Advice for Travelers in Beijing

In case I didn't make it clear enough, splurging on the Grand Hyatt was a really, really good idea. It's located two (hell-of-a-long-Beijing-style) blocks from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen square, at:
Beijing Oriental Plaza
1 East Chang An Avenue
Beijing 100738
Phone: (86) (10) 8518 1234
Fax: (86) (10) 8518 0000
E-mail: grandhyattbeijing@hyattintl.com

Since Beijing is so amazingly huge, and traffic is so horrendously bad, it is worth your while to stay right near the center of town no matter what. On the other hand, had we just relied on our hotel for a sense of Beijing we wouldn't have gotten much of a taste of the city.

Luckily, the MF group we'd bumped into in Xi'an had recommended we go to the Leo Hostel in order to avail ourselves of their tour to Mutianyu. The Leo Hostel is located in the heart of a lovely hutong (the traditional Beijing alleyways) with tea shops, parades of people, and yummy yummy street food. If you're going budget style, I'd definitely recommend it as a place to stay.
Leo Hostel 2
various phone numbers for it are:
(86) (10) 6303 1595
(86) (10) 8660 8923
(86) (139) 1192 7715
e-mail: info@leohostel.com

Regardless of where you stay, make sure you wander around in the hutongs south of Tiananmen square.

Leave yourself a leisurely morning to see the Forbidden City, but get there nice and early if you want to experience any semblance of peace while there. We got there at 8, and thought it was reasonably crowded then. By 10:30 when we left, it was wall-to-wall tour groups.

Leave an equally leisurely amount of time to see the Summer Palace, which is stunningly beautiful and worth going to despite the fact that it's on the outskirts of town. A cab will take 40 minutes or so, the public bus closer to two hours.

And, above all, do not do not do not, even if you are a vegetarian, attempt to eat at a vegetarian restaurant in Beijing. Instead of reveling in vegetables, what they do is take your favorite defenseless veggies, and some harmless tofu and then make it look and smell like traditional Chinese meat dishes. Except worse. At the Green Tianshi Angel Vegetarian Restaurant -- which proudly boasts "No Smoking. No Alcohol. No Eggs. No Meat." -- we had something that was supposed to taste like fried crab cake. And well, did. If the crab had been left out in the heat to rot for two weeks prior to our eating it. I wanted to smoke just to dull my tastebuds.

Sep 14: Miao

This is culturally insensitive, too, so you really might just want to skip on ahead. . . but do you know how fun it is to say "Mao"?

It can be said the way Catherine's cat said it before we left. It can be deep and vibrato, like banging a gong. It can be sung Sha Na Na-like: "M, m, m, mao mao mao." It can be said contemplatively, as an "Om." And, our favorite: "How now, brown Mao!"

Advice for Travelers in China: Lining Up

I am going to say a thoroughly culturally insensitive thing, so if you're inclined to be squeamish please close your eyes: For a Communist-influenced country, the Chinese just really don't know how to stand in a line.

They shove, they push up in a bunch, but more than that, they simply cut to the front and step in front of you without even acknowledging that they've done it.

But here's the thing -- it really isn't meant rudely. And better yet, they think it's normal when you do it back. Or at least cut them off before they do it to you.

So, here's the advice, wield your arms and legs wisely. Just stick an elbow out in front of someone, block them before they take you out at the ticket window, step into someone whose invading your space. They will instantly step back and never cry foul.

Sep 14: Mao/Ozymandias

I don't quite have the Mao thing down yet. I haven't read up extensively, and I haven't really asked anyone -- though I will once I get to the symposium -- so there's probably good reason why I don't understand. But I'm not yet getting how there's a simultaneous acknowledgement of his faults (if killing thousands of people, and encouraging the destruction of temples can be called "faults") while simultaneously revering and respecting him. The answer may well be that on an individual level people don't do both simultaneously, but on a country-wide, face-to-the-public scale this does seem to be the case.

I mean people queue up for hours to get a glimpse at his scarily-intact, perfectly-embalmed body for goodness sake. Eleni and I refrained, but I would have gone had we had the time--the better to understand you, my dear. As it was, we've gotten our Mao dose through a giant statue in Chengdu and the 12-foot high poster of his face hanging over the entrance to the Forbidden City. Having your Communist face up over the Emperor's palace is a pretty nice contrast. . . and it has given me my first inkling at an understanding. It's certainly not the whole story, and might not even be a large part, but it's something. . .

It has to do with a certain embracing -- perhaps romanticizing, but at the very least a constant awareness -- of history. I first noticed this in Xi'an. When archaelogists found well over 6000 smashed statues buried underneath a farmer's field, the insinct was not merely to analyze the ruins, or even put the ruins on display, but build them back as they were. And not, say, a handful for a museum, but every single one. My guidebook said they deserved the Nobel Prize in World Tourism. Which, well, they do. But I think part of the desire to recreate the army is wrapped up in how aware everyone here is of their own history. The first emperor of the Han dynasty, who had the terra cotta warriors built to protect his tomb, is still a fixture in the Chinese mental landscape, almost as much so as he was in the third century BCE when he lived. And so where the Western world might be content to gaze at the ruins, a la Athens, his legacy is being painstakingly rebuilt. I thought as I looked at the statues: "No Ozymandias, here."

The Great Wall is the same way. While most of it is in disrepair, crumbling in places, overgrown with plants everywhere, the government has carefully rebuilt the wall in four different visitation spots around Beijing. It is assumed that tourists want to visualize the wall as it was -- a living fortification -- not see it as it is.

I have begun to imagine Chinese history like the study of philosophy. Not, as in science, where when a hypothesis changes the old one is discarded, but where value is seen in learning it all -- even if just about everyone agrees some dated theory was so much scholastic gobblety-gook. Western philosophy is almost a static thing, things get added, but nothing gets taken out, and there's no real heierarchy for the various branches. Chinese history seems to be the same way -- unjudged, and all of it present simultaneously.

As far as I can tell, any educated Chinese person can instantly recall the names and dates of every dynasty back to the Bronze age, which ok, fine, I have several friends who can name every U.S. president, but nonetheless this sort of constant awareness of one's past isn't as inherent a part of the American soul.

Mao Tse Tung, after his political cohorts were tried upon his death, underwent a radical decline in popularity (cf that whole "faults" thing above) and then in the 1990s he had a popularity comeback. And I think, perhaps part of it, is that he had become "history." And history is revered here, kept close to one's breast, breathed in and out daily. Mao is as much a part of that as -- and weighted no more and no less than -- the Forbidden City. When all the past is simultaneously here in the present, there really seems no reason to distinguish between the two.