Images from Beijing
“One… two… OK!” We cosy up with our new friends, a 60-something Chinese couple, and smile for the camera as their son counts down to snapping our picture.
It’s evening and we’re in Beijing, wandering the maze of narrow alleyways, or hutongs, near the city centre. And quite inadvertently, we — two young women with short brown hair and glasses — are causing a bit of a stir.
WATCH: Gemma Nisbet's video tour of Beijing
Only 10 minutes earlier, we were approached by a gaggle of schoolgirls who indicated their desire to pose for photos with us, cooing “beeeautiful, beeeautiful”, all the while.
I’m surprised that we’re considered so novel in this metropolis of more than 20 million, where western expats aren’t exactly rare. But a visit to Beijing, it seems, is nothing if not an ego boost.
Our evening had begun a short stroll away at Tiananmen Square. Officially the world’s largest public square at 440,000sqm, it’s a strange place: a public space and considered the symbolic heart of the Chinese nation but also closely controlled by the Government, with security checkpoints on the way in, guards and secret policemen constantly patrolling, and light poles festooned with security cameras like bizarre Christmas trees.
The sheer scale of the place is dehumanising, an effect only enhanced by the grandiosity of the surrounding buildings, including the Great Hall of the People (Beijing’s political hub) and the national museum. At the square’s centre is the monumental Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, where devotees can go to view the former leader’s embalmed body. Two huge screens display patriotic images, casting a neon glow over the pavestones in the half-light of the smoggy dusk.
But there are chinks visible in the self-conscious display of the totalitarian might. A pair of guards chat idly as they march — for a moment two friends rather than stony-faced representatives of the State. In front of the Soviet-style statues standing before Mao’s mausoleum, there’s a distinctly shabby collection of pot plants corralled into a half-hearted display.
Then there’s the image that inevitably pops into your head standing here —, of the iconic photograph of a man standing resolute before a tank, shopping bags clasped in either hand, during the protests of 1989. This image, the protests and the government crackdown that followed are not widely known among the younger generation of Chinese, so effective has official censorship been.
As the sun sets, the square closes for the evening, so we head for the nearby hutongs. The architecture here is on a human scale, starkly different to the anonymous experience of Tiananmen Square.
It’s also quite unlike the modern Beijing we have seen so far, with its mix of splendid contemporary buildings and rather less aesthetically pleasing high-rise apartments. All is peaceful as we pass enticing shopfronts, groups of friends sitting outside simple restaurants and men selling pineapples from the backs of carts or grilling skewers of meat to sell to bystanders in need of a snack. This is a gentler, more traditional Beijing, and I like it very much.
Our destination is Alice’s Tea House, situated in a small shop in the midst of a maze of narrow streets. Run by the eponymous Alice and her genial husband, Charlie, it is unusual among tea houses in offering home-cooked meals prepared by Charlie along with traditional tea ceremonies administered by Alice.
Alice with her husband Charlie and their cat, whose name translates to "Little Strong Guy" / Picture: Gemma Nisbet
The couple are excellent hosts and, as we eat a delicious meal of banquet-like proportions, digging into meatballs, spicy green beans, stewed pork and rice topped with roasted peanuts, Alice chats away in excellent English about Beijing, her 13-year-old daughter who is at home studying, and life in the hutongs, where until very recently she and her family lived.
A style of architecture strongly associated with Beijing, the hutongs are narrow streets lined with traditional buildings called siheyuan.
Arranged around a courtyard, these residences would house up to 10 families, all sharing a toilet and kitchen, but fell out of favour in the second part of the 20th century as many Beijingers moved into modern housing including high-rise apartments — undoubtedly more private and convenient, but generally lacking in charm and community atmosphere. Many hutongs were demolished after Mao came to power in 1949 but, in more recent times, there has been renewed interest in saving them, both as tourist attractions and grand homes for the wealthy.
After dinner, the tea ceremony begins. Alice begins with lychee tea, pouring the brew between various ceramic vessels to infuse the flavour before decanting it into tiny glass cups set before us on the table. Lychee is Alice’s most popular tea, and is followed by delicate jasmine and slightly sweet oolong ginseng,which is Alice’s favourite, then white tea and earthy puer, said to aid weight loss.
Alice reuses the same leaves multiple times, demonstrating the difference in the taste after successive infusions. It’s a dainty and deliberate way to drink tea — more akin to how we would savour a fine wine or Scotch at home — and reflects its importance in Chinese culture.
Midway through our tea tasting, we are interrupted by the family cat, a robust-looking ginger tom, that jumps on the table, keen to be the centre of attention. Blind in one eye, he was found on the street in poor health by Charlie, who nursed him and named him Xiao Qiang, which means “Little Strong Guy”. Later on, master and pet pose for our cameras, the cat bearing Charlie’s clowning around with good nature.
It’s a happy, cosy scene and it is with some reluctance that we eventually tear ourselves away as Alice and Charlie begin to shut up shop for the night.
We arrived in Beijing two days earlier and, after checking into our hotel — the glamorous Peninsula Beijing — follow the adjacent main shopping strip of Wangfujing to the crammed but efficient subway and on to the Forbidden City.
The largest palace complex in the world, the Forbidden City was the home of emperors and their households during the Ming and Qing dynasties and, as the name suggests, was strictly off-limitsed to the majority of Chinese for some 500 years. Ringed by high walls and a moat, it is an imposing sight.
Visitors queue outside the Forbidden City / Picture: Gemma Nisbet
The area in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the main entrance to the Forbidden City which bears a huge likeness of Mao, is busy with a crowd of Sunday afternoon tourists, most of them Chinese. The queue moves quickly and inside, we cross the large square to the ticket office. This is the only place in Beijing where we are waylaid by street vendors, most of them selling a variety of novelty hats: khaki communist caps, yellow traditional satin hats with a single long braid down the back, straw conical farmer-style numbers, even feminine headdresses adorned with plastic flowers.
We are approached by a succession of people keen for us to engage their services as guides, but we opt for the audio tour instead, which adds 40 yuan to the 60 yuan price of admission — around $16 in total.
Covering 720,000sqm, the complex is utterly huge and potentially overwhelming. Indeed, such is its size it would be impossible to see all of the Forbidden City in one visit, so I resolve to wander pretty much straight down the middle, bypassing the various specialty galleries along the edges.
I cross one of the marble bridges spanning the curve of the Golden Stream and walk through the magnificently detailed Gate of Supreme Harmony to the so-called Sea of Flagstones, an enormous space capable of holding 100,000 people. Then past the three halls — the first of which, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, is clad in scaffolding. I peek inside the second, the Hall of Middle Harmony (they have a way with names here) and am disappointed to find the interior looking a little neglected and shabby.
I don’t know whether it’s the glare radiating from the expanses of white stone or the air pollution, but by this point I’m feeling somewhat shabby myself — fatigued, with a gritty mouth and grimy face from the smog. It’s a relief, then, to come to the Imperial Garden at the far side of the complex. Bushes in blossom and cypress trees — some so gnarled they have to be propped up with wooden stilts — are interspersed with what I can only describe as stylised piles of rocks, including the 10m tall Hill of Accumulated Elegance. It is quite strange but for me also the most evocative part of the palace.
That evening, we visit the Donghuamen night markets at the northern end of Wangfujing. Offering, according to a sign at its entrance, “nearly 100 kinds of famous, special, delicious and new snacks from all over China”, this is the place to come should you wish to sample some exotic proteins — anything from fat silkworm larvae to centipedes, starfish and big, black spiders, as well as rather more conventional fare including dumplings, squid and what look suspiciously like Potato Smiles smothered in tomato sauce.
Stallholders selling skewers of various meats at Donghuamen market / Pictures: Gemma Nisbet
One stallholder does his best to talk us into trying a kebab of halved testicles from some unfortunate but unidentified species, while another young woman endeavours to convince us of the joys of eating snake, skin on and coiled around a wooden skewer.
“Good for the skin,” she says through a mouthful of meat, grimacing at the taste despite her best efforts. We decline — not for a lack of adventurous spirit, of course, but because we have just eaten a generous and delicious dinner at the Peninsula. She has rather better luck with an intrepid French couple, who buy a selection of weird and wonderful delicacies for a late-night snack.
We end our stay in Beijing the following day with a visit to the 798 Art District. Located midway between the city centre and the airport, it was originally built in the 1950s in collaboration with the Soviets and East Germans to produce electronics but, by the early 1990s, most of the factories had ceased production. Then, in a pattern repeated all over the world from downtown Manhattan to Melbourne, the disused industrial buildings proved irresistible to artists and by the early 2000s the area had become a hub of studios and galleries.
Today, with gentrification having led to higher rents, the area tends to accommodate the more established names of the Beijing art world.
This is not to say it has lost its atmosphere or its industrial edge — there’s still a huge, abandoned coal-fired power plant in the middle of the district’s jumble of streets and alleyways, with plenty of oddities and eccentricities to surprise the visitor. I wander more or less at random past street art and sculptures — many of them commenting on China’s communist history — and into galleries and design shops.
I allow myself to get lost, heightening the sense of discovery when I stumble across the towering Lego-like figure of a man in an alley, am greeted by a caged bird with a cheery “ni hao”, or turn a corner to find a tree wrapped in red yarn at the far side of a sparse courtyard, soft music playing over a loudspeaker.
Street art at 798 Art District / Picture: Gemma Nisbet
Then I become properly lost, finding myself in an industrial wasteland complete with steam hissing from rusted pipes and workers wearing hard hats.
It occurs to me it might be some kind of self-referential, postmodern art installation but am relieved nonetheless when I manage to follow the trail of galleries back to the heart of the art district to meet up with my group.
Later, walking back to the main road to meet with our minibusvan, we are approached by an enthusiastic group of teenage boys eager to have their photographs taken with us. And as we smile for the cameras with yet another group of new friends, I reflect on the things we have seen and the places we’ve visited, and think that, in travel as in life, it’s all about the people you meet along the way.
Gemma Nisbet travelled courtesy of Creative Holidays and China Southern Airlines.
BEIJING SMOG
It would be impossible to come to Beijing and not mention air pollution — smog is inevitable in the Chinese capital and, during my stay, blocked out the sun and sky during the daylight hours.
Air pollution — all pollution, really — is a serious problem throughout urban China but it is renowned for being particularly bad in Beijing.
The issue is exacerbated by the twin factors of size and geography. The city is home to more than 20 million people with five million cars on the road, while the prevailing winds mean that much of Beijing’s smog actually originates from surrounding cities and provinces. Seasonal dust storms only worsen matters.
You’ll see people, particularly expats, wearing face masks in the street, and many buy air purifiers for their homes and prevent their children from playing outside on days when conditions are particularly bad.
Don’t let it put you off but do come prepared. If you suffer from hay fever, bring antihistamines. I found the pollution irritated my skin and eyes, so eye drops are also a good idea.
FACT FILE
Creative Holidays has a Beijing day tour visiting Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and more from $67 per person, and hutong tours from $62 per person, both valid for sale until June 30. The company is also offering a three-night package staying at the Peninsula Beijing Hotel in a Grand Deluxe room, from $549 per person twin share, including full breakfast daily and a Great Wall and Sacred Way day tour, valid for sale until August 31 for travel from June 1 to August 31, with extra nights available from $129 per person. creativeholidays.com or 1300 301 711.
A tea ceremony and home-cooked meal at Alice’s Tea House is RMB70 (approximately $11) per person. Alice can also help with booking tours and tickets for shows. alice197412@126.com
China Southern Airlines flies from Perth to Beijing via its hub in Guangzhou three times a week, departing Perth at 8.30am on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and arriving in Beijing at 10.20pm. Return fares are from $765 for economy, $4704 for business and $6244 for first class, valid to the end of July excluding peak periods. Travel agents, 1300 889 628 or facebook.com/ChinaSouthernAU.
