China

Final day in China, and time for Forbidden City. It had been so close yet so far all this time. First we needed a double order of Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches that we ate on the steps outside the subway. If we brought them inside, the announcements would conveniently become bilingual just long enough to ream us out for eating in there.

When we got off the subway, there seemed to be a ton more security guards than usual. Lots of bag scans and metal detectors to go through just to get near the building. The lines themselves took ten minutes or so and we hadn't even entered the gates. We wondered if it was always this intense. The Irish flag was flying alongside the Chinese today, we later noticed so that may have been a factor.

Forbidden City was quite large. We passed two whole halls of the outer court before the ticket counter appeared. The complex was designed and built from 1406-1420 for the Emperor and Empress along with their many concubines and attendants. It served as such during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Some halls were used to conduct meetings, others for celebrations. I had rented an audio guide and it urged me to look up at the statues on the roofs which served as guardians. The more there were, the more important the building was. The highest number of guardians was eleven.

We visited the Hall of Supreme Harmony, used for ceremonies, like the lunar New Year, Winter Solstice, birthdays and enthronement of a new emperor. The hall was built in the 15th century then rebuilt in the 17th. Inside there was a dragon throne. We also visited the Hall of Central Harmony, a few times since my audio guide stopped working properly and I had to get it fixed. Here the Emperor would rehearse speeches, rest and meet with close ministers. The last large Hall of Preserving Harmony had less pillars than the others and could be used for banquets and dances. Later it was used for imperial ceremonies.

Outside each hall were large copper vats that were used to put out fires. We also came across a large stone carving that ascended between the staircases. They transported the stone from the suburbs of Beijing by sprinkling water on the road to create an ice path.

We passed through a few more halls before making it to the Imperial Garden. Large rocks transported from southern China upon request, dominated the landscaping in a good way. They had a pavilion on either side. It seemed like the most relaxing area in the extremely large and cold complex.

Along both sides of the gates were buildings: palaces for the Empress and the concubines selected young and for their beauty. Some who had sons even had a shot at becoming royalty later on in life. Many of the rooms were still set up from the last Empress's 50th birthday party some years ago. Ornaments and furniture were on display behind glass. On the Eastern side, the buildings had been converted into museums housing bronze, jade and ceramic displays.

Chilled once again, we tried to find the exit but were forbidden from going the logical route that would lead to the subway. We finally understood the name in today's context. We went around, past the imposing walls and moat again except in another direction. There was no logical reason that we could see as to why people needed to walk around the massive complex in the cold other than to encourage the sales of tickets for the little electric car to the exit or to corral people past souvenir shops. The added twenty minutes where my face was so dry my lips cracked open again , didn't improve my mood.

We got turned around in one more dead end in the underground before we made it to Tiananmen Square. As advertised, it was a lot of paved open space with security that felt a bit out of place. People would boldly try to take photos of or with the guards, who seemed unwelcoming at best. I used my zoom lens just the once. But mostly, we stuck to photography of the monument in the middle and the big stone buildings reminiscent of a Soviet style.

Once we said our goodbyes and packed up our bags, we took the late subway to the airport for our lovely 2 am flight. Despite all our time spent using internet, neither of us had thought to look up which terminal we needed to arrive at to catch an Air Asia flight. We took the third last train to terminal 3 where some international ones departed.

Luckily for us, a Malaysian couple was struggling to communicate with the security guard just before the subway exit gates. The Chinese woman working was so lost she even asked us if we spoke Mandarin so we could translate her words into English for the couple. Essentially, they wanted to know if he could see her off on her flight and then return to the train to go to terminal 2 for his later flight. We were able to tell him when the last train was running, which axed his plans. Lucky for us again, the couple knew which terminal Air Asia flew out of much better than the woman who actually worked there and hardly understood English. The Malaysian man and us took the train back to terminal 2, where sure enough we could catch our flight.

The hassles weren't over yet. It wouldn't be China if they were. The Air Asia desk was impossibly slow. They were running a big long-distance jet, yet to check everyone in, they only opened three counters. We stood in line for a full hour just to drop off our checked bags. I suppose they figured we had nothing else to do between 11pm and 2am, but still, a chair would have been nice. At least the smiling Malaysian people reminded me that soon we'd be in a warmer place, if only for the layover, but Thailand was much the same.

We'd gone into hibernation mode, killing time in the morning in the misguided hope that it would warm up, although it never did. We also had an unhealthy addiction to the Logos game/app that coincidentally amped up our desire to stay inside.

Once we eventually left, we tried out the Taiwanese sandwich shop that my friend recommended. Boy were they good, like little egg or egg and bacon crepes, with a flaky yet oily exterior. They were salty with chili sauce, ketchup and pepper. The vendor even spoke some English so I could be sure mine were meat free. We regretted only buying one to scarf down before the subway ride.

We came back above ground at Lama Temple, a Tibetan temple that had withstood battles that desecrated other buildings. Originally a residence for Emperor Yong Zheng, Lama Temple was converted into a Lamasery in 1744. Since, it helped to serve as a liaison between China and the Mongol people when relations were healthy.

By this point, we'd admit that we'd seen a lot of temples, most looking very similar and this one also fit the bill. A unique feature was a giant wooden Buddha statue, so large in fact that they earned a world record (posted in the temple museum) for their statue. They also had the prayer wheels we saw in Sichuan province that were more typical to Tibet.

Most people visited to pray and bought bundles of incense sticks. There were many sites where they placed the sticks as an offering for each prayer. That incense shop made quite the healthy business. We were pretty cold just wandering around, economically snapping photos when interest topped the desire to have warm hands. The only place to warm up had been the museum with a collection of bronze statues and worship items. Monks stood in the corner, I assumed to supervise, although their phones caught their attention far more than any visitor.

We found a vegetarian restaurant which was quite far from the temple. It didn't always pay to avoid meat, but the place was nice. It had a health grocery section at the front and then a dining area with several sections. It felt like a tea house out of a kung-fu movie with round windows in the stone walls, dark furniture, an indoor courtyard made to look outdoorsy. We split a kung-pow mock chicken dish that I was a bit sceptical of and I tried some flowery Roselle tea.

It took a few wrong turns to find our way out of the hutongs and head toward the other hutongs that Lonely Planet recommended. We passed some sweet Christmas decorations like life-sized lobsters wearing Santa hats. Ryan also spotted a few guitar shops that we stopped in to 'warm-up'. Most of the recognizable brand guitars were wrapped in plastic which killed most of the fun for him. There was also a hotdog stand with veggie dogs right near the start of our self-guided tour.

We opted to do the tour backward based on our location, which was much easier in theory, especially without street names. We started with nice residential hutong alleys that led to the Drum and Bell Towers currently under construction. It was for the best anyway as we would have likely been too cheap to pay the entrance fees.

Across a busier street, we got a bit more lost trying to decide how far was enough based on the poorly scaled map. Rarely did Lonely Planet produce useful maps in the books themselves. Since our interpretation was that they wanted us to go through someone's yard, we made our own route past vegetable vendors, homes and other one or two story constructions that didn't contribute to the skyline.

We found a nice little park with a frozen lake that the book forgot. Soon the hutongs got really commercial and trendy as we tried to locate so-and-so's former residence even though it turned out we could only look at the front gate. Our fingertips and cheeks were burning so we went back.

My friend recommended a nice Chinese restaurant a few streets away from her place for supper so we had a nice feast of lamb wraps, eggplant, a refreshing cucumber dish and fried beans. It was sad to think we'd be saying goodbye soon, felt like yesterday we were having adventures in Thailand together. It was also awesome she put us up and shared her living space for a whole week.

Monday, time for the reason most people come to China: Great Wall! Our tour even included breakfast, if we could find Saga hostel again. It had been tricky enough yesterday, but we had it in memory now. We were the first ones there and ordered two American breakfasts. Despite that fact, our food came absolutely last and was a bit cold. We broke down and bought drinks that they failed to include in the 'complimentary but not really you paid for it in the tour price' breakfast.

Our minivan of tourists drove ten minutes to reach a larger bus full of even more tourists. Unlike what we'd encountered in most of China, the bus was full of nearly forty foreigners. 'The most whities we've seen since leaving Canada,' Ryan proclaimed. Our guide found the number of people quite large as well.

He gave us some background on the wall itself which spanned from the sea, past mountains and to the desert. Emperor Qin Shi Huan had decided
that they needed a wall to keep the Mongol invaders from pillaging villages. People today recognized his role in unifying China which was a collection of smaller locally governed communities prior to his rule. He unified the people with language and religion. He built the Great Wall to have a physical barrier and keep out the Mongols. But during his era, people were more likely to think of him as a tyrant who enslaved millions, a sizable chunk of the large population, and ran up large expenses building the wall and an elaborate tomb. People at the time had very few provisions as a result.

Once we arrived at the wall, we opted to pay to take the cable car up as we only had three hours and wanted to make the most of them. Since it was early, the wall wasn't busy at all and the only line came from our busload. We got on our gondola with one other traveller. Mountains rose all around us and the Great Wall soon came into view. We were really there!

Starting at watchtower 13, we began our journey. The temperature was rather pleasant and the skies were a perfect blue, nearly Asian-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) blue like when the government shut down factories and closed everything when the Western leaders held the conference in Beijing earlier that month. If the trees leaves weren't dead the pictures would have been even more phenomenal.

The wall was narrower than we imagined, smaller than a lane of traffic. New bricks had been laid to make walking easier. Eventually, the photogenic winding wall became an uphill challenge. A woman along the way had forgotten water. We would have shared if we weren't running on a low supply ourselves.

We passed the 'No tourists' sign as our guide had instructed. The woman selling snacks there didn't say anything either. There was another vendor past that point anyway so the sign was more of an 'at your own risk thing'. That's what travel insurance is for, just kidding.

The bricks' placement became sporadic with some sideways, others missing and other parts reclaimed by vegetation. It got easier to walk on soon after and there were always people in front of us which had to be a good sign. We kept walking just past the halfway point time-wise. After a few more pictures, we ventured back.

We met an American man on the way who was teaching ESL an hour South of Beijing. Monday and Tuesday were his weekend so he was just visiting. He had wanted to teach abroad elsewhere but got quite a few offers from China after uploading his resume. He worked with quite a few Canadians too, mainly from the Maritimes. We ended up chatting about travelling and working abroad the rest of the way back. We made much better time than anticipated.

Ryan and I explored the other side of the wall on our own, not ready to leave just yet. The wall kept winding and winding. Off in the distance, we could see small watchtowers. It felt like we were in Middle Earth or something like that. The walls themselves had interesting drainage systems running down the sides too.

Even though the walls were quite high, in the past the Mongols had been able to scale the walls, but getting back with the goods they'd pillaged from the villages was much more challenging, so it served as a deterrent. Guards in the watchtowers also kept the country safe.
China's flaw with the wall had been spreading themselves too thin and not providing supplies to their guards. The Mongol leader, Genghis Khan, bribed the cold, hungry guards, overtook the wall and became the emperor of China.

Nearly lunch hour, we rode the gondola down and walked to Mr. Yang's restaurant. We joined a table of ten or so other tourists from our bus and waited for plate after plate of food to be placed on the table. There were at least a dozen different dishes and I could even eat half of them. The highlight for me was the spicy cabbage and greens. I hadn't eaten this well with Chinese food in awhile.

It was nice to actually have a ride back to my friend's neighbourhood, although the walk back from Saga was brutally cold. Ryan and I ventured back to the dumpling place for supper with the translation and Chinese characters for eggplant saved on his phone. We couldn't find the dish in the English menu so we asked for the Chinese. They were quite surprised. We managed to order what we wanted and while it wasn't exactly the same as the dish we had on our first day, it was still delicious and meat-free. The Chinese couple next to us ordered the same thing afterward.

On Saturday, we headed to the National Art Museum. It met my friend's two specifications: indoors and not far from the apartment. We only had to walk ten minutes and it was free to boot if you brought your passport/local ID card. The museum turned out to be quite busy. It featured modern art, sometimes using bold, bright colours, abstract style or portraits of local people. There was a neat red chair sculpture with wooden antlers that my friend wanted for her apartment.

The next sections featured jade carvings from Chen Lizhong. Some were large pieces and extremely detailed. Others were tiny with the same amount of detail, so small we had no idea how they managed it. Maybe with trained mice. Birds with various beak lengths and lotus leaves on the brink of death were the themes of one artist's collection.

http://www.namoc.org/en/exhibitions/201410/t20141030_283264.htm

Next, we went upstairs to check out a photography exhibit which featured photographers from all over the world, but a fair chunk from the US. They were part of the Straight Photography movement from 1839-2014. The exhibit featured photographers like Ansel Adams, Kim Weston and many others from similar photography groups. Many had collaborated in the past. Some shots had double exposures to juxtapose different images and others employed Photoshop-like techniques that had inspired the software. The macro flower photography was one of my favourites.

http://www.namoc.org/en/exhibitions/201410/t20141030_283259.htm

On the top floor, a Mexican artist, Diego Rivera, was featured along with his many paintings with a theme of rebuilding the country. It also featured his portraits and large murals. Since it was the weekend, many children were there taking art classes as they sketched away the scenes in Rivera's murals, typically the non-nude ones.

http://www.namoc.org/en/exhibitions/201410/t20141011_283047.htm

We went back down to the first floor to see the exhibits we missed. One Chinese artist, Liu Yunsheng, did portraits of people from Yunnan and Tibet provinces so realistically they looked like photographs. He did very well with expressive eyes and capturing lighting.

http://www.namoc.org/en/exhibitions/201411/t20141104_283469.htm

For supper, we were pretty starved considering we hardly did breakfast and lunch was a piece of chocolate cake for me, strudel for Ryan and coffee for my friend. The restaurant my friend wanted us to visit didn't open until 5:30 so we found Grandma's Kitchen instead. We sat inside the cozy backpacker joint with a Western themed menu as Christmas music played in the background. The most important part was that it was warm. The food was just alright, but we stayed mainly to enjoy the atmosphere and company.

Sunday, Ryan and I made our way to the aviation museum bright and early. We rode the subway until the end of line 5 then caught the 643 bus. We even got seats! A couple on the bus chatted with Ryan to help him find our stop and to ask about our trip. They told us we were very brave to get on a bus and not really know where we were going. I wasn't sure if it was bravery, cheapness, the anticipation that there would be friendly, helpful locals to point us in the right direction or a combination of the three that motivated us.

The walk there was a bit long through a flat open field with harsh winter winds penetrating our fall jackets. Half the exhibits were outdoors. Joy. The first collection had many Soviet designed Chinese MIG fighter jets and other aircraft mostly from the Korean war era. They also had Soviet copies of the American built DC-3's along with a few dozen tail dragger Chinese YAKs and a few rarer tri-gears. It was even possible to sit in the cockpit of a retired MIG or enter the Chairman Mao's personal aircraft, for a fee of course. Surprisingly, you could get as close as you wanted to all of the planes in the outdoor displays.

After making our way through all of the MIGS outside, we decided to warm up and check out the one of the indoor displays. During the Cold War era, the Chinese had built a large bunker beneath Datangshan mountain to protect their aircraft from enemy bombing raids. Since the airfield was no longer in use, it was turned into part of the museum.

Inside the very long bunker were aircraft from all over the world and different time periods. Including some aircraft on loan from sharing agreements with other countries. They also had some rotary-wing aircraft including the impressively large Russian Hind-D, a rough looking Chinook and a few old Hueys. They had some World War 2 British trainers and even a DHC-2 Beaver. China's first own designed production aircraft was also on display.

While viewing a few more MIGS, it was interesting to read descriptions of the Chinese perspective of the Korean war. Their collection featured MIGS that had shot down American-Allied aircraft and were quite proud of their own fighter ace pilots. After seeing most of the aircraft on display, we walked through a few exhibits that were all Chinese with no English translations.

Entering back into the cold, we made our way to the far end of the outdoor displays and quickly looked at the artillery and old radar/communication sections. Many of the larger aircraft were located at the end as well including a ORBIS flying hospital and an amphibious plane sitting in pond. There was a bomber and some passenger planes as well. With the cold nipping at our cheeks, we decided against touring the larger museum and caught the bus and subway back into Beijing.

My friend had a work supper event so we decided to revisit the hutongs for some Greek food. Again it was pricy but Ryan would have probably given a newborn child for a gyro. His didn't come as expected as the pita was more like a base and the meat built atop like a cheeseless Greek pizza, but he still enjoyed it. My veggie moussaka was tasty but Winnipeg's wide selection of amazing Greek restaurants had spoiled me and made the dish hard to live up to its Canadian counterpart. Ryan's also convinced we needed to visit Greece in our lifetime as he stared at all the photos on the walls.

It was less motivating to get out of bed when the weather was chilly. I had come to realize that as Canadians, we were a bit spoiled when it came to dealing with cold weather. Sure, outside it was frigid colder than Mars, the North Pole or wherever, but inside our homes, central heating made us forget the weather unless we looked out the window or needed to leave. In China, we hadn't come across central heating so the chill of winter was always around meaning that you were almost always in a sweater or two. Showering became more infrequent since stepping back out into the chilly non-bathroom was unfavourable. Luckily, my friend had heat lamps in her shower that made the experience better.

We geared up for the day with sweaters, jackets, mitts, hats, scarves. We had a mix of fruit and 7-11 breakfast before using the straightforward subway to get near Summer Palace. At our stop, there were plenty of restaurant chains, although none of them had vegetarian options so we just ended up in Subway. Sometimes we just got sick of trying. We did take advantage of the free refills situation though.

The walk to Summer Palace was, as per usual, much shorter than described by the taxi drivers' sales pitches. We bought the pricier of the two entrance tickets and wandered into Benevolence and Longevity Hall. There was the standard Chinese architecture we expected along with statues of a lion and dragon.

Summer Palace served as a home and entertaining area for the royal family. It had commissioned in 1750 by emperor Qianlong. It was damaged during the Second Opium War, then rebuilt and embellished by Empress Dowager Cixi in 1888. She had used funds allocated for the navy to do so. I could see why dynasties went out of style soon afterward.

Down a path and outside the walls, sat Kunming Lake in the mid-stages of freezing solid. We could see this from our position at the Spring Pavilion. The lake and the hills surrounding it were artificial in the sense that one had been dug and the other formed from the residual earth. Quite an impressive feat, given the immense size. One of the tour guides said that the grounds were eight times bigger than Forbidden City, although that may have been just another sales tactic to promote the usefulness of their services.

People walked across the lake in the distance despite there being water between the walkway walls and the layer of ice with a mysterious thickness. They must have found a different starting point. Some paddle boats were frozen in the lake as well.

The leaves had fallen off the trees which was a real shame for the beautiful willows. I supposed winter probably wasn't the optimal time to visit
Summer Palace. We visited a gallery that was mainly closed then went back to the lakeside to make it to the causeway. Designers had tried to replicate the one in West Lake, Hangzhou, but the original was still more impressive. A lot of the temple on the island was closed for the season, but the views of the hills in the distance and pagodas built atop them were impressive. The people walking on the glass-like ice turned out to be locals ice fishing. Quite bold.

Back at the main Summer Palace area, the tradition of building courtyard after courtyard continued along with the theme of many of the displays being closed. Red coloured the columns while paintings sat right below the curved roof eaves.

We walked down a long corridor to reach the Temple of Buddhist Virtue, a tall tiered temple with a great view of the whole city. It had clusters of stairs to reach the top. On the way down, we saw the Bronze Pavilion which was the only section not destroyed by the Allies during the Second Opium War and by international forces during the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion. Many buildings in the palace had been restored to the state it was in today after fires, but looting had claimed many of the treasures.

Continuing the walk, we passed a large marble boat called Qing Yan Fǎng to reach Suzhou Street, an underwhelming market area by the water. Our all-access admission cards became a bit of a scavenger hunt as we tried to locate and visit them all to make the tickets pay for themselves. Only a few other people descended the stairs to see the few souvenir shops still open and the frozen river.

The Sumera Tibetan temple at Wanshou Longevity Hill caught our eye. It required a hefty climb to reach the top. Some of the stupas were rounder. One of the temples featured a wall with thousands of hand sized Buddha figures carved in it. We realized as we left, that we really should have took the shortcut from the Temple of Buddhist Virtue earlier to save us doing the climb twice.

Our final stop, after debating whether to stay and complete our bingo card admission ticket or try to catch a glimpse of Old Summer Palace, was the Garden of Virtue and Harmony. By this time, it was pretty relaxed. The pond in the center and the beautiful willow trees were highlights for me.

We left Summer Palace, looking for the 33 bus to reach Old Summer Palace. We still had maybe an hour or two of daylight. The bus ride was cheap, once we managed to explain our destination to the driver, only a few stops away. We got dropped at the farther South Entrance, so we paid our admission and sped walked past the beautiful park and ponds.

With the sun still in the sky, we arrived at the ruins we sought. During the Qian dynasty, Emperor Qianlong built a European style garden in Baroque style with the help of Italian painter Giuseppe Castiglione and French missionary Michel Benoist. Construction was completed in 1759. The area featured several pavilions, fountains and even a maze. The buildings incorporated Chinese style in their architecture. In 1860, the Allies also burned and destroyed the grounds. Since many of the pillars and floors were stone, they survived to an extent.

It was neat to walk the different sites with collapsed and cracked pillars, blocks statues and tiles. The carvings in them still survived. Conservation wasn't at the forefront of the government's mind as all visitors were allowed to walk around and through the ruins, given that they paid the admission fee. Some of the fountains still retained their shapes. There were bronze zodiac animal statues on display too.

As the sun set, we tackled the maze. The walls were below eye level so we could see most of the layout, but that didn't make it too much easier. A Chinese man helped point out the way to us so we could reach the stone, dome roofed pavilion before complete darkness. We took a few pictures before running back through the park and to the subway.

We followed directions from the Lama Temple stop to find a hutong area, which was the term for the old alleyway style streets that used to be more dominant in Beijing until urbanization took over. Now they became pieces of protected nostalgic pieces of history and by the looks of this one, a trendy hipster neighbourhood. We found Veggie Table down there, a vegetarian place our guidebook had recommended. The prices were a bit high but I was pretty excited to be able to order essentially anything off the menu. I chose hummus and a chili while Ryan went for a veggie burger. The atmosphere was nice and relaxing, like a trendy bookstore.

Hutong exploration continued past souvenir shops, trendy bars - even a vampire themed one - and international restaurants including mouth watering Greek food. Ryan's eyes went wide and we agreed to come back to the area. Someone had even built a Christmas tree out of green beer bottles that many stopped to photograph. It felt like Osborne village.

We came across a paint-your-own-cat store. Ryan was flabbergasted and quite entertained with the idea of people bringing in their cats in on a leash to be commemorated by portraiture. How would they stay still enough? It wasn't until I pointed out the ceramic cats, that he realized the store's true intention. He insisted his idea was better. Perhaps he'll open up a branch in Winnipeg. My initial interpretation of his statement was that people would slap a coat of paint on their poor cats. It's probably good both of us were wrong.