Last Day in China

When you travel on a budget, you make budget choices. One aspect of this for us is that we often take some relatively undesirable flights. It saves money when the flights are at inconvenient times or if they include weird layovers. 

Case in point: As I write this, just a bit after midnight, I am sitting in Daxing Airport south of Beijing. We are heading to Almaty, Kazakhstan, but by way of Tashkent, Uzbekistan. That's a bit less than direct. However, the real savings come from the fact that our flight departs at 2 AM and we have a thirteen hour layover in Tashkent. 

This meant that today (or, technically, yesterday) was our last day to enjoy Beijing. We got tickets to see the Forbidden City in the afternoon. We did have to check out of our hotel, but they kindly let us keep our luggage there. 

The Forbidden City is massive. I had seen its outline on a map, but that didn't prepare me for how big it is. As we were entering, so we several hundred other people. There had to be thousands of people inside that complex and yet it could have easily fit a thousand times as many people. Yes, the buildings are large, but the courtyards, gardens, and open spaces are gargantuan. 

In addition to being vast, the Forbidden City is quite beautiful. There are dozens of buildings with arched roofs crowned in tubular tiles atop highly decorated wooden beams over red walls with intricate doors. Some of these buildings sit on a foundation with multiple levels, like terraces cut into mountains for farming, but the levels here are bounded by finely carved stone pillars. It is impressive. 

That being said, there comes a point such that when you see your nth large building with arched roof and all the fixings, it has less impact than when you saw the (n-1)st such building, and that impact was less than the (n-2)nd one, and so on. You get the idea. Even grandeur can become ho-hum. 

I did particularly enjoy the Imperial Garden. Not only is it full of beautiful trees and flowers, but also many ornamental rocks. Some of these rocks are like jungle gyms. How they were transported to the palace, I don't know. But what makes me more curious is the question of how they were found. Was there some guy whose job it was to go out into the mountains, look at big rock formations and say, "If we could haul this back to the Forbidden City, the emperor would plotz!"? (Probably the Chinese didn't use the word "plotz", but they must have had some word with a similar connotation.)

After the Forbidden City, Alrica found this delightful noodle shop. They make handmade stretched noodles. Mine came with a beef soup. Alrica's came with a sectioned plate, like a Seder plate, with different toppings and vegetables she could add. These were some fantastically tasty noodles. 

We returned to the hotel to get our belongings and hung out there for a bit. Then we took a train to the airport. All of that was fine. But the real "fun" came after. 

I have never been to a security checkpoint with this level of scrutiny. After stepping through the metal detector, each passenger gets a thorough (and I mean thorough) pat down. The woman who handled my pat down touched me in more places per minute than anyone else ever has, including my wife. She was tugging at my belt and lifting my shirt. Alrica told me that when she got her pat down, it seemed like the woman wanted inside Alrica's bra. 

Plus, both of our bags got flagged during screening. Mine ended up getting screened four times with the agent unpacking more and more of it each time. When it was finally through, I had to sit on the floor and repack. 

But we did get through. If nothing else unexpected happens, in about nine hours we will be in Uzbekistan. With a thirteen hour layover (and probably no sleep) we hope to see some of Tashkent. 

But don't worry, I think we can stay in budget. 

Stumbles Upon

When you travel, there are things you plan. You know you want to see sight A or eat food B or experience cultural activity C. (They probably have better names than single letters from the Latin alphabet. Incidentally, the license plates in China use the Latin alphabet.)

There are also the things you didn't plan, you just stumble upon them. Some of these are weird, some are interesting, and some are fabulous. I had something of a stumble upon day (and Alrica joined me for part of it.)

While Alrica was getting some work done, I went for a walk. My plan was to visit a park that was only 30 minutes away. To get there, I had to cross a canal where there were people swimming. It was almost like the park had a moat.

I discovered the park is fenced and there are only a few ways in. And you need to get an admission ticket. It is very inexpensive, just 2 yuan, which is about $0.29. I could have absolutely afforded it. But I just wanted to walk. I wasn't looking for any special park services.

So instead, I decided to walk along the canal. There were walking paths on its sides. I'm glad I did as it was very interesting. 

In addition to a small number of people swimming in the canal, there were a much greater number of people fishing in the canal. These were always men. I never saw any women fishing. I saw plenty of women walking, but they did not stop to fish. 

Some fishermen had surprisingly long poles with a hinge. They attached the bar of the pole to the railing and then bent it at the hinge so the long pole stuck down to the water's surface. Others had poles of a more traditional type, but their reels were bigger, like the size of a bread plate, and shaped like a wagon wheel with spokes.

Fishermen at a canal isn't so rare. What was rarer was the slingshot man. I came to a place where the walkway passed under a highway. There, in the shadow of the span overhead, set about 15 meters or 50 feet away from the path were these metal racks with metal and plastic objects hanging from strings. Think cowbells and soup cans and bleach bottles. At the side of the path was a man with a slingshot. He was pulling back the elastic band and letting small bullets (like ball bearings) fly at the targets. Sometimes I knew he hit one because I heard the satisfying metallic clunk. When he was done, he packed up his slingshot and bullets. But the targets weren't his. They remain there under the overpass for anyone who wants to sling. 

I took a different route back to the hotel from the canal. I happened to pass these open gates that seemed to have some sort of market within. Turns out I had accidentally discovered the Panjiayuan Market. It's huge, spanning several blocks in both the east-west and north-south directions. Within are tables and stands in the open air. There are frames that hold fabric above to block much of the sun, but not walls. 

That's not wholly true. There is a section of the market which is inside a building. Here you find carpentry, hand-crafted furniture, antique books, antique vases, and statuary. In the open-air section are crafts. There were so many beads made from wood, jade, stone, and who knows what else. In one section, each shop had beads of a different color. There were lots of bracelets and other jewelry. There were hand-crafted wooden toys, fabric vendors, paintings, and calligraphy. 

There were a few stalls selling food and milk tea drinks. There was also a post office. But this is not a market meant for foreign tourists. There were a few foreigners beside me, but hardly any. Almost everyone, vendor and customer alike, was Chinese. 

It turned out the market was just a couple blocks from our hotel. So later in the day, I took Alrica there to see it for herself. And on that excursion, we experienced our coolest stumble upon of the day. 

Alrica wanted some good dumplings for dinner. She played around on AMap, the mapping app that works in China, and found a place called Ersanjiupin Handmade Dumplings Self-service. It was a bit further from our hotel than the market, so we hit the market on the way. 

Finding the dumpling restaurant wasn't easy. Thank goodness some people posted reviews which included pictures of the building. A couple of the reviews were in English.  Of course, most are in Chinese, and AMap doesn't auto-translate. Luckily, one of the reviews in English indicated that the restaurant was on the third floor. So bit by bit, we progressed and we found it. 

This restaurant, Ersanjiupin Handmade Dumplings Self-service, is not only full of delicious foods, but it is a fun experience. First, you pay. The cost is 49 yuan per person (which is about $7) plus you pay a deposit (about $3.50.) A deposit at a restaurant? I'll get to that. 

This buys you a table, so you go sit down. At one end of the table is a metal pot full of water. One of the staff turned on the heat for us since we must have looked like we didn't know what we were doing (which was true.) As you wait for the water to boil, you have foods to collect. 

Let's talk dumplings. The restaurant hand makes the dumplings. When a set of dumplings is ready, they are placed, uncooked, on a little wooden tray with high sides. In front of the kitchen area is a refrigerator, but not the upright kind you have in your kitchen. This is the kind shaped like a footlocker with a sliding door on top. Along the top are labels telling you which kind of dumpling is in that spot. All the signs are in Chinese, so we had to do a lot of translating. You open the refrigerator, take out the trays of dumplings you want, and bring them back to the table. 

On the wall behind the pot of water are instructions. These are also in Chinese, but after translating, we learned the rules. Once the water boils, you can start cooking the dumplings. Vegetarian dumplings should be cooked for 5 minutes. Meat dumplings should be cooked for 6 minutes. They recommend you boil about 18 dumplings at a time. And you have an overall time limit of 90 minutes at the restaurant. 

But the dumplings aren't the only food available. There is also a big area like a salad bar, but it isn't just salads. It holds all kinds of cold foods, dishes from many regions of China. There were clams, dishes with gray noodles, some sorts of prepared chicken, roast pork on the bone, fruit, noodle dishes, and rice dishes. You take rectangular plates from under the bar and then fill them with the cold dishes. 

You can go back as many times as you want to both the dumpling fridge and to the cold food bar. There was even a drink dispenser. I had some sort of drink that tasted like a combination of cola and ginger ale. Not sure what it was, but I liked it. 

Even more exciting, Alrica noticed that beside the dumpling refrigerator was a freezer with different flavors of ice cream! All this and bowls of ice cream? Woohoo! As it was all you can eat, we ate a lot. But we were lightweights compared to many of the other patrons. They must train for this. We could see stacks and stacks of empty dumpling trays at the end of their tables. 

When you are all done you bring up your ticket that you got when you paid. The ticket includes the time that you entered. So long as you are leaving within 90 minutes, they credit you back the deposit. We did stay less than 90 minutes, so I can't say for sure what happens if you take too long. I suspect they keep the deposit. 

It was great food and a lot of fun to do. And that is the best kind of unplanned stumble upon. 

The Great Wall of China

I grew up in Iowa, which is known for having a very good education system. When I was a teen, I moved to Florida, which isn't known for great education, but I still got a pretty good one. Yet, in all my pre-university studies, I learned precious little about Asia. I could go so far as to say next to nothing. Note: In university, I majored in mathematics and chemistry, so there wasn't any Asian history covered there either. There are some mathematical concepts named for somewhere in the east like the Chinese Remainder Theorem. But that doesn't really count. Or if it did, it counts in modular arithmetic. Note within my note: I also recognize that almost no one who reads this will appreciate that joke, but I appreciate it. 

No doubt, at some juncture is middle school, I had to memorize capital cities. In high school, I learned about Japan, but only in the context of World War II. The Himalayas came up (geology joke), but only because they were so tall. In discussing the current affairs of the time, naturally, the Middle East was mentioned but only painted with the broadest strokes of the pen or the paintbrush. 

From my experience, our education system is guilty of orientalism, the idea that everything east of (you pick the point) is "the east" and it is glommed together as one monolith. Given the number of cultures, languages, and people in "the east", this is a terrible oversimplification and leads to stereotypes and a lack of understanding. 

But what's my point? Even given the bare minimum I learned concerning Asia, I learned about the Great Wall of China. I don't know what grade I was in, what course it was mentioned in, or even if it was part of any regular curriculum. But I had certainly heard of the Great Wall of China. And I suspect most people have. 

Yet, knowing what it is, reading about it, and seeing pictures of it, none of that is comparable to walking on it. Calling this the Great Wall is an understatement. This wall is monumental. 

We visited the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It is one of the younger sections, having been built by the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century. "Younger" here is relative, given that this means it is already nearing 700 years old. During the Ming Dynasty, both the inner wall and outer wall were built with crenelations and arrow slots. That differs from some other and older sections of the Great Wall in which these appear only on the outer wall, and the inner wall is more rounded and slightly lower. 

Standing on the wall, hiking along it, looking at how it meanders through the mountain, it makes you feel tiny. The wall is a marvel. At almost no point is the walk just straight. You curve left and right. You go up and down, sometimes on slopes, sometimes on stairs. Some of the stairs are so slight, you barely need to lift your foot. Others are so steep you bring your knee up to your chest just to get to the next one. The wall follows the crest of the mountain, like a gargantuan serpent of stone. 

There are twenty watch towers in the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. The furthest east, and generally lower in elevation is Tower 1. The furthest west, and much higher in elevation, is Tower 20. We rode up in a chair lift (a ski lift) and arrived next to Tower 5. There are paths to walk up the mountain to reach the wall of one prefers. But that's a long and steep walk up before you even get to walk on the wall. 

From Tower 5, we headed west, toward Tower 20. The views of the mountains all around us were amazing. And there are multiple ranges. Looking out to the north, there was a near mountain range, one behind that, and one behind that. Imagine an army from Mongolia cresting mountain after mountain, finally reaching this one and saying, "Really? We're this far into it and now we have to scale a wall?!" I, for one, would not want to put in that amount of effort to invade. 

The watch towers each have two floors. The top floor is for the guards to watch for enemies, fire arrows, and throw stones. The bottom floor is sleeping chambers for the guards not on duty.

After we passed Tower 9, Alrica decided she had had enough. She turned back toward Tower 5. I kept going. This was probably the only time in my life I was going to hike along the Great Wall of China. I took advantage of it. 

We were lucky in the parts of the wall we were hiking. We weren't alone by any stretch of the imagination. But compared to some other parts, it was sparsely populated with other walkers. Mutianyu is a bit further out of the city than some other sections of the Great Wall in the Beijing District. From the town of Mutianyu, there are three ways up. You can walk up the mountain, you can ride up the chair lift to Tower 5 like we did, or there is a cable car that takes you to Tower 14. I walked past Tower 14 to near Tower 16.Wow, there were so many more people on the west side than in the middle section. 

What can be frustrating is that sometimes people stop at bottleneck points to get pictures. For example, going into and out of some of the towers involves much narrower stairs. At the top of those stairs, you have a great view (assuming you are looking away from the watch tower and not into it.) So many people stop there to get pictures. They need 700 pictures of their loved ones in various poses on the stairs. This causes two lines to form. First, there are all the people inside the watch tower waiting to get out. And then there are all the people on the steep and narrow and at times precarious staircase waiting to get in. The doorways are arches just wide enough for one person to pass through. This is already a natural pinch point, and those who stop for a couple minutes to get just the right shot of their companion leaning on the wall cause big traffic jams. 

The sections to the west are higher up, so theoretically have better views. I found that they weren't that different. All of it is impressive. The mountains are stark and tall and looming. The engineering of the wall is admirable and inspiring. And all of it conspires to remind you that you are just one tiny little person in one short span of time. You are, like my childhood lessons concerning Asia, next to nothing. 

But you get to use a piece of that time to enjoy a hike in an incredible place. So, that's something. 

The Summer Palace of Epic Naming Conventions

Quick note: It seems that blogger.com is blocked in Kazakhstan where I am now and where I am posting from. So I am posting from the Blogger app on my phone. The downside is that I lose certain functionality. I can't caption the pictures. And some of them turn sideways. So, good news. You get some extra neck exercise while you read this.

I've heard of people who have "a summer house." I've even known some with that ephemeral place by the lake or full-service cabin in the mountains. But I know of no one with a summer home as fantastical as that owned by the dynastic emperors of China. We visited the Summer Palace, and let me say, "Wow!"

Yes, it is a place by a lake but, unlike others, the lake (not a tiny one) is entirely in the grounds of the palace. It is in the mountains (or one mountain) but, unlike others, the mountain is entirely in the grounds of the palace. And it is grandeur on a scale that stretches the imagination. 

The Chinese aristocracy had many talents, building great walls and great palaces among them. But let's not underrate their ability to name things. Every building and most of the natural formations inside the Summer Palace complex have the most poetic, evocative names. First let me show you the Summer Palace of the Four Seas, perfectly lined up with the Archway of Cloud and Jade Brilliance. 

A summering emperor could enjoy a long walk around his enormous lake, called Lake Kunming (not sure if that has poetic meaning or not.)

On the way, he could pass through the Purple Cloud Gate Tower. 

He could take a slight detour on to an island in the lake to see the Heralding Spring Pavilion. 

He would pass near the Hall of Jade Ripples.

And continue through the Pavilion of Literary Brilliance. 

On his way back, he could stroll at a leisurely pace along the Long Corridor. (That's more on the nose than most of the other names.)

Understand, the Summer Palace was but one of the majestic buildings in which an emperor could chill. Another choice was the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity. 

This Hall is protect by a Qilin.

Meanwhile, the emperor's mother, the Dowager Empress, had her very own Chamber of Distant Gazing on the north side of the mountain. 

Nearby was the Hall of Serene Peace. (Doesn't serene mean peaceful?)

And, perhaps best of all, everyone could enjoy the Garden of Harmonious Interests with its beautiful reflecting pool. 

Naturally, you can count on two philosophers to ruin the whole appellation aesthetic by naming one of the bridges over this pool the Fish Observation Bridge, just because they were philosophizing about the movements of the fish they were observing from the bridge. 

In all seriousness, not every building in the Summer Palace complex is original. Many of them were destroyed during the Second Opium War by the British and the French in 1860. They weren't rebuilt until the 1990s.

War does have a way of destroying beauty, doesn't it? Gives you something to think about as you gaze over Kunming Lake from the Pavilion of Clear Radiance.