day five: beijing

Day 5
January 3, 2008
(our last day)

The Summer Palace, the Lama temple, Houhai’s Drum Tower, a hutong tour and a secret stone boat

This was our last day of touring Beijing, and perhaps my favorite. The first stop for us was the Summer Palace, a place where the emperor and empress and their family and concubines and eunuchs and such would spend their time during the summer. It’s pretty much right inside the city but slightly further from the center where the Forbidden City is. This place was incredible. We entered into a wonderland, a playground for the ancient rich. As we walked past the first building, the space opened up onto a large lake, frozen over and rimmed by a winding walkway. Covering the stones in the open space leading up to the shore were long lines of Chinese characters. I scanned the area and noticed that these characters paved the entire space. Some were dark and well-formed, others were fading in the sunlight. Then I noticed about a half-dozen old Chinese men and women holding long poles at the end of which were sponge tips. A water bottle was attached to the side of the pole, slowly dripping its contents to the sponge which was used like the tip of a brush. The men and women were drawing with water. Others had gathered around to watch their art, slowly gliding over the stones, making brush strokes of ancient words and ideas, flowing in lines towards the frozen water of the lake. It was meditation. It was art. It was beautiful. We stood and admired the words fade into dry stone and then made our way towards the other side of the lake. On one side of the walkway, a series of small picture windows lined the wall, each their own shape and each decorated intricately with small paintings of flowers.

At the end of this walk, we entered the series of buildings that were the Cixi's sleeping quarters and the Hall of Longevity. After exiting this area, we discovered one of the most magnificent walkways I have ever encountered. Along the lake, a covered wooden walkway called the Long Corridor lines the shore. At over 700 m in length, every inch of the walkway is covered in traditional paintings – intricate, detailed paintings of ancient scenes with the Monkey King, monks, emperor’s weddings, gardens and other palaces. And we were forever trailed by a very large group of Russian tourists by whom I was, of course, forever intrigued. So, between the spectacle of the walkway and the spectacle of Russian wealth and hair do’s, I had more than enough to take pictures of for quite a while. About halfway down the walkway, a large gate opened up onto an open space. The gate, through which one entered from the lake, welcomed the emperor and empress into the palace when they would arrive for their stay. In front of the gate was the entrance to the Buddhist temple built onto the hillside of the garden. The Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty, for whom the palace was built, was a deep believer in Buddhism, despite the fact that she was a vicious despot of an empress. She did fun things like hold her sisters and various concubines in the palace inside large water tanks with only their head left above the surface for weeks at a time. She ruled over China from 1861 to 1908. She was forced out of her rule through the Boxer Rebellion. Cixi is a fascinating human being. Check out the Wikipedia site if you want to know more.

The water was gorgeous in the winter light. Boats were docked at various spots along the shore, and many people were lounging around on the walls and in the pavilions surrounding the lake. I came across a man who was playing the flute beautifully at one dock. Traditional Chinese music emanated from the instrument as I walked up. I was doing some audio recording at that point, so I managed to catch some of it. As soon as I passed by, he changed his tune to Auld Lang Syne. Ah, to be Western in China. Such a funny thing.

As we rounded the last stretch of the walkway, we came to the end of the lake where the Stone Boat sits in the water. This is a very large marble boat which sits at the water’s edge. It’s a two story boat with stained glass windows on both floors. There is a huge mirror on the second floor where the Empress Cixi would “sit and admire herself while eating cakes and drinking tea,” as my tour guide pointed out. The boat was wooden originally, I think, but for some reason, the emperor decided to make one out of stone. Hmm. Not sure.

At this, we wandered just a short way to the exit of this entrancing palace. To think of the way the space was when Cixi walked the hallway in her great silks and headdresses. This place was incredible. I could have spent all day there. I left with such a sense of wonder and enchantment, like every stone and painting, every hall and gate, was holding tightly to secrets you could hear whispered on the cold January wind.

And from here to the yet another amazing meal of Sichuan food in a more modern Chinese restaurant. The place had a much sleeker edge to it than the other restaurants we had been to but with hints and touches of vintage China peeking out from behind the crisp lines and angles of the interior space.

After lunch, we headed to the Lama Temple (Yonghegong Temple), formerly an imperial palace that now serves as a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Again, breathtaking. I cannot believe I stood in such a sacred place. Altogether, there were maybe 7 different halls in one line preceded by a long walkway. Situated right in the middle of the city, the incense from the temple burns continuously and permeates every inch of the surrounding area. It wasn’t too busy while we were there, which was nice. We had a chance to wander aimlessly and listen to our guide explain all the different shrines and Buddha statues. Each temple left me in greater awe than the last. Running my hands along the prayer wheel. Looking up into the sky to see a tree barren save for 60 or so persimmons clinging to its branches. Watching the thick plumes of smoke reach up into the clouds above. Candles flickering, offerings being made at every moment. Such a sense of calm. As we got towards the very back of the temple site, we entered the Hall of the Wheel of the Law in which the monks come to study and meditate. Buddha sat in the middle, of course, surrounded by two or three rows of pillows with small reading lamps set on long tables for reading. To the far left were various statues of monks parts of the world, all seated in a row under a line of windows. In front of them was the first and only Buddhist sand painting that I have ever seen in real life. I have seen them created in films, but I have never laid my own eyes on one. It’s beyond description to see one in person. Beyond imagination the intricate details, the colors, the shapes and patterns. The impermanence of such a work of love – created as an offering meant to be present for only a short time. I moved around the painting which was contained within a Plexiglas cube and hit every angle I could. No photos allowed within the temples, so I have only what is left in my memory. I feel so fortunate to have even glimpsed something so ethereal and sacred.

I happened to walk back around to the front of this particular temple as Jim and Tina wandered out the back. I came across a Chinese woman who was giving a tour to 4 people from Spain. She was speaking Spanish, and since she was speaking slowly and deliberately, I could understand everything she was telling them. I immediately turned on my audio recorder and eavesdropped for as long as I could manage. She was explaining to her tour group the story of the Dalai Lama and why the current Dalai Lama does not live in Tibet or China but is in exile in Dharmasala, India, and is in search of the next chosen one. In this temple, to the right of the Buddha, there is a photo of the Panchen Lama, a man who was chosen by the People’s Republic of China, not by Tibetan Buddhist, but in the space where there should be a photo of the 14^th Dalai Lama, to the left of Buddha, there is nothing. He remains in exile, where he has been since 1959, seeking independence for Tibet from Chinese rule. In September 2007, the government ruled that all monks must be approved through their channels, a process which would include the selection of the 15^th Dalai Lama upon the death of the current Dalai Lama. Fascinating and crazy. I was thrilled to be listening to this in Spanish. It was too amazing to be standing in such a place and listening to a language I can only speak half a world away.

On the approach to the final temple, all I could see was something massive and gold standing in the space. I hadn’t bothered to really look at the height of this temple before I entered, but when I walked fully into the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses and looked up, I saw that the Buddha standing before me simply had no end. Its body reached so high in to the rafters of this temple, its face was barely visible. Fully gold, fully wooden, and fabled to be carved out of one solid tree, I had never seen anything with such solid weight in my life. It’s a 26m tall statue of the Maitreya Buddha carved from a single white sandalwood tree. It’s 18m above the ground, 8m below the ground and 8m in diameter. It’s immense and so spectacular. Humbling to stand in front of such a thing. It blew my mind.

We did some mild shopping on our way out. Jim found a woman who makes traditional Chinese paintings using her fingers and sides of her palms. Fascinating. And then, after quite a while of aimless strolling, were suddenly jacked up into speed mode by our tour guide. There was somewhere to be, after all, unbeknownst to us. We were rushed over to the Houhai area for our hutong tour. We piled out of the car after crisscrossing the neighborhood and winding our way through the maze of rickshaws. We stood waiting for our next tour guide, also named Tina, who would take us through the hutong. She showed up and we were packed into our rickshaw. She took off with her bike and went a different direction. So, we were a little unclear as to what we were supposed to be getting a tour of. We were on the rickshaw for a total of like 10 minutes and went about 4 blocks. Then, just as suddenly as she had left, there was Tina #2, pulling us along to our next destination. Over the Houhai foot bridge we went, and as I stopped to take a shot or two, Jim and Tina #2 were almost out of my line of sight. Moving quickly through the hutong, I had to run to catch up to them. Um, could we maybe slow down? Well, no, actually, we can’t. You see, there’s a drum ceremony we have to catch in 10 minutes at the top of the Drum Tower, so we’ve just got to keep moving. Oh, well, then. In that case. Because we were definitely informed of the Drum Tower ceremony we had to get to at 4:40 when we were basically in total leisure more 40 minutes earlier at some silly souvenir shop. Ok. Sure. So, off we went, towards the Drum Tower at a brisk walk, to say the least. We hoofed it up the very steep, very uneven stone steps leading to the top of the tower, and we made it just in time for the drumming of the drums.

The towers houses one of the oldest drums in China as well as the alleged largest drum in the world. Every day, the drummers come in and bang on these gorgeous traditional drums. I got some great audio of the experience. Such a powerful, deep reverberation in my body standing in that room. From the walkway around the outside of the tower we could see clearly down into the hutong below. Obvious scars of urban development visible from our height. I could see where one neighborhood had been flattened right up to the wall it shared with a bordering neighborhood. Inside the tower, across from the drums, there was this ancient time-telling device that used a series of water activated levers to record time. In Korean history, the invention is credited to one of this country’s emperors, but perhaps it was taken from China. Not really sure. The basic premise is that a constant stream of water flows into a series of cisterns, causing a level to be raised on a measured dial which records the time. At a certain time interval, the water causes a statue of a guard to bang a set of cymbals together to chime the time. The Chinese have created a replica of this device which sits in the Drum Tower. It’s pretty incredible and ingenious.

After the wild Drum Tower ride, we had some down time to wander through Yandai Xiejie again, one of the main drags in Houhai. Jim picked up a sweet mahjong set and I found some hot Mao t-shirts for the preschoolers in my life. It was back to the hotel for us where we proceeded to create an elaborate and extremely artistic display of all our fabulous finds in Beijing. This was fun. To see all the amazing things we managed to find in our travels in the city all in one place.

We made it out of the hotel for our last night on the town. Jumped in a cab to find the Stone Boat Café in Ritan Park. Hoping for a tiny, cozy spot to eat a bite of food and play some mahjong, we were so very pleasantly surprised when we found what we did. We made it to the neighborhood and quickly realized we were definitely in Russian territory. Russian signs, Russian department stores, Russian restaurants everywhere. The café is actually inside the park, so we had to get the guards to let us in since it was after 9:30 by the time we got there. As we wound our way up the path in the dark and deserted park, we found this wonderland of ponds and open courtyards. We noticed that the row of restaurants along the street that we had just passed on out way in shared a backyard with the park. Totally gorgeous in the winter moonlight. We were all alone in there. It was so peaceful. Pretty soon after passing the restaurants, we started to hear some music carry through the air. Further ahead, we could see the orange glow of another space. As we got closer, we realized, wow, they’re playing Dylan. This funny café in the dark inside a park in Beijing in the middle of the winter where no one else is is playing classic Bob Dylan. Too cool. We walk in and it is tiny. Like maybe four booths altogether. It’s just us, two people who work there and a guy who must be a regular. They’re sitting around talking quietly, reading the newspaper, when we walk in. They were incredibly kind to us and got a real kick out of the mahjong set, which, of course, we have NO idea how to play.

We ordered some soups and set up our very own special twisted version of a solitaire-style mahjong that Jim played by himself. Our hosts could not figure out what the hell we were playing. The soups arrived and were just about the most delicious meal we had on our whole trip. The whole place was just so simple and so elegant. The boat looked out on the small pond in the park. Its lights and heat lamp a welcome respite from the bitter Beijing cold. I felt so transported in that space. To another age, really. So far away from the buzzing of the city streets and movement of the life of a city undergoing so much change and upheaval and transformation. As Dylan washed over us, we ate our fill, played a very random, surely never-before-achieved 2-person game of mahjong solitaire and made our way out of the place so that the poor guy who was waiting on us could go home.

Needing to use the bathroom, we spotted a bar right next to the park entrance. I’ll just duck inside and use the bathroom. You get a drink. We’ll stay for a bit and go home. Well, after winding our way through a construction wall that served as a temporary entrance to the bar while renovations were underway, it didn’t take us more than a few minutes to realize where we were. We were in a hooker bar. In the middle of Russia town. In Beijing. Seriously. We walked right into a hooker bar. It’s called Maggie’s Bar. And from the swanky velvet couch in the corner and the trashy blue and orange glow of strip lights lining the walls and ceiling, to the standard set of overweight white guys and scantily clad, doting Chinese girls, it was pretty clear. We saw some funny sights that night. White guy dancing at its finest, people. These pretty girls fawning all over these rather nerdy and unattractive guys turned out to not be so pretty after all in the rather harsh light of the ladies’ room. I was a little shocked to turn to see one of the girls I had seen on the dance floor standing at the mirror. Not quite the flawless skin and perfect body that I thought I saw. The DJ set was incredible. Totally appropriate and priceless. Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” into Steely Dan’s “Hey 19” and off without a hitch to “What a Feelin’.” That one got me up on the dance floor and me and this really sweet, well-dressed Chinese girl tore it up. It was just us. We were in heaven, singing the song at top volume to each other. And then this song by some Mongolian boy band came on, and all the girls stormed the floor (another girl told us who the band was that made the girls go wild). It was a strange and slightly creepy place, but we had a total blast. What a way to end our Beijing extravaganza.

And so concludes my tales of Beijing. We left the next morning for home. I landed back in Gwangju to a blanket of snow, the only one of the season. I made it out the day after our return to catch the snow in the park and enjoy an afternoon of tea and solitude.

It was an epic trip, to say the least. I’m so very fortunate to have had the opportunity to go there and to have this kind of trip. I would definitely go back in a second if I could. It’s a city of conundrums and paradoxes, like Korea, really. So much change in such hyperspeed. I’ll be interested to hear from folks what their experience in like for the games.