Christmas in Beijing

Well, not really. I hope to be in the countryside for Christmas. But it sure looks like Christmas in Beijing.

Beijing is a fascinating city. I don't know if there is any place like this - writing and rewriting history continuously. I don't think that Athens or Rome or Cairo or any other big city with a long history behind did or does anything similar.

It is a city of contrasts, a city that goes at a faster pace than many others and surely faster than the rest of the country. It is currently undergoing major facelifts and restorations. The Olympic Games are getting closer and there's a big rush. Many monuments are being restored. Streets are closed and entire areas reconstructed.

The shopping areas and malls are arenas of goods, people and lights. Shiny, bright, glitzy stuff. There are more high end stores and bigger than in many other cities I've been to. And the new Chinese generations are avid shoppers.

Megalomany has a long history here. The emperors had to show their power and magnificence and so they built big. The Communists followed the pattern, but their buildings are just big, bleak and dull. All the graceousness and delicate detail work you see in the old wooden temples and palaces is gone. During both imperial and communist times regular people lived in humble, simple conditions and were most likely poor.
The old residential areas (aka hutongs) stand proof of this. They were not allowed to be higher than any imperial building, so they all are one storey high. Their tiles could not have any of the imperial colours either. So they are grey.
I don't know if there was any rule or restriction regarding the outdoor wall paintings but they are all grey. So the areas are grey, grey and humble. They are inhabited by simple poor people. People who still go to work by bike - old rusty bikes for that matter. People who mend and patch still rather than replace and dispose.
In hutongs people smile and say hello though. They look and are human. They are not in a rush. Rush to where? It's the rush around them that slowly kills these neighbourhoods.

The hutongs have trees however, big old trees which you don't see too often in China. There's need for cultivated land to feed all the people, and shade is not good for the crops. So trees are quite scarce. Forests even scarcer.
There's one positive aspect to this megalomany: the parks are big as well. And the parks (and lakes) in Beijing around the palaces are extremely beautiful and peaceful. You can basically escape the traffic and city noise right in the center of the city. I loved the parks in Beijing with their many old people and the old brown trees and the gates and pavilions. The lakes were partially frozen at this time but that only added to their charm.

Unfortunately what has survived the most recent turmoiled past may now get demolished. And this is the case with the hutongs, the old residential areas in the city. Beijing is a Mongol city and Mongols, as we all know, are nomads and are fantastic horse riders. They needed to dug wells for their horses and build horse-troughs. "Hut" or "hot" means horse-trough in Mongolian. The Chinese built their homes around these wells and this seems to be the origin of the word "hutong".
Hutongs are a maze of narrow lanes and courtyards. The traditional entrance gates into such a courtyard have beautiful carved stones on both sides of the gate and a nice tiled roof above. The gate itself is usually red with golden decorations and handles. That's a simplified description.
Wandering along the quiet hutong alleys I saw a man sitting down on a stone and reading a newspaper amid piles of rubble. I wondered if the man was at home there. The area is going to be soon replaced by some more Glory Malls and Partylife stores. It now consists of piles upon piles of rubble. There were many people walking around with a sad nostalgic look in their eyes. They probably lived most of their life there before getting displaced now. People who have worked and suffered and did not get any favours in life. Had they not been honest humble people they would have long moved to another area or replaced their old rusty bike by a car. They had to move now, eventually, since real estate has become so expensive. Such is life.


Tiananmen Square is a huge, paved, grey and cold square. It literally cries for people and asks for strikes and demonstrations. Only people can give it life and colour. And people do that. In the early morning hours, when the sun rises and people rush to work there are people there, locals passing and many tourists hanging around. The group guides with their red or yellow Mickey Mouse umbrellas stand out. Then there are the stiff, severe and uninteresting green statues - the guards standing there for hours. Quite grotesque. There are also some short-term black statues. They come back to life after the flash triggers and the shutters open - Chinese tourists who need to have a picture in the square with Mao's picture in th background. If you come by at night you'll find the same crowds - it's only the presence of people what makes it lively and interesting.

Beijing Opera: No respect for audience or artists. In my humble opinion the show was at least 1 hour too long. I do not contest its tradition and beauty but my experience was not an entirely positive one and that is my quick drawn conclusion.
The show lasted 3 hours and 10 minutes without intermission. The costumes were awesome and the makeup. The acrobatics stunning. The plot I'm sure was good but it had much too many twists for me to understand. I couldn't find out to this day the name of the show. The music, well the music is an acquired taste thing. And I did not have time to acquire it yet. The best part was the last half an hour when the Chinese became so impatient and frustrated that they started leaving the theatre after glancing at their watches dozens of times. I had two shows and the one closer was much more fun and intelligible than the one on the stage.
If it was exhausting for us in the audience sitting and dozing off, it must have been so much more exhausting for the artists. And there are daily shows. Does anybody care about them?


No visit to Beijing is complete without trying the famous Peking Duck - a historic dish. I went to the historic Bianyfang restaurant which was quite busy. It was interesting. At first the waitress hardly let me look at the menu. She had decided for me: half-duck roast duck. Then, after the table was covered with lots of plates and bowls and ingredients and the duck was skillfully sliced in front of me the same waitress grabbed my chopsticks and showed me how to properly eat the dish. After discovering this secret and starting to enjoy my dish another woman came with a scribbled paper. My bill. I had to pay it right then. It did not matter that my hands were greasy and I was still halfway through my dinner. I paid quite irritated by her attitude but I was still trying to enjoy my duck. Next thing though another staff person started sweeping the floor in front of my table. Cleanliness above everything! I finished my duck quite pissed off and left without even tasting the traditional feat-ending clear duck soup.

There is an alternative to this. A lot more picturesque and fun, but not necessarily cheaper: the nightmarket. That's fun. Nearby the main shopping area this array of food stalls offers anything you can imagine on the skewer. Prawns and snake, chicken gizzards and hearts, corn and glazed strawberries but also things like penis and testicles (and the vendors love teasing and mocking the foreigners for their usually disgusted declines. "What kind?" I asked. "Beef."), silk worms and a selection of approximately 2-inch size bugs. Sorry, I don't know the names and I don't care. No bugs for me, either.

Did I mention the kitsch? The amount of kitsch and Mao paraphernalia you can buy is astonishing. Any monument, anything has a dozen different size replicas and depictions.

I already mentioned that I like very much the old Chinese architecture. Well, what I didn't like about all these impressive palaces and places are the interiors. They are empty or at least seem so. They are lifeless and dark and very cold. And there's so much schnick-schnack there on display as well, at an imperial scale, of course. Blocks of jade carved by hundreds of people in several years; huge crystal rocks; immense vases and bowls; numerous clocks and jewellry. And then the information about empress Cixi requiring 3000 embroiderers to only work on her exquisite socks throughout the year. What a waste. All useless and boring stuff for me so I learned to restrict myself to the more interesting exteriors.

The only issue I had was once more related to... cleanliness. It seemed to me that as soon as I lift my camera and look through the viewfinder a sweeper comes into picture. There's always somebody sweeping the floor. Whether in the restaurant, fast food, palace, park, museum, hostel hallway, etc. It's a challenge to take a picture without them.


Comments and opinions aside there are many beautiful places to see, palaces and parks and temples, in and around Beijing, some of which are UNESCO world heritage sites. I would do a very poor job trying to describe them, there are so many books and albums who do that in a very professional way.
I can merely gather and selectively present my impressions which I do, especially since the internet offer is very limited in China. But there are hardly any internet cafes in Beijing and those that exist have barebone computers (no software, no DVD unit). Business people carry laptops, why bother with internet cafes.

I have to add that winter in Beijing is wonderful. It is cold - the lakes are frozen - the air is crisp and the sky deep blue. The pollution takes care for the beautiful sunrises and sunsets.
Nevertheless, I saw some hardy roses in blossom in Beijing: yellow, pink and red. And the magnolia trees in the Summer Palace garden had big buds.
And then there was this man playing a traditional string instrument on a bench in Beihai park while my hands were frozen with my gloves on. (How come his hands were able to produce those beautiful sounds? I wondered) And then the other man who started singing opera arias at sunset in the Summer Palace garden. Or the women who started singing on the train. I love this spontaneity and these instant music shows. It shows there is a lot more than just the rush and the glitter and the chopsticks.


Merry Christmas to all of you!!