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| The Forbidden City. |
Getting There
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| Hong Kong Airlines strange mist. |
Beijing is about a 3.5 hour flight from Hong Kong. We took Hong Kong Airlines, which has soothing music and a strange mist that comes out from above the luggage bins before departure. Getting a taxi to our hotel was a bit difficult. The first taxi we were pointed to drove off. The driver of the second taxi we were pointed to did not want to take us anywhere. There was zero English. Zero. Luckily, we had prepared and printed out the address of our hotel written in Chinese. The driver finally took our luggage and then drove very slowly in the middle of heavy traffic while he input the address in his cellphone for about five minutes. Once that was complete, we sped up and made it to our hotel safe and sound.
Architecture
With the exception of the buildings surrounding Tiananmen Square, which were designed by Russian architects in the 1950s, the architecture in Beijing is fabulous. Each office building is unique and quite interesting. The buildings are large, but there are no super tall skyscrapers in the center of the city.
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| Peter, Spiro and Belle. |
Private Tour Guide
We hired a private tour guide recommended by a friend to take us around to all the sights. Our tour guide, Belle, was very knowledgeable, fun, and she spoke English well. Spiro said he was a little skeptical about getting a tour guide at first but that Belle turned out to be “fantastic.” She said she had to take an exam in English to become a licensed tour guide and only 18% of those who take the exam pass it. All of her sentences start with the phrase “So it is like this…”
Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City
Our first morning in Beijing, we had some trouble ordering breakfast. Although the people at the hotel restaurant spoke decent English, it turns out that the only thing more difficult to explain than “food allergies” are “pancakes.” It looked as if our boys would just be having bacon for breakfast, but to our surprise, the chef made them waffles. After our breakfast feast, our driver drove us around the outside of Tiananmen Square, which was massive (109 acres) and packed with people. Belle explained that young people would bring their grandparents from the provinces to Tiananmen Square once in their lifetime to see the mausoleum of Chairman Mao. Tiananmen Square was once part of the Forbidden City, but the walls were knocked down and public buildings and museums were built.
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| Along the moat to the entrance of the Forbidden City. |
After driving around Tiananmen Square, we were dropped off with our guide on the west side of the Forbidden City and then walked along the moat to the entrance, avoiding huge crowds and lines of people. The Forbidden City is even more massive than Tiananmen Square. It is 180 acres and contains 980 buildings, some of which are very large. The largest buildings are supported by tree trunks from 1,000 year old trees that were cut down in southern China and shipped north along canals built for bringing materials to the site. According to Belle, the Forbidden City took just 16 years to build from 1405-1421. Of course, two million laborers worked on it 24 hours per day. The Forbidden City is right in the middle of Beijing and along the north/south axis of the middle of Beijing, cutting through the middle of the Forbidden City, the ground is slightly raised. That is the path upon which only the Emperor was allowed to walk.
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| Athanas family standing where only the Emperor could stand. |
The main buildings of the Forbidden City sit on top of a three-story-high marble base, made to look like clouds. Every 20 feet or so, about 10 feet above the ground, dragon heads protrude from these bases. When it rains, water runs down the base and out the hundreds of dragons’ spouts onto the ground below. The ground consists of 16 layers of bricks, so that the water immediately drains away, eliminating flooding. Spiro said “the Forbidden City was the most amazing place I've ever seen.” Peter also found the Forbidden City spectacular, but not as amazing as the Great Wall.
All of the buildings, walkways and railings in the Forbidden City are covered with carved and painted dragons. The dragon was the symbol of the Emperor and is to this day the symbol of China. So where did the Chinese dragon come from? In the words of our tour guide Belle, “So, it is like this…” Over 5,000 years ago, before the 2,000 years of Emperors and the 3,000 years of the seven kingdoms, China consisted of numerous small tribes. Each tribe was represented by an animal, which was the tribe’s symbol. If one tribe would defeat another tribe in battle, the victorious tribe would add the best characteristic of the other tribe’s animal to its own animal, to make its own animal even more powerful. “So it is like this…” If the snake tribe were to defeat the fish tribe, the snake tribe would add scales to the snake symbol. If that tribe then defeated the horse tribe, it would add a horse’s head on the end of the scale-covered stake. If that tribe then defeated the eagle tribe, it would add an eagle’s talons to the scale-covered snake with the horse’s head and so-on. Thus, the dragon, an amalgamation of the best qualities of every animal, is the symbol of total power.
Silk
After the Forbidden City, Stella and I had lunch at a local Chinese restaurant while the boys looked on hungrily. Then we all went to a government-owned silk store. They had live silk worms and explained the process of how silk was made. It was quite interesting. After purchasing some really, really comfortable comforters, we went down the street to the Temple of Heaven.
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| The Temple of Heaven. |
Temple of Heaven
The Temple of Heaven, built at the same time as the Forbidden City, is where the Emperor would come a few times per year to worship his father, God. The Temple of Heaven consists of 670 walled-in acres of trees and a handful of buildings, including The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a huge circular building, built on a three-story-high circular marble base representing heaven. The building is made completely of interlocking wood, including 1,000 year old tree trunks for support. There are no nails. The huge forest surrounding The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, which extends in every direction as far as the eye can see, is full of retirees, exercising, dancing, playing badminton, playing cards and just hanging out. It is a very festive atmosphere. Spiro said, “The Temple of Heaven would have been absolutely spectacular had we not seen it directly after the Forbidden City.”
Dinner
After a long day of walking around, we were all starving (especially the boys). At this point, the people at the hotel restaurant completely understood the boys’ food allergies and the chef prepared pasta with olive oil, garlic and mushrooms. Peter joyfully and thankfully feasted on this specially-prepared meal, but Spiro announced “I refuse to eat fungus” and ordered other food. The moral of this story: just because somebody isn’t allergic to something, doesn’t mean they have to like it.
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| The Summer Palace. |
The Summer Palace
The second day we were in Beijing, we drove by the Olympic village, which was vast and had some cool modern architecture. Then we went to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is built on a huge 660 acre lake. The Summer Palace contains a long corridor that runs along the lake to the main palace. It is more than 700 meters long and is decorated with 14,000 paintings. Like the Temple of Heaven, there are lots of retirees hanging out at the Summer Palace grounds. They even had a band of retirees giving an impromptu concert when we were there. You can take a boat ride across the lake or rent a paddle boat of your own. There must have been 100 paddle boats out there the day we visited. “So it is like this,” Belle said. “The Forbidden City is for business, the Temple of Heaven is spiritual, and the Summer Palace is for relax. Thousands of people here now, but remember this whole area for one person. Very quiet and relaxing then.”
Actual Emperors spent very little time at the Summer Palace, but the Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi, a concubine of the Emperor who effectively controlled the Chinese government from 1861 to 1908, lived there for most of her reign. She is known as the “Dragon Lady.” The term is now used to describe any powerful, ruthless and aggressive Asian woman, but according to Belle, “So it is like this… Dragon Lady not negative or positive, just describe that she have the power.”  |
| The 700 meter long corridor with 14,000 paintings in the Summer Palace. |
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| The Great Wall of China. |
The Great Wall
After the Summer Palace, we took a long drive through numerous orchards, farms and small towns north towards the mountains and the Great Wall. When we arrived at the entrance of the Great Wall, there was a little village with shops and restaurants. The boys temporarily lost interest in the Great Wall when they saw a “Pizza” sign on one of the restaurants. Reluctantly, they agreed to check out the Great Wall before having lunch, although they weren’t entirely sure how it could be better than having pizza.
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| One of many watchtowers along the Great Wall. |
The first Emperor of China connected various fortifications to make the first Great Wall around 200 BC. Over the next 400 years, the Han dynasty built the second, much longer Great Wall. Finally, the Ming dynasty rebuilt much of the wall in stone and brick, which Belle described as the third Great Wall, from 1368 to 1644 AD. Belle says the Great Wall is 13,000 kilometers long. “So it is like this… if the Great Wall was in the US, it would go from Los Angeles to New York, back to Los Angeles and then back to New York again.”
The first thing you notice about the Great Wall is that it is built at the top of a mountain range. You take a bus up a winding road and then a lengthy ski lift ride to get up there. It seems impossible that people could have carried the giant stones and millions of tons of bricks used to build the Great Wall up that mountain. Pictures simply do not do the Great Wall justice. Being up there, on the top of the Great Wall on the top of a mountain range, is simply awe inspiring. You can see for miles in every direction. Spiro said “I really don’t know what to say, it was an indescribable feeling of awe to walk along it.”
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| Steps of the Great Wall. |
The Great Wall goes up and down along the top of the mountain range and the stone steps are very treacherous. They are purposely built to be different heights and lengths so that if invaders got to the top of the wall they would lose their footing trying to fight the defending soldiers who lived there and knew every step. There may originally have been as many as 40,000 watchtowers along the Great Wall. The Ming dynasty built 6,700 stone watchtowers, each about 250 yards apart. They are constructed to allow the north wind to swirl through windows, creating natural and refreshing air conditioning. In winter, these windows were covered by packed snow to keep out the cold. Peter said of the Great Wall, “Given that I have always wanted to go there, I may be biased when saying it, but the Great Wall was the best part of the trip.”
Although the Great Wall turned out to be better than pizza, we were all hungry after walking up and down the Great Wall and the boys knew just where they were going to eat. Belle took the boys to the Pizza restaurant and ordered for them. Not only did the place have Pizza, but it also had numerous televisions with Olympic basketball on. The US was playing China. Once the boys were established at their “Temple of Heaven,” Belle took Stella and I to a local Chinese restaurant up the street. After our late lunch, our driver took us to the airport and we returned to Hong Kong.
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| View from inside a watchtower. |
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| Peter taking in the view from a watchtower. |
