlines a compelling well-arranged piece of work.
Forbidden City
The Forbidden City is in the center of Beijing and is the largest preserved classic Chinese Imperial Architectural Palace of China occupying 720,000 sq meters of land. It is intriguing as it is also deeply intertwined into China’s history. It is the Palace the Ming and Qing Emperors called home and it consists of the Front Court where ceremonies are held and Palace Court where the Emperors and their households, empress, wives (polygamy was accepted in those times)children, extended relatives, concubines, eunuchs and servants live in different quarters. The wives had their own palaces, six western and six eastern palaces. The Palace was ordered burnt down byEmperor Honshuin the early 14th century when he moved the capital of China from Beijing to Nanjing. When ZhuDi JongLe, his son became the third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty,(1420) he moved the capital back to Beijing and the Forbidden City was rebuilt using 3 million workers, using the best materials ,wood, rocks and marbles available and it was completed in 15 years. The Chinese name is Zijin Chang literallyPurple Forbidden Citywhich was its original name. There are 9000rooms, although our docent insisted that there are 9,999 rooms in the Palace itself and the Emperor moved his sleeping quarters every night for fear of assassination. (Some paranoia reigned, I must say!) The Palace is over five hundred years old and received the UNESCO World Heritage Designation in 1987 as best preserved historical palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The six Eastern and six WesternPalacesare so named because of their site orientation, and each has a separate courtyard, and wasoccupied by the Emperor’s concubines carefullyguarded by eunuchs; in those times polygamy was part of the turf.These palaces have been converted to hold old calligraphies, artifacts and furniture of that period for current visitors to view. To move around its vast ground, walk around, and see its preserved magnificence, surrounding the Imperial Palace is to feel and walk with and through history.There is a huge rough rock weighing hundreds of tons cut out from the mountains, beautiful and imposing nonetheless that traveled 7 km; it was pulled and pushed manually by workers for several weeks during the heat of summer to reach the Forbidden City, which is displayed in one of the palace courtyards. The workers had to stop and dig for water to survive their assigned mission all for the pleasure of the ruling Emperor. Without knowing the history behind the huge rock, one can just pass it without even stopping to wonder how it got there.It is indeed almost forbidding an experience, and somewhat foreboding at the same time. You can indeed spend a couple of days here and not even absorb the significance of it all.
Summer Palace
The Summer Palace is exemplary in the harmony of Man and his Environment. It is a perfect piece of work where structures of traditional Chinese designs served as examples that influenced future architecture of this genre. It was built in 1750 by EmperorQianlong,burned down during the British-French invasion in 1860 and was rebuilt in 1880 to 1902 but its trove of treasures had already been ransacked by the EightAlliedPowers during the so-called Boxer Rebellion. It was frequently used by CiXi, the Empress Dowager who misappropriated the Naval Defense funds to rebuild the Palace and a smaller palace to celebrate her birthday. At present it stands as a masterpiece of traditional classical Chinese architecture and gardening, surrounded by mountains (The Longevity Hill which is about 60 meters high) and the peaceful LakeKunming. We took a motorized boat on the Kunming Lake to the other end for a closer look at the Pearl Water Tower, the water source restricted for the Emperors and their guests use when they visited; and got closer to theWhite Arch Bridge which can be crossed by foot. The Marble Boat stands white and majestic from a distance but is not accessible to the public. It is in the shape of multiple story boat anchored by a whole piece of white marble and the rest of the boat which is made of marble as well served as a resort place for the Emperors and his family. The Long Corridor described below is the longest of its kind; and the art work has recently been refurbished before the 2008 Olympics. Beijing is also unusually clear the day we visited, and most of the structures mentionedwere obscured by smog on our first visit butare quite visible now even from afar. These made for a wonderful grand revisit. There is a legend that when a jug of treasures disappeared mysteriously from the Gold MountainPalace which is atop the hill, it signaled the decline of the Ming Dynasty.
Long Corridor
The characters and principals depicted in the stories of the Four Ancient Classical Novels in Chinese literature are painted in this longest corridor of its kind leading to theSummer Palace. These are The Story of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber (CiXi, The Dowager’s favorite novel) and The Journey to the Westwhich has 100 chapters. These were written in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. The art remains intricate and edges on excellence. The portrayal of events and characters would even be better relished if one is conversant with the novels narratedin the four ancient classics. This of course, is a regret of mine.
The Great Wall
The Great Wall was started during the reign of JongLe, of the Ming dynasty. In wonder, in structure, in concept and in its execution it has no second. As a start point JongLe (ZhuDi) connected the already existing walls of the six states he vanquished, thus was the startpoint of buildingThe Great Wall. All through Chinese history the rulers were always fearful of attacks from outsiders or uprisings by the abused masses, who were always thegreat majority (“uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”) but in the case of the Great Wall, it was also the fear of Northern invaders, the Mongols; and the Wall secondarily served to relay urgent messages to the Emperor from the North by horse relays, some sort of early Pony Express. To a much miniscule scale the erection of Intramuros in Manila, Philippines by the Spaniards during the colonization of the country served the sameulterior protective intent..The Spaniards segregated and fortified their own settlements in Manila by erecting the walls to keep away the compliant natives they enslaved, for fear of uprisings, which eventually happened 299 years later.( A more descriptive experience at the Great Wall is in the2007 travelogue.)
We were dropped off at what looked like the start of The Great Wall, with probably over 500 hundred steps looking down at us, to beclimbed, to reach and view the Wall and its magnificent mountainous surroundings on a clear day. This became an issue when our guide told us after he was confronted, that where tourist normally get off (at the 6th tower area, we have been there before) is packed and the advice was to detour; which was a total fib, but I let it ride because thiswas our first day in China and we saw and walked up the Wall from a different perspective before. It was alsothe first issue which alerted me to his craftiness.This docent is young, smart, personable but overly sly. There were more to follow during this Beijing segment which left me with no choice but to register a typed report on his demeanor and performance to the Ritz Tours organization once we were in New York.(I finally received a “we’ll investigate” response after three failed attempts and this with the help of my travel agent.)There are pluses in being out of a sizable tour group, no waiting for other tourists, flexibility of time to linger in places of your interest, full attention of your docent. There are also some drawbacks, the want of others point of views during the tour, andhaving to remind the docent, very politely at the outset not to digress from the given itinerary unless instructed otherwise, and not vice versa and also make it known that you are allergic to souvenir shops, which are their favorites.Once this is cleared it will be smooth sailing.