A tale of two Chinese cities
July 10, 2004 | 12:00am
Filipino culture in the last millennia, as most scholars explain, was influenced by two waves – one, from the Near East and India through Indonesia and the other, from the Northwest through China. That influence manifests itself in traces gleaned from our religious practices, language, and architecture. We have developed culturally and physically (in our towns and cities) from patterns initiated by these influences that, in the last two centuries or so, have taken a direction more from the west than from our original eastern origins.
This introduction is a little convoluted for a simple Saturday piece on a recent visit to the two major cities of China, but the biggest insight I have culled from my Sino sojourn was that we need to learn once again from our Eastern and, more specifically, our Chinese, neighbors.
I had not had the chance to visit Beijing and Shanghai so I jumped at the chance to familiarize myself with these two much-hyped megalopolises. Panda Tour’s China Panorama travel program included three days each in these two cities so I brushed up on my almost non-existent Mandarin and flew in via PAL through Pudong Airport in Shanghai.
First impression: Cool new international airport! NAIA III compares but, of course, it is still mothballed and may eventually open, a few years from now, already slightly obsolescent.
Back to Pudong – we whisk through the efficient immigration process and have dinner before boarding the transfer flight to Beijing. We arrive in the comfortably warm summer night to check in at the Marco Polo Beijing, a stone’s throw away from giant Tiananmen Square. The streets look clean, traffic is light, and there are but a few billboards to mar the drive to our hotel.
First Day: Tiananmen Square and the Summer Palace are on the itinerary. Beijing is the capital of the world’s most populous country. Its national square matches the dimension of the Chinese demographic. The square can swallow up the whole Rizal Park and parts of Ermita. It fronts the Imperial Palace, center of the city and the country. This is where Beijing distinguishes itself from Manila. Manila never maintained its center (Intramuros) and never built the government complex around the Luneta. Beijing has retained the symbolic strength of its center and enhanced it with layers of its history – from the Mandarin dynasties to contemporary communism to today’s embrace of a flavored capitalism.
The Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven are two more "must-sees" in the capital. Beijing is laid out according to the traditional grid of nine celestial squares with the imperial palace in the center grid. Feng shui plays a crucial role in its overall orientation. The palace has water in front of it and a mountain (actually a hill) behind, the best configuration for power and stability. Not so for Manila’s Malacañang, which has the river behind it and nothing in front (to be fair, our current palace was a summer resort rather than the main edifice of state).
Beijing is surprisingly full of parks and open spaces. Its boulevards, both in the old and new quarters, are broad and well-landscaped, reminding visitors of Paris. In fact, Beijing shares a heritage, like that of many European capitals, of turning its former ring walls into wide boulevards. (The etymology of the word boulevard comes from "bulwark" or the Spanish "buluarte.")
Beijing was not always so clean and green. The change came after it opened up to the rest of the world and decided to make a go for gold in hosting the Olympics. It won the bid to host the 2008 games after a multi-billion dollar makeover, whose inertia has carried over into all aspects of the city’s renaissance. The city is building a fantastic new opera house, new stadiums, a games village, ring roads, an expanded mass transport system and more parks.
The populace is enjoying a lot of that infrastructural improvement even today, a full four years ahead of the Olympics. Needless to say, these improvements have enhanced the city’s attractiveness for investment and urban growth. Beijing is a happening city because it found the will to be one! (On the other hand, Metro Manila is not one, but 17 little kingdoms with almost no coordinated effort for improvement save for U-turns and outdoor toilets, if you call those improvements. Okay, we have an expanding light rail network, but it is one that is overpriced, underutilized and lacks proper urban design to be user-friendly.)
The urban design of Beijing is exemplary in its pro-pedestrian and pro-bicycle emphasis. Motorcycles are banned from the city to reduce pollution. Many buses are electric powered (using overhead lines like tranvias) and the sidewalks are wide and free from encumbrances. Bicycle lanes are everywhere and even the pedestrian overpasses have special ramps to allow bikers to push their bikes up and over. Wonderful! Also, bikes are cheap (about P700 for a good one) mainly because they make their bikes themselves – remember, they industrialized and we still effectively have not.
On the second day, we were off to the outer edge of the metropolis and a visit to one segment of the 6,000-kilometer Great Wall of China. Although it’s the length of the wall that defines it, it’s the height one has to climb that really makes a lasting impression on tourists. I should have trained a few months in advance for the trek up to one of the wall’s vantage points. Close to 600 steps up I gave up, leaving the rest of the wall to the more adventurous and muscle-toned. The very idea that this wall was built is staggering. Technology has overtaken us today, but if you think about it, we Filipinos build the equivalent of several Great Walls in the length of all our gated communities, villages and subdivisions. The Filipino middle and upper class still erect barriers between themselves and all "others," making a mockery of our supposed egalitarianism, Christianity and democracy (The Batasan and Senate, as well as all government buildings, are fenced off from the public they serve.)
After the Wall, we enjoyed an early evening entertainment featuring Chinese acrobatics. Move over Cirque du Soleil! We capped our evening with a scrumptious Peking duck dinner and some shopping. Malls are everywhere around Beijing, but the tiangges are bound to attract the Filipino tourist more.
Our Beijing visit was highlighted by a visit to the City Zoo to say hello to the panda, our host’s mascot. The zoo was a short ride from the city center and much visited by locals, too. Again, we were impressed by the user-friendliness of the facility as well as the general cleanliness of the place (Mayor Atienza is slowly improving the Manila Zoo but needs more funds and public support, it seems.)
While my traveling companions were in the tiangges, I ventured on foot around the old colonial quarter of Beijing. A section of this district has developed into a Nakpil-style nightstrip. Sanlitun Street is as happening as Malate, but has the advantage in that real sidewalks and most heritage buildings are kept intact. Across town is a bigger example of pedestrian-oriented city revitalization — Wangfujing. This is Beijing’s Avenida Rizal, but longer and wider. Utility lines are underground and so is the subway. People walk or ride colorful trams to shop up and down Beijing’s main drag. Security is good with street police visible and curtly courteous. Again, everything is clean and, obviously, maintenance is in Beijing folk’s vocabulary.
No wonder tourist arrivals have quickly rebounded and are increasing in the lead up to the Olympics. And, oh yes, they are building another Disneyland just outside the city. Life is good in Beijing and all this – clean air, green space, more jobs and improved quality of urban life – was achieved in one generation.
Next week: Scintillating Shanghai!
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