China.

Jesus, this is going to be a monster. I may have to do this trip over a few posts (I’ve been saying that for three weeks now – damn the election was a month ago). Well, here goes – I’ll try to make it brief yet interesting and not wander too much.

So, Moms and I flew out in the morning and headed to China with a crapload of Chinese people. Flight was packed. Dragon Air. Pretty decent. Landed and got our bags and made our way to a taxi. The ride into town (our hotel was pretty close, in the northwest corner of Beijing) took about 40 minutes and we didn’t see anything too amazing. Hardly anyone knows English in Beijing, so we crossed our fingers and hoped that the taxi cop guy gave our driver the right directions. We made it, though – sweet. The hotel was a Hilton and it was in a nice, if a bit nondescript, part of town. I would compare it to downtown Minneapolis, except the high-rises are higher and mad ugly. They took all their design flair from the Soviets, which is essentially summed up in the concept of “slap it up in drab concrete and shove a bunch of air conditioners in the side. Paint nothing. Decorate nothing. You’re done.” Some of the newer apartment complexes were a bit more modern looking, but still bore traces of that no-nonsense, cookie-cutter (can I think of another hyphenate adjective?) style. “Stalin’s wedding cake,” I think some call it. I call it “make you want to smoke some chiva if you lived there.”

We unpacked, had a quick lunch in the hotel, and grabbed a cab for the Forbidden City, which is roughly in the center of Beijing and lies just north of Tiananmen Square. Traveling through the city, we saw rows of shops that resembled US strip malls, tons of people on bicycles, even more auto traffic, and residences of various sorts everywhere. The setup was fairly similar everywhere we looked – stores on ground level and the buildings either above the shops or set behind them. Sort of an odd, dense yet sprawling suburbia – despite the density, it’s still able to sprawl due to the sheer size of the city.

We arrived at the north gate, which is called the Divine Military Genius Gate. The entrance was packed with tourists and cats trying to take you around the Hutong (the little narrow neighborhoods and streets around Beijing) on their motorized scooters. We first entered the Imperial Garden, where I think a lot of the virgin concubines lived. To be honest, it was in some ways the most beautiful part of the City, since it was full of rock outcroppings, trees, little gazebo-like chill spots for playing chess and getting buffs, and tiny buildings surrounding the entire garden, which now house jade exhibits and film and camera shops instead of honeydips.

As we went south, we saw several other buildings, large and small, that comprised the Earthly Tranqility Palace, the Hall of Union, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and so on. You could not enter most of these buildings, but you could look inside through glass windows which were being mobbed by completely unruly mainland tourists. I mean, they were unreal. They would just shove you aside to get a look at some dusty floor cushions that the concubines sat on when they were chilling or entertaining or whatever. That’s the thing about the Forbidden City – it’s really beautiful, but at the same time it’s just not all that. The problem is its size combined with the absence of life; gone are the multitudes of officials, servants, and soldiers in elaborate garb, the incense burning everywhere, the gongs, the horses, and so on. It’s just tons of white courtyards and red buildings. I know that sounds very reductive, and believe me, it’s amazing, but I can’t imagine what it must have been like when it was full of life. I think what impressed me most, both here and at the Summer Palace, were the paintings on the roof beams – elegant, detailed scenes of egrets, ponds, ships, forests, and so on. The ceilings and the roof beams were absolutely stunning. The rest of it was just kind of quiet and had this strange sort of outdoor museum feel to it.

Heading farther south, we passed through the Heavenly Purity Gate (all the shit here has these lofty-ass names) and reached the first of the big open piazza-type areas that you see in like The Last Emperor – huge, wide, broad areas of white stone ringed by the temples in the center and the smaller buildings on either side (the big moat, which surrounds the entire city, lies behind the outer ring of buildings. There are about 800 buildings in the Forbidden City and nine thousand rooms). In the very center of the city lies three structures in a row: the Hall of Preserving Harmony, once used for banquets but which now houses archaeological finds; the Hall of Middle Harmony, a sort of lounge for the emperor; and the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the largest structure in the City and the most important one in terms of ceremonies and such. It was used for coronations, the emperor’s birthday, stuff like that. There’s a huge bronze turtle in the front that would be filled with incense on these occasions so smoke would come out of its mouth. The turtle is a symbol of longevity and stability. Makes sense. The Dragon Throne sits in the center of this structure, and the emperor would sit there and make his decrees (“all decisions final” as the guidebook says). This is the place where the term ‘kowtowing’ originated, and it refers to the requirement that everyone in the hall touch the floor with their foreheads nine times. The eaves and corners of these buildings are elaborate, gold-painted carvings of dragons, and the roofs are rich red barrel tiles. It should be mentioned that there’s work going on everywhere, too – the place is so huge that it is in a constant state of renovation. It’s big enough, however, that the work does not get in your way and you do not feel that you are inconvenienced or missing anything. There’s plenty to see.

Below these three halls lies two more massive courtyards of stone, with huge stone lion statues and bronze statues and separated by the Supreme Harmony Gate. The larger of these two courtyards, between the Supreme Harmony Gate and the above-mentioned Halls of Harmony, could handle ceremonies attended by up to 100,000 people. The other courtyard, also large and south of the gate, may also be familiar to people from various movies: this one has the five marble bridges over the Golden Stream (ha ha, you wrote Golden Stream) which is a common film and postcard shot. This courtyard had a huge photo exhibition that wound its way along the eastern and western sides of the courtyard and exhibited many beautiful shots from around the world – landscapes, shots of war-torn Middle and Far Eastern countries, and the like. Very large and richly saturated photos.

After crossing the bridges, you exit through the massive Meridian Gate, which was formerly used only by the emperor. After that, you walk down this long mall past the Workers’ Cultural Palace and, now that you are out of the part of the City which requires an admission fee, you are once again assaulted by the hawks selling postcards and other crap. It kind of sucks, to be honest, but it’s not so bad. You just have to be firm and keep moving.

So. What was it all for? Why was it so massive, and why were there so many buildings? Well. Ah, yes. I mean basically it was for a lot of fucking. Seriously. Look, the dude (dudes, actually, since there were several emperors over the years) did not need all that space for policymaking and decision making and entertaining ministers and foreign cats. And he did not need all that space for storing gold and rugs and shit like that. You have all of China for that – you don’t need it to be within the walls of your little chill city within a city. However, you DO need that many buildings and rooms and all that if you have 9000 maids of honor and 70,000 eunuchs to care for you and for them, along with mad servants and the posse of royal elephants. The emperor would make his pick for the evening, then a eunuch would go off and wrap her in yellow cloth and backpack her over to the big boy’s feet. It was believed that frequent sex with the young girls prolonged life. Even Mao did it. Ewwwww! Mao, just waxing it backshot style…think of that next time you look at one of those kitschy alarm clocks.

Anyway, I know this is getting long, and I have not even reached the Square yet. Hang in there with me, I’ll get this done. I wish I was trashed or something to make the tale more interesting.

We passed through the final gate and took a few snapshots of the huge portrait of Mao and scoped out some of the soldiers trying to look serious and tough. Tiananmen Square is just south of the Forbidden City on the other side of a wide, busy boulevard, and you can walk to it via an underground pedestrian pass. The Square was as the guidebook described it – lots of people flying kites, some uniformed teens laying sod, some students wanting to practice their English with you…no tank tracks, though. I made a couple jokes about that – “Excuse me, sir. Have you seen any large tanks around here?” Mom didn’t find that funny – but yo, hardly anyone knows English over here! Plus I got to rib the regime a little bit. We were approached by a student who wanted to practice English; his name was Oscar. Nice guy. We even walked across the street with him to the Museum of Chinese Revolution, where his art class had set up all their art (it is a common ploy of artists in the Square to try to sell you art, but we had time and didn’t really care. Plus, moms was looking for some wall hangings for the dining room). I ended up buying a small piece that Oscar painted and then we headed to the south end of the Square to hail a cab. Took down Oscar’s mobile phone number, but I’m not sure when I’ll use it or what I’ll say. “Hey man, I’m back in the States! It was easy as pie! You should get out here sometime!”.

The southern end of the Square is where Mao’s tomb is situated – while we may have been too late to check out his waxen action anyway, neither of us had much desire to see him in the first place. Apparently they do their best with the upkeep, but that’s like this cat I know who only wears clothes produced before 1950 – sooner or later, the relentless march of time is going to make that little project a problem. I mean, damn. 60 year-old underwear? I don’t fucking think so. But, to each his own, you know? He’s a pretty cool cat anyway.

Also at the southern end are these large bronze sculptures about ten meters long and 5 meters high – like a carved façade, but in sculpture form – of various heroes of the Revolution. You know the type – like the famous painting of the heroes of the French Revolution. You got your workers in their work garb, you got your soldiers and your brave women leading the charge, that whole menagerie of people holding hammers and ropes and banners and rakes and shit. I snapped a couple photos and we moved on to about 20 minutes of cab hailing. My moms didn’t want me to run ahead and snake some old folks, right? Then they get in and pass us, and the cat who got in the front seat is laughing at us! Fuckers. I was pissed. I know how some of those old ladies get down in Chinatown – they can poke you in the eye with an umbrella, then just cackle in your face when you get pissy. Whatever, it’s all good. Let the baby have his bottle.

Once we got home, we had a nice dinner at the hotel because we were too bushed to go out and find a restaurant. The meal was good, much better than the usual hotel fare in the US, and we headed up to bed. Had a big day coming tomorrow – the Great Wall and shit. But I’ma save that for the next post because I am mad tired and need to go get some food or something. Peace.

Chucky