June 15
Bill and I spent a pretty jammed first full day - the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, a rickshaw tour of a hutong community (a neighborhood of wooden one-story houses in the 'old style'), and a Peking Opera medlay performance (intended for tourists).
Our guide Ming was a lucky find early in the day - good English, knowledgeable, flexible. He seemed a little sad to me, describing how difficult it is for regular people to compete in the new Chinese economy, how hard everyone has to work to survive. But it may simply be that Chinese fatalism that I interpret as sadness.
The Forbidden City is enormous, looking a little down at the heels these days, and so jammed with people it was hard to feel any connection with the place. Ming is very taken with the "Dragon Lady", power behind the throne from roughly 1860 - 1910, aunt of the last emperor, Puyi. Parts of the film The Last Emperor, about Puyi's fall from emperor to gardener, were filmed on site. If Ming is an accurate reflection of the culture that led to building this city, every element of every room has significance. It is sort of feng shui on steriods. Carved bats are a sign of long life, as are chrysanthemums; the number nine is lucky so doors have 9 studs across and 9 down; and raised thresholds will keep out demons. These thresholds were breached in many places so Puyi could ride his bicycle throughout the compound. So perhaps therein lies the success of Sun Yat Sen's revolution in 1912.
Our visit to the Temple of Heaven was, for me, more engaging. The Temple site has, since the 1949 Revolution, become a much-used park, where people come to play and picnic. There is a large area where many people were ballroom dancing, alone or in pairs, to an informal sound system. Old men played mah jong and checkers, and rowdy family groups played a card game involving slapping of cards and much laughter. The Temple is beautiful, newly restored a few years ago with vibrant blues, greens and yellows in a three-tiered round temple built in the early 15th century. The Temple was built for emperors to conduct Daoist sacrifices to ensure a good harvest. The ceremonies themselves, said the museum on site, were conducted from 2600 B.C. into the 20th century, wherever the site of the capoital city was. This is probably how emperors stayed in power - convincing this nation of farmers that they could influence a good harvest. And, of course, each of those emperors needed to maintain the thresholds in the temples to keep out the evil spirits.
Our visit to the hutong was a treat - narrow lanes between one-story houses with gray tile roofs. The lanes are generally too narrow for cars, so a rickshaw or bicycle is the way to travel. Each hutong in the city is a real community - comparatively quiet in this noisy city, and very safe. Our local guide Rose said there are few locks on the doors and things are safe ("...but I wouldn't leave a new bicycle unattended.") We visited the Wang family, who have lived in their home here for 100 years. The family has passed on the craft of painting tiny landscapes inside small glass bottles throughout that time. Their home, like the others in the hutong, is roughly 15 feet by 40 feet, has running watter and a small kitchen, but they use a community bathroom. The community is a real one - old men sitting on the stoop shirtless drinking tea, children chasing balls, a barber cutting hair in the tiny pocket park next to others playing mah jong and checkers. This does not feel like Disneyland, and roots us more firmly into the life of one group of working people.
And finally, a little sample of Peking Opera - gorgeous costumes and masks. The orchestra provides themes and repeated signatures, like melodrama. The small segments we saw included the evil horse thief, the trickster monkey god (a dazzling swordsman), the pious daughter. The music is difficult for Western ears, but the melodrama fun and the old painted wooden theater lovely. It's a lot like the old theatres in Western mining towns.
We ended our day being swindled by a motorized rickshaw driver. We tried and tried to flag down a taxi to return from the opera, to no avail. When the rickshaw driver stopped, he claimed no English but hustled us into the rig. And then the thunder and lightning began (honestly - couldn't make this up). He stopped about a kilometer short of our hotel, aggressively charged us six times the fee we paid to a taxi driver to go to the theater and turned us over to another, real taxi. Ah well, ask the price before you climb into the man's vehicle. I actually think my mother taught me that in my teens. But I will long remember riding in the open rickshaw, surrounded by bicycles and rickshaws with no lights and no helmets, feeling the rain begin to grow into a real storm, and zipping through traffic with no respect for lanes, with a fervent belief by every driver in the power of the horn to clear the way. I put my faith in the Buddha.
Bill and I spent a pretty jammed first full day - the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, a rickshaw tour of a hutong community (a neighborhood of wooden one-story houses in the 'old style'), and a Peking Opera medlay performance (intended for tourists).
Our guide Ming was a lucky find early in the day - good English, knowledgeable, flexible. He seemed a little sad to me, describing how difficult it is for regular people to compete in the new Chinese economy, how hard everyone has to work to survive. But it may simply be that Chinese fatalism that I interpret as sadness.
The Forbidden City is enormous, looking a little down at the heels these days, and so jammed with people it was hard to feel any connection with the place. Ming is very taken with the "Dragon Lady", power behind the throne from roughly 1860 - 1910, aunt of the last emperor, Puyi. Parts of the film The Last Emperor, about Puyi's fall from emperor to gardener, were filmed on site. If Ming is an accurate reflection of the culture that led to building this city, every element of every room has significance. It is sort of feng shui on steriods. Carved bats are a sign of long life, as are chrysanthemums; the number nine is lucky so doors have 9 studs across and 9 down; and raised thresholds will keep out demons. These thresholds were breached in many places so Puyi could ride his bicycle throughout the compound. So perhaps therein lies the success of Sun Yat Sen's revolution in 1912.
Our visit to the Temple of Heaven was, for me, more engaging. The Temple site has, since the 1949 Revolution, become a much-used park, where people come to play and picnic. There is a large area where many people were ballroom dancing, alone or in pairs, to an informal sound system. Old men played mah jong and checkers, and rowdy family groups played a card game involving slapping of cards and much laughter. The Temple is beautiful, newly restored a few years ago with vibrant blues, greens and yellows in a three-tiered round temple built in the early 15th century. The Temple was built for emperors to conduct Daoist sacrifices to ensure a good harvest. The ceremonies themselves, said the museum on site, were conducted from 2600 B.C. into the 20th century, wherever the site of the capoital city was. This is probably how emperors stayed in power - convincing this nation of farmers that they could influence a good harvest. And, of course, each of those emperors needed to maintain the thresholds in the temples to keep out the evil spirits.
Our visit to the hutong was a treat - narrow lanes between one-story houses with gray tile roofs. The lanes are generally too narrow for cars, so a rickshaw or bicycle is the way to travel. Each hutong in the city is a real community - comparatively quiet in this noisy city, and very safe. Our local guide Rose said there are few locks on the doors and things are safe ("...but I wouldn't leave a new bicycle unattended.") We visited the Wang family, who have lived in their home here for 100 years. The family has passed on the craft of painting tiny landscapes inside small glass bottles throughout that time. Their home, like the others in the hutong, is roughly 15 feet by 40 feet, has running watter and a small kitchen, but they use a community bathroom. The community is a real one - old men sitting on the stoop shirtless drinking tea, children chasing balls, a barber cutting hair in the tiny pocket park next to others playing mah jong and checkers. This does not feel like Disneyland, and roots us more firmly into the life of one group of working people.
And finally, a little sample of Peking Opera - gorgeous costumes and masks. The orchestra provides themes and repeated signatures, like melodrama. The small segments we saw included the evil horse thief, the trickster monkey god (a dazzling swordsman), the pious daughter. The music is difficult for Western ears, but the melodrama fun and the old painted wooden theater lovely. It's a lot like the old theatres in Western mining towns.
We ended our day being swindled by a motorized rickshaw driver. We tried and tried to flag down a taxi to return from the opera, to no avail. When the rickshaw driver stopped, he claimed no English but hustled us into the rig. And then the thunder and lightning began (honestly - couldn't make this up). He stopped about a kilometer short of our hotel, aggressively charged us six times the fee we paid to a taxi driver to go to the theater and turned us over to another, real taxi. Ah well, ask the price before you climb into the man's vehicle. I actually think my mother taught me that in my teens. But I will long remember riding in the open rickshaw, surrounded by bicycles and rickshaws with no lights and no helmets, feeling the rain begin to grow into a real storm, and zipping through traffic with no respect for lanes, with a fervent belief by every driver in the power of the horn to clear the way. I put my faith in the Buddha.
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