Beijing

Last weekend (Thursday through this Monday) Avik, Reina, and I took the train to Beijing and back, a trip that was almost postponed. During our first week, our supervisors at Xian Dai told us that we needed to see Beijing for a full China experience. We were to pick whichever weekend we thought would be best for our trip and we would be able to have an extended weekend break. We decided that traveling to Beijing during the first month of our internship would be best so that when deadlines pile up during August, we would have more time in Shanghai. It also gave us a chance to plan out what we still need to see in Shanghai. I’ve got quite the list in my sketchbook. Anyway, during the weekend when we visited Suzhou, the weekend before our intended Beijing journey, the city experienced its worst flash flood disaster in about 60 years. We kept reading news reports and discussing our plans with coworkers to determine whether it would be a safe, ideal time to visit Beijing. It sounded like they cleaned up quickly, so with a little bit of uncertainty, we boarded the train for a 12 hour ride.

We met up with our tour guide, Vanessa, at the Beijing South Station, and were driven via van to our hotel. According to Vanessa, some of the areas we drove through had recently been flooded with 1-2 meters of water. Beijing cleans up fast. I was surprised by how smoothly the cleanup and disaster relief must have been carried out. After checking into our hotel, we decided to wander around a bit and ended up having a hotpot meal a few blocks away.

Early the next day, we woke up, had a quick hotel breakfast, and traveled to Tiananmen Square. Beijing, or at least the sections of the city we traveled through, were at more of a human scale than Shanghai. Not as many towers, and the streets seemed to have a toned down, less frantic pace. From Tiananmen Square, we passed through the Meridian Gates and into the Forbidden City. Everything in the Forbidden City was designed according to the rules of Feng shui, and was therefore extremely axial. After passing through throngs of people in larger than life courts and gates, we eventually came to the concubine living area. This part of the Forbidden City was filled with smaller courtyard gardens and we saw the well where the Dragon Lady, one of the most powerful concubines, was drowned.

From the Forbidden City, we traveled to a Mongolian portion of Beijing and took a rickshaw ride through the hutongs with Pamela, a guide who knew more about the area. We stopped for lunch at a small family house and had a home cooked meal while watching a Chinese version of Wipeout. After taking the rickshaws back to the van, we stopped by a silk museum where we were able to hold some silkworms and see different techniques for weaving and shaping the silk threads.

Our next stop was the Temple of Heaven, which was last restored in 2005 and is where people would come to pray for the harvest. After a full day of running around Beijing, we took a quick break at the hotel, ate far too much food at a small restaurant nearby, and drove to the Chinese opera. I won’t even pretend to have understood what the plot was. All I can say is that it was unlike any performance I have ever seen. There was a general who was under attack and his wife did a mesmerizing dance with two swords while singing a warbling song. She ended up committing suicide with the general’s sword so that she wouldn’t be in the way of his escape. There were also two soldiers who performed a stylized wu shu battle with swords and a princess who got herself drunk because the emperor wouldn’t come to a party she was holding in his honor. There seemed to be a lot of family drama, and beyond the crazy costumes and intriguing performances, I didn’t quite grasp the entire story. The experience was almost more beautiful and mysterious not understanding the language. We left the opera and rode back to the hotel in a downpour of lightning and rain. Luckily, there was no severe flooding during this storm.

Our second full day in Beijing was mostly spent outside of the city. We began the journey with a 1 ½ hour drive to the Great Wall. After riding an old lift through the mist to the top of the wall, Avik, Reina, and I spent a couple hours exploring the towers of the wall and wondering what life must have been like for the guards who had lived there. Possibly because of the fog and mist, there were very few tourists at the wall which made the adventure much more meaningful. My first day back at Xian Dai, Bai Gong, the project architect who has become a mentor to me, told me that I was a “hero” for visiting the Great Wall. Apparently, it’s a symbol of strength to visit the old structure.

After our wanderings along the Great Wall, we went back to the van and had a winding ride through the hills to the Ming Dynasty Tombs. There, we learned a little more about the imperial history of China and saw another set of axial structures. On the ride back to Beijing, we stopped by a jade gallery / restaurant for lunch. Irony struck as we drove by the Beijing Olympic stadiums and stopped to take some photos around the same time the Olympic games were beginning in London. We had a bit of free time to wander around the city in the afternoon, and then met at a small restaurant for a dinner of spicy beans and fish meatballs with cucumbers. The sun had set early, and Avik, Reina, and I went out for a little nighttime jaunt down a wonderful pedestrian market street, stopping for some mango ice cream along the way. We then journeyed back to the hotel through some back alleys and stumbled upon the first truly residential-feeling area we’ve been to so far in China. Instead of housing towers surrounded by traffic, these were a complex of 5 story residences set off from the main streets. In Beijing, it felt like it’s more about buildings being designed for the people as opposed to Shanghai where it’s almost like the people are just fit into the buildings.

We began our third day in Beijing with a visit to the Beijing Zoo. I can freely admit that I did not enjoy the experience. It was still worth witnessing, though. The pandas were cute, but there were an insane amount of people flooding the premises. It made a hot, humid day even more uncomfortable having to fight our way through herds of people. Needless to say, we did not stay long.

This was the first day the sun came out in Beijing, and it was perfect for out next destination. The Summer Palace and grounds was probably my favorite site we visited during our stay in the city. A series of pavilions, walkways, bridges, and pagodas were scattered around a lotus filled lake. Here we learned more about the history of the city and culture and were able to see the Dragon Lady’s house. We had a peaceful ride across the lake in a dragon boat and watched a few ladies performing a modern take on a traditional dance in one of the larger pavilions. The Lama Temple was our next stop, another long axial progression through gates and Buddhist shrines, but with a different architectural style. The temples started with the Laughing Buddha, and culminated with a monumental, 26 meter tall Buddha that had been carved from a single white sandalwood tree and was clad in bronze. Photography was not allowed inside the temples out of respect to the number of Buddhists who were praying and lighting incense. There was a large wheel at a corner of the temple, which we all spun clockwise, to bring us good luck in finding happiness, fortune, and longevity. Spinning it counterclockwise would bring bad luck.

For dinner, we ate the Peking duck. After finishing off every last morsel of food, we made our way to a Chinese acrobatics performance. We arrived early, so we had time to wander to a large building nearby, which was a mall with a crazy, amorphous central core. The acrobatics show was spectacular. Some of the highlights were a bunch of guys tumbling and jumping through tiny hoops, two contortionists who balanced plates and glasses on their hands and feet while spinning around, and the end of the performance where ten girls rode in circled on the stage, all on top of a single trick bike moving in different formations and waving fans around. It’s difficult to describe the actual performance. Take my word for it, though. It was amazing.

After a successful trip to Beijing, we arrived back in Shanghai on Monday night and woke up early Tuesday morning to head back to work. While I was away, my department received a new project for a high-end business club which will be located in Hefei, the capitol city of the Anhui Province. Although I’ve still been involved with the Baotou project, this week most of my time has been spent developing massing and site design for the club. Both of the projects have deadlines on August 20^th.

I'll keep the blog updates coming, though they will probably continue to be a bit scattered!