In almost every major city in the world, the government makes sure that the first 10 kilometers of road from the airport is a sight to behold. Good roads mean roads with lots of trees, never mind if everything else doesn’t look too good after that.
Beijing’s and Shanghai’s good roads don’t stop at the airport. They are everywhere. Both cities are well-lit with wide sidewalks, pedestrian lanes and wide bicycle lanes too. Most people there still use the bicycle to go around, and they stick to the bicycle lanes. Shanghai though is more cosmopolitan than Beijing. Come 2008, however, when Beijing hosts the Olympics, you can expect a sparkling new city. In fact, as early as now, it is already preparing the infrastructure for it, including plans to eliminate sandstorms from the Gobi Desert, which pollutes the city every summer. Not to be outdone, Shanghai, on the other hand, is trumpeting its hosting of the World Expo sometime in 2006 to 2007.
Whenever I go to a new place, I like to be billeted at a hotel as close to the city as possible. Hotels out of town may be cheaper, but you end up spending more on cab fare. If there is one group of people who doesn’t believe in the theorem that the shortest distance from one point to another is a straight line, it is the cab driver. Not in London and, voila, not in Shanghai either. In Shanghai, our cab driver missed a turn, got embarrassed, turned off the meter and did not charge us from that point on. He said that he wouldn’t charge us extra since it was his mistake. You’d wish all cab drivers were like him.
Beijing has more bars, cafes and international restaurants than Metro Manila, so if you can’t stand eating Chinese food every day, there are always other choices. In fact, my husband and I had dinner at Golden Elephant, a restaurant that specializes in Indian and Thai food, along Sanlitun Street. Charlene Panutat, a friend of mine who stayed in Beijing for a year and had actually written my itinerary, aptly described Sanlitun as trying to be like Lang Kwai Fong in Hong Kong. It is like Julio Nakpil St. in Malate without the potholes and restaurants that are open one day and close the next.
We stayed at a hotel three blocks away from Tiananmen Square, which is famous for being the biggest square in the world and for the 1989 demonstrations. It is a beautiful square, with lots of people strolling around and flying kites, the same way Rizal Park was 20 years ago. Surrounding the square are government buildings like the Great Hall of the People and Chairman Mao Zedong Memorial Hall. The Chinese are proud of their government buildings. You should see how beautiful they are when they turn on the lights at night.
Chairman Mao’s embalmed body lies in state enclosed in a glass coffin at this hall. The line leading to the hall is very long, and it is not only tourists queuing up but local Chinese as well wanting to pay their respects to their revered leader. Before you enter the hall, there are flowers for sale which you can place in front of the huge marble statue of Chairman Mao. Yes, the flowers are for sale (you need funds to maintain a government building, you know; nothing comes free). The guards on the site all made sure that we stayed within the dotted yellow lines, moved really fast and, most of all, kept quiet. The atmosphere was very solemn; it was like a church. But once we got out, we got the surprise of our lives.
The Chinese kind of entrepreneurship found its way right outside this Memorial Hall. All of a sudden, there were two dozen stall keepers yelling at us to buy, buy, buy, various Mao memorabilia, from Mao clocks to Mao watches, from Mao postcards to Mao posters, from Mao lighters to Mao pendants. Not to forget the ice cream stand, but the brand, of course, was not Mao. It was Wall’s.
Our companion, a local Beijing-er, asked me if there was someone like Chairman Mao in the Philippines. If I only knew how long the lines would be at Rico Yan’s funeral, I would say, "If you were referring to the long lines, there is someone and he’s called Rico Yan." But I knew she was referring to someone the Filipinos look up to or revere as a leader or hero. I said, "Jose Rizal" and my husband said, "Ninoy Aquino" and it suddenly occurred to both of us that no one remembers them anymore unless their names are brought up in Philippine history classes. That is the sad part of our history.
Speaking of Rico Yan, I was coming out of the Hall of Jewelry at the Forbidden City when I suddenly got a call from my friend Ivy Lim, who belongs to the family that owns and operates the Dos Palmas Resort. She sounded really depressed. After all, it was a double whammy. A very nice young and popular screen idol had just died, and of all places, he died at Dos Palmas. I know that the Lim family had been trying very hard to revive the resort, what with the Abu Sayyaf hostage-taking incident last year. I told Ivy to relax. "It’s not your fault," I kept telling her. Dos Palmas is such a beautiful place, and surely people will continue to visit it.
I was freezing at the Forbidden City, and after the call, I froze even more. It’s a good thing I was at the tailend of my walk. The Forbidden City is such an awesome sight. Covering 720,000 square meters of space, it was the imperial palace of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. It is divided into the Outer Court and Inner Court made up of numerous halls and palaces where emperors lived and conducted their daily business. The various thrones of the emperors done in exquisite design are still intact, and so is the matrimonial bed. Outside some of the main halls you can see the sign "Supported by the American Express Foundation." Oops, what is American capitalism doing here? But wait, at the back of the entrance ticket is an ad by Swiss consumer products giant Nestle. Oops again!
Inside the Forbidden City is a deep well where the empress would throw the concubines she despised. I’m sure that many women in the Philippines would want the same well built here.
My husband and I also visited the Ming Tombs where 13 of the 16 Ming Dynasty emperors are buried. The tombs were so spread apart that you need to take a car from one tomb to another. We decided to pick only one, the tomb at Dingling, where the 13th Ming emperor, Shenzong Zhu Yijun (1563-1628) is buried along with his two empresses (one was actually a concubine who became an empress), Xiao Puan and Xiao Ling. The Dingling tomb was built at the cost of eight million taels of silver. That sounds really big, but unfortunately, I really don’t know how much that’s worth today. Dingling has two museums where all the treasures that were dug up from the tomb are now put on display. There is also a list of the Ming emperors, their empresses, and their numerous concubines. The first Ming emperor was the most prolific with 16 concubines. My husband was already wondering why I was so interested in concubines and their lives. By the way, one of my favorite movies is Raise the Red Lantern, a story about – you guessed it – concubines.
How can you miss the Great Wall of China when you are in Beijing? There is a Chinese saying, "Conquer the Great Wall to be a man." They say that the Great Wall is also the only thing you can see from the moon. There are three places to start: Badaling, Mutianyu and Simatai. Simatai is for the adventurous climbers while Badaling is for tourists like us. Badaling is where most of the tourists go. Another rule I follow when I visit a new place is to go where the tourists go and get lost later.
To get to the Great Wall you could choose to take a cable car or walk. A two-way ride costs 50 rmb and one-way costs 40 rmb. Our companion said that she had gone there twice and had not taken the cable car yet. I wanted to walk too but my husband reminded me that suffering is optional. It’s a good thing I listened to him because I kept running out of breath just climbing the Great Wall. According to our companion, it will take an hour and a half to walk up and one hour to go down.
It’s hard to imagine how anyone could build a wall more than 6,000 kilometers long without any use of machinery. It’s even harder to imagine that construction started in 221 B.C. during the time of Emperor Qin Shihuang (and ended in the Ming Dynasty). At the two towers were the usual peddlers selling Great Wall shirts, Great Wall playing cards and Great Wall certificates that said "I climbed the Great Wall." The peddlers could print your name on it. This sounded more like a tourist trap to me.
You need money to maintain the Great Wall too, you know, so it turns out that the 50 rmb was only for the cable car ride. To climb the wall itself you had to pay an additional entrance fee of 40 rmb. Ah, but that is only for those who had two legs and could walk. The sign at the ticket booth said, "Leg Disabled Free for Cable Car." We didn’t know if it meant that you get a free disabled leg if you take the cable car or if you have a disabled leg, you get a free cable car. Or worse, when you get into the cable car, they disable your leg.
For the ticket to the Great Wall itself, the sign said that it cost only 22.5 rmb (instead of 50 rmb) for "People Lower Limbs Disabled" and students/senior citizens.
By the way, the toilets of the Great Wall are rated four stars by the Beijing Tourism Authority. And the toilets are free. Isn’t that a fascinating idea – rating toilets!
There are still many sights to see in Beijing, like the Temple of Heaven and Summer Palace, but we had run out of time. Since it was Holy Week, we could not miss visiting a church. Our companion brought us to Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and it was jampacked with people. They were kneeling and singing songs in Mandarin. The priest was leading the Stations of the Cross. When we got out of the church, our companion said, "I do not practice any faith, but after what I saw inside the church, I was moved."
And to think this was Communist China!