I got a decent night's sleep, about ten hours off-and-on. After finishing my
muffins for breakfast, I packed up and we arrived in Beijing on time at 10:00
a.m. The Beijing train station was quite large and require us to do a great
deal of walking.
It took a little while to find our local guide, possibly because she arrived late. We walked over to the bus and headed to our hotel. Our guide described the Golden Mountain Hotel as a Three Star Hotel. It looked like it had once been a Five Star Hotel, and then a Four Star Hotel. I suspect that in another few years it will be renovated or become a Two Star Hotel.
They gave us suites with a small entry hall, bathroom including a tub, living
room with a table, TV, bar, chairs, and a couch, and a large bedroom with two
double beds and another TV. We were on the tenth floor and our windows opened
all the way, just like in Shanghai. Although the rooms were nice, the carpets
and wallpaper were old and worn, and in need of replacement.
We were given 45 minutes to take showers, change, and get downstairs to start our exploration of Beijing. This proved to be an issue as our shower did not work. I turned on the water in the tub but when I pulled up the knob to get the water to go to the shower the knob came off in my hand. So, I washed as best as I could in the tub and Anne called Ian. About ten minutes later, a woman showed up and checked out the tub, and I showed her the problem. She left, but returned five or ten minutes later with a pair of repairmen. We left them with the tub and headed downstairs to meet up with Sally and Ian.
We headed to the Temple of Heaven first. Historically, the purpose of the
Temple was for the Emperor to have a place to come to pray for good crops. In
theory, a good emperor, who cared for his subjects, would go to pray a couple
of times a year. In practice, some rarely went at all. Partly, this was due
to the amount of effort required. Once the Emperor arrived, he fasted for two
days and prayed to the Gods. No one else was allowed in the temple . . . except
of course for the Emperor's concubines. I mean really, going without food for
your subjects is one thing, but there are limits to what even a good emperor
would give up for his people! While the Emperor was in the Temple, the people
shut themselves in their houses.
On the Temple grounds there is a rounded stone in the center of a raised platform.
At the time of its construction, this was the highest point in Beijing, which
was the capital of the Middle Kingdom -- and thus the center of the World. Thus,
this was the point closest to Heaven. It was thought that if you were to stand
on this stone and make a wish, it would be heard by the Gods and granted.
On the way to the main portion of the Temple there is a walkway. The Emperor would walk on the left, the Prime Minister would walk on the right, and down the rounded center would walk God. From looking at the crowd, there were a lot of pretentious people there when we visited! In the main part of the Temple, there was a circular wall around the buildings that reflected your voice. If you spoke in a normal voice on one side you could be heard clearly on the other side.
We headed off for lunch and, being that it was 1:30 p.m., the restaurant was
empty, other than us. They had snake wine there, just like in Hong Kong, but it
was in a huge jar instead of bottles. After lunch it was off to the Forbidden City
and Tian'anmen Square.
A couple of quick thoughts on Beijing and some asides. There was a lot of press about the impending decision by the International Olympic Committee on what city would host the 2008 olympics, with Beijing listed as the front-runner. The vote and announcement were to be broadcast live at 10:00 p.m. on the day of our arrival in Beijing. We thought that it would be great timing to be in Beijing when they announced that Beijing would be hosting the 2008 olympics. I also thought back to May 1989 when my parents visited Beijing during the demonstrations in Tian'anmen Square. I was hoping that Tian'anmen Square demonstrations didn't run in my family!
Ian also informed Anne and I that he was unable to reconfirm our flights back to
Hong Kong on Dragon Air. Apparently, Dragon Air had us listed on the flight, but
they needed our ticket numbers to reconfirm us. This was a problem, as we never
got our tickets. The tickets were issued by Himalayan Travel, a U.S. travel agent
that does reservations in the U.S. for Imaginative Traveler, the U.K. based travel
agency that ran the trip. Imaginative Traveler did not book the flights, so they
knew nothing about them.
As we were twelve hours ahead of the U.S., that gave us only a few hours Friday
night to contact Himalayan Travel to find out what the deal was. If we had to
buy tickets, we would have to accomplish this over the weekend, without the help
of our local guide, who was only really around during the week.
Beijing is quite large, both in population and in area. Like Chongqing, Beijing is both a city and a province. we continued our exploration by driving to the Forbidden City. it is very large, and is surrounded by high, thick walls and a moat. I expected large, open courtyards, like those seen in The Last Emperor, not the beautiful buildings, sidewalks, and private gardens that occupy the northern section of the Palace.
The Palace has 9,999 1/2 rooms. Nine is a special number in China because there
are nine levels of Heaven. I do not recall seeing the 1/2 room, so I cannot tell
why it is less of a room than the others. As we got to the southern portion of
the palace we saw the large courtyards that I had expected, and also got dragged
into a student art exhibition. Lucky us, we were even given the opportunity to
buy some of the art! After finishing our tour of the Palace, we exited through
the South into Tian'anmen Square.
We exited the Forbidden City under the large picture of Chairman Mao. We walked
the length of the Square, which is really long, and headed to the supermarket,
and place-of-Internet-access. We needed the supermarket for provisions for our
trek along the Great Wall on the morrow, and we needed the Internet place in order
to send an E-mail to Himalayan Travel to find out about our tickets.
Tian'anmen Square is a large concrete square ringed by large roads. The whole thing
is then surrounded by buildings on all sides. The Forbidden Palace to the North,
huge government buildings to the East and West, and Mao's tomb and other monuments
to the South. The huge government buildings on each side were built in only nine
months.
Throughout the Square there are huge lamp posts, mounted with speakers. These are used as a public address system. People hang out in the square and fly kites, eat lunch, or just sit around in groups and talk. The whole place gets packed with people for large events, as we would find out in just a few more hours!
The Internet place was really large, with about 150 terminals. It was in the middle of a shopping mall. We got on a terminal and Anne sent off a note to Himalayan Travel. I got a note saying that I had made Law Review, so I sent a quick E-mail to Becca and another one to Mom and Dad. When I was done, we went down to the supermarket, which was large and similar to a large U.S. supermarket. Anne picked up a backpack for our impending journey and we got some food for our trek. We caught a cab back to the hotel just in time to drop off our stuff before meeting the others for dinner in the lobby. However, we did not have sufficient time to actually take our first shower in almost two days.
We went to the restaurant next door to the hotel for dinner. The food was pretty
good. After dinner we headed back to the hotel and I watched the olympic vote on
TV, while some other occupant of the room fell asleep -- and fell over -- while
sitting next to the TV. Osaka was eliminated in the first round of voting and
they moved on to a second vote. After the second round, the man tabulating the
votes took the results, folded them, and put them in his suit pocket. It was
jsut like the Oscars!
It might not be much of a surprise that Chinese television had pleny of shots
of celebrations in progress when they announced that Beijing would host the
2008 olympics. We did not need the TV to figure out who had won, fireworks
started going off around the city as soon as the announcement was made. Anne
and I thought it would be fun to join the crowds, so i called Ian and we decided
to meet in the lobby and walk to Tian'anmen Square.
It took us about an hour to make it to the Square. The whole way there were
people walking in the streets, riding cars, buses, and taxis, waving flags,
honking horns, and cheering. It was an amazing atmosphere with such a huge
number of people, all in a great mood. People would yell "Hello!" or "Welcome
to Beijing" when they saw us. Others gave us Beijing 2008 and Chinese flags,
high-fives, and a copy of the newspaper, proclaiming Beijing's victory (out in
less than an hour).
As we drew close to the Square the crowds got even larger. There were hundreds
of police in lines in the Square, some restricting access to certain roads or
to sections of the Square, others standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the length
of the Square as more of a presence. The crowd was mostly gathered toward the
North of the Square where there was a section cordoned off. Inside that section
were large groups of people, many in olympic shirts, singing, dancing, taking
pictures, and carrying large colored flags. Occasionally, the police who were
keeping the rest of the crowd out of this area would wave their arms in a "sit down"
kind of motion and the first several rows of spectators would all sit down.
We walked around for about an hour, and I looked for my friend Debbie, who we were to meet on Sunday, but I didn't see her around. Odd. We took some pictures and drank in the excitement. It took us another hour to get back to our hotel, and we arrived around 1:00 a.m. Anne called Himalayan Travel and found out the good news that they had not actually purchased our tickets back to Hong Kong. This meant that we would have to buy our own tickets some time in the next 53 hours prior to our flight leaving.