it's not the size that matters...
after the slight disappointment of our flying visit to x'ian there was some concern that our corresponding twenty four sprint in and out of chengdu would be similarly anticlimactic. chengdu is the capital of the sichuan province, gateway to tibet and home to the eponymous spicy cuisine. the draw for the timepoor, however, was the giant panda breeding and research centre a few kilometres outside the ringroads which encircle the city.
after yet another early start we found ourselves amongst a largish group of fellow travellers trudging up a neatly arranged grey path in the morning mist. the compact, well organised nature of the walkways together with the gaggles of camera toting travellers (including, as always, incredibly noisy chinese) made me slightly concerned that we were going to get another antiseptic, disneyfied chinese experience. fortunately, my fears were waylaid the instant we got our first glimpse of the pandas. these magnificent beasties really do not disappoint; from an evolutionary point of view they should have died out centuries ago, with their ludicrously poorly thought out diet creating hulking lethargic behemoths with little energy to do much beyond stuffing their faces with bamboo to maintain enough momentum to eat yet more bamboo; that they are notoriously poor at reproducing is as much to do with them being to lazy to get it on as with an absence of potential partners. the centre is actually both well set out and apparently well run, with lots of adult pandas sleepily chomping bamboo and dozing whilst the cubs, full of an energy which is soon to dissipate gambol around wrestling each other. we even saw a couple of tiny two month old babies mewling in their incubators looking quite ridiculously cute. this really was a must see and frankly an entirely more worthwhile dropping in then the terracotta warriors.
a particular mention should go for the panda centre's information film which depicts the work which the centre does whilst all the time trying to anthropomorphise pandas and the significant events in their lives; for all the talk of falling in love and marriages the best line had to be where the narrator informed us that the post natal mother panda often stays within her cage, much like a chinese mother. nice: still the ladies of china seem to get out enough to try and run me over on scooters so their cages can't be that restrictive. imprisoned chinese matriarchs aside, some sympathy must also be reserved for the male pandas given that the little onsite museum (ostensibly in their honour) baldly and unapologetically informed us that another of the reasons pandas struggled to reproduce is because their johnsons are just too small to get the job done in the apparently cavernous lady parts of the female pandas. this seems a little harsh to emblazon over the walls of a museum as scientific fact; maybe, surrounded by notebook wielding scientists, they were just nervous.
waiting for our flight to guilin tonight before the start of a hopefully more sedate second week encompassing just yangshuo and hong kong. we set ourselves quite steep targets in terms of what we wanted to see and do in our two weeks in china and whilst, inevitably in such a vast country, there are lots of side avenues which we would have liked to meander down (not least down the sichuan highway to tibet) it looks like we will have ticked a lot of the right boxes. hopefully we can recharge a bit now in preparation for a return to offices which suddenly seem to have started looming impatiently over our shoulders.
no stampeding!
x'ian's a funny place. given that the primary attractions for travellers are the historic delights befitting an ancient imperial city and the small matter of a centuries old terracotta warforce lurking in the ground nearby we had expected somewhere calm and serene, a contemplative base from which to survey the remnants of times past. the whiteknuckle cab ride from the airport, hurtling down expressways oblivious of other traffic and pedestrians as our slightly nuts cabbie casually dangled a lit cigarette from his lips, should have given us a clue that presumption woud not match reality; the flashing neon lights, starting on top of the ancient tang dynasty city walls and continuing throughout the old city, all designer boutiques and kfcs, served to reinforce that. following a brief wander around a darkness totally violated by honking cars, flashing golden arches and europop blaring out of seedy karaoke bars it was with confusion in our minds that we went to bed, wondering about a bizarre city which seemed to have ravenously embraced modernity in an attempt to displace its historic past. here in one of the citadels of old china its replacement was rising up to take its place.
we dragged ourselves out of our hostel at around 8am to get onto an early bus to the terracotta army. the site is vast, carefully landscaped to provide venues for various little stalls as well as (yet another) kfc and a subway which line the long walk (no stampeding) up smooth concrete concourses towards the pits housing the clay figurines. i had some concerns as to how this would work as an attraction, namely as once you had walked in and had the initial moment of awe looking down into the pit filled with statues, you were left with little else. this, unfortunately, was very much the case; following a bad start when we realised that the clay citizens of pit 2 were on tour leaving behind a vacant empty bowl of little interest we strode hopefully into pit 1 to have a moment of genuine awe as we were confronted by thousands of stern faces which fizzled out fairly rapidly. it did not help that the layout of the whole experience is rather weak; it looks as though they have only excavated about a quarter of the pit which, given it was discovered in 1974, is remarkably slow work, even by archaeological standards which, admittedly, revel in tardiness. this led to a situation where the back two thirds of the vast pit were actually largely empty, creating in turn a large blank space which undermined and to an extent dominated the packed front section of the pit. considerably more effort appears to have been spent on creating a surrounding environment designed to efficiently part visitors from their money then presenting this astounding find and the entire experience suffers as a consequence.
all in all therefore a worthwhile but slightly underwhelming day; on a longer holiday the detour to x'ian is definitely worth it but to fly so far for a day just to glimpse the terracotta army seemed in retrospect like a tourist box ticking exercise. on a questionable air sichuan flight at the moment flying into chengdu where hopefully the giant pandas will be truer to form.
somewhere between mist and smog
our final day in beijing was reserved for a mooch around the summer palace in the west of the city. as we crawled along the expressways heading west it became clear, for want of a less ironic word, that not even this far reach of beijing was spared from the cloying affliction of smog. it seemed, if anything, particularly bad, gloomily bearing down on the roads and obscuring the highrises on their peripheries. the complete lack of visibility made me fear that our day was going to be a bit of a flush, with the views over the kumning lake which are supposed to make the summer palace particularly enchanting shrouded away in a cloud of co2.
as it was, not even the smog and the teeming hordes, initially just as overbearing as at the forbidden city, could detract from the elegance of the place. as we walked in through the east gate i was a little concerned that we would be entirely swamped by matching hatted chinese tourists, but as we walked up a hill to the buddhist incense pagoda it became clear that the entire complex was dotted with various sidetrack and trails, with all the hopes of peace and intimacy which they suggested. these optional routes meant that it was possible, from time to time, to enjoy the landscape and the rickety wooden buildings in relative solitude as you chose a slightly quixotic rockstrewn path from a to b whilst everyone else stomped through c. this was in complete contrast to the forbidden city, which steered its entire flock of visitors largely down one route on which everyone constantly clumped together knocking into each other and their camera shots; the summer palace afforded a liberty to explore which we were able to exploit fully and consequently garner an impression of the peacefulness which the imperial court sought to find here. if anything i would say that it deserved far more time and attention than the frankly charmless forbidden city, feeling much more like a pleasure than a travelling chore. in these rarefied surroundings you could almost believe that the smog was actually nothing more than the soft radiance of mist rising up from the lake. well maybe with your eyes if not your lungs.
on a plane as i type this on my netbook to x'ian and the chicken rice has just arrived. as our tour gets properly whistlestop for a few days, with the next stop a certain terracotta army.
communist enterprise comrades!
we hauled ourselves out of bed at 7.30am this morning to get onto a minivan with a frencher than french, gitanes puffing, couple and our guide, lily, who would be taking us to go and see the great wall at mutianyu. i'm not normally one for guided tours but this seemed like by far the easiest and cheapest way to access the wall away from the teeming hordes at badaling so, having received a discount in relation to which we were sworn to secrecy from our higher paying copassengers, we set off amongst the weaving buses full of beijing commuters wending their way to work.
after a brief tale of how much harder life was for chinese citizens than for their counterparts in the west, with the absence of welfare and support for bringing up children, vicki had been discreetly wondering quite what separated communist rule in china from sheer authoritarianism. the roads were lined with gleaming new apartment blocks, a legacy of the olympic games, but it seemed as though the vast majority of them lay empty, outside of the price range of the ordinary beijingese. someone had ordered these flats built and someone had no doubt profited from them, quite possibly any number of high ranking party officials. but other than greasing the palms of those blessed with party patronage the benefit to rank and file chinese seemed minimal, no matter how enthusiastically they had waved their hastily bought flags on tianamen square yesterday; the crumbling alleyways of the hutongs, all cramped quarters and communal toilets, remain teeming with life while the twenty first century leers over them, empty and disinterested in the people below.
the first indication of the communist nature of our host authorities, however, came at the first scheduled stop on our tour. in normal free market third world tourist economies, tours such as these are often punctuated with visits to the tat shops of friends and relatives, as the cooperative try and squeeze an extra dollar or two out of tired travellers. here, however, we were presented with an excursion to the government run jade factory and shop. having politely feigned interest at the two minute explanation of process and spent a couple of minutes more wandering around the aisles and aisles of fairly expensive jade trinkets we went to leave of our own accord, only for a very worried looking lily to usher us back onto the sales floor scolding us that we had to spend another twenty minutes there. so it was at the tea drinking ceremony and the silk factory, official government enterprises not advertised on any tour leaflet but to which attendance was mandatory. the party, who i would posit make the addition of these charmless warehouse stores to tour itineraries compulsory, are certainly in a manner generating work for the numerous chinese working on the floors and behind the counters, providing them with a captive audience. questions still remain about who most benefits from the fruits of any sales, however, with a suspicion that it is largely the party members who profit just as richly and exclusively as the money grabbing boss of any capitalist enterprise, hiding their faithful or otherwise subjects away from the corrupting influence of affluence. your filthy dollars and sterling are welcome here, but the chinese government would very much like first crack at taking them off you, regardless of how much it may disadvantage the independent shopkeeper hawking his souvenirs around town. it may not have failing banks but this is no utopia, as hierarchy ridden as anywhere else.
as for the wall itself, after the slightly muted reaction to the forbidden city expectations were dimmed, but it did not disappoint by any measure. mutianyu was surprisingly secluded with other tourists relatively scarce and, having been unleashed by our guide, we spent a happy, sweaty couple of hours stuttering up and down sheer, uneven steps and playing soldier in the imposing ramparts. as well as its size which truly is awe inspiring every time you peer around a corner to see it stretching off into the distance and disappearing into the clouds, it is also set at the top of a number of peaks, adding to its air of grandeur and moreover providing an unexpected opportunity to get into a teatray on wheels and rocket down to the car park in a metal tobbogan at the end of your wander.
all in all a good, if tiring, second day in beijing. another foot massage now before a quick jaunt around the summer palace tomorrow and then off to three internal flights in three days, starting on the way to xian. here's hoping we can spend our time at the sites, and not stranded in airports...
forbidden to none
two days in shanghai was a pitch perfect start to our two weeks in china; different enough to be interesting but without too many must sees to chase. after a night in and amongst the glittering lights with some cocktails on the 87th floor of the jinmao building, we spent the sunday wandering around the glitzy shopfronts of the east nanjing road before going for a foot massage which managed to simultaneously be both incredibly relaxing and eye wateringly painful.
our first experience of chinese internal flights was slightly hairy, though not in the way in which i had imagined. after an exhilarating 300km/h journey to the airport on the bullet train, making the naming of the heathrow express something of an embarrassing joke, we checked into the 20.55 air china flight from shanghai to beijing on which we had booked seats. having checked in, handed our bags over and been gruffly presented with two boarding passes we were upstairs having some noodles when i noticed that the 20.55 had been delayed. to 00.30. not good. there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth until i saw there was another air china flight at 20.35. sensing an opportunity i rushed downstairs to try to convince the duty supervisor to bump us to the earlier, non delayed, flight. when i explained our predicament, he looked at our boarding passes and, a look of mild surprise and annoyance passing his face, passed them back to us saying that we were already booked onto the 20.35. i looked at him blankly; surely some mistake? but no, there it was imprinted on the passes; our check in clerk had booked us onto the earlier flight and not bothered to tell us that he had done so. it was only because our original flight was delayed that we even noticed, otherwise we would have been twiddling our thumbs as we missed our last call.
in any event, the flight itself was extremely comfortable and we touched down in beijing, negotiated the monster taxi queue making a mental note of the legitimacy of barging to the front and checked into out hotel without too many problems.
first impressions of beijing? the smog. it hangs over the city like a permanent cloud, blocking out the sunlight and creating a haze which refuses to lift. it was the smog which actually was one of the main negatives around our day of wandering around tianamen square and the forbidden city. tianamen square is, in truth, a joyless looking place anyway, a grey paved car park filled with patriotic chinese and their soldiers and hemmed in by hundred of cc cameras, the stereotypical communist utilitarian space designed for functional communal enjoyment unfettered with bourgeois aesthetic concerns. we did enjoy the hordes wandering around with their red flags bought from the hawkers dotted around the square; this is a very much a place to both buy into the communist ideal but, possibly even more importantly, demonstrate to anyone who may be watching how much you believe.
the forbidden city is however definitely dimmed by the greyness which envelops it, its magnificent buildings and sheer scope undermined by the cloying smog which smothers it. the other problem, and the one which bothered me the most, was the sheer number of visitors who were there. i am not naïve enough to expect solitude at an east asian site such as this one but the volume of other sightseers was amazing, especially when you consider how vast the forbidden city complex is. i suppose given how many chinese tourists clutter the various temples of south east asia, it is no surprise that they decamp en masse to something as significant as this in their own land. even the various back alleys were teeming with people and megaphone toting tour group leaders with their flocks.
judgment is still therefore reserved on beijing. a beautiful city is in here somewhere, and you can occasionally glimpse it peering out from amongst the narrow alleys of the hutongs; the smog and the sheer volume of people however means that, currently, it seems a nearly but not quite.
we topped of our day's wandering with some steaming cups of tea in a little tibetan cafe; i had a mug of tibetan sweet tea whose restorative qualities were impeccable. vicki, however, thought it would be clement to season her ginger tea with salt as opposed to sugar. hmmm. if there's not a proverb about people who fiddle too much with things striving for perfection there should be...
