(China: Datong – Beijing. Taiwan)
Cold Northern Mainland China:
Pingyao, Datong and Beijing: THREE layers of thermals, two or three pairs of socks, than many more layers over those, then puffer jacket, scarf and warm “lid” and moisturizer are all essential. By this stage one looks (and feels) like a constricted Michelin Man but nearly warm in this dry and blistering cold. For spectacle wearers: there is NO way that your nose can be warm without your glasses becoming permanently fogged. Choose your priority now: frozen “longnose” or seeing the sights. You cannot choose both. While dressed in this “fashion”, eat and drink sparingly: unlayering in open squat bogs is publicly unprepossessing – even with an excellent balance on unreconstructed middle-aged knees.
The four hour train trip from Datong to Beijing (where we “cracked” soft class with our own waiting room and escorted priority entry to the platform – to find our carriage attendant battling the coal-fired heater and the carriage full of black smoke) commenced with 90 minutes of steel works, coal-fired power stations and very dirty industries along a frozen river with terraced rice fields. The train then rolled into a long and spectacular gorge of frozen streams, occasional dams and small hydro-power stations and the two circuitous rail lines clinging to opposite sides of the gorge, occasionally exchanging banks over skeletal bridges or disappearing into long, curving tunnels. Our compartments were on the “wrong side” for the views so we hogged the corridors, unlike the obedient Chinese who stayed in their warm cabins with the doors firmly shut. For nearly two hours we played a cat-and-mouse game between foreigners-with-cameras taking in the scenes, and a relentlessly proper carriage attendant – with coal fire now under control – who was determined that the laced corridor curtains would remain closed and arranged “just-so”. It got to a stage where we would out-glare our car lady and refuse to let go of the open curtains to the view. Every toilet or snack break would result in rigidly closed and arranged curtains “just-so” and an unspoken dare NOT to disturb her neat carriage.
I last visited Beijing about 23 years ago. It was a bleak and “closed” city of bicycles and controlled tourists who had to use specially issued currency, couldn’t convert to local cash without penalty, and were stuck purchasing from the grossly overpriced “Friendship Store” which was a compulsory stop on every day tour to siphon more hard currency from foreign pockets. We very few foreigners who caught the local trolley buses and the new and closely guarded subway with the locals were a source of intent stares (and screaming infants sighting their first “foreign devils”). A visit to Department Store Number One was mixing in heaving crowds of locals with not much to spend looking at counters offering even less to buy. The compulsory Mao Jacket was being phased out, but not much variety was evident to replace it. Metal painted pandas in the street holding cute hollow tree trunks were really cast iron spittoons, and those citizens being “re-educated” were required to scrub them out. Everyone (male) smoked and spat. Navigating over broad streets at pedestrian crossings was like traversing a marked suicide zone, but at least the traffic was mainly gently swerving trolley buses and ringing bicycles.
It’s changed a bit!
The Number One Department Store is still there, but now looks more like Myers Bourke St (complete with bargain basement). There are huge bookshops over several crowded floors milling with locals who sit on floors and stairways reading intently. The school sections have English texts for students: very much the classics of English literature in amongst Little Golden Books. Chinese translations of business manuals and books by Obama are on the Best Seller tables. The old “chop shops” are still there as are the (largely ignored) propaganda newspaper boards, but Wangfujing St has been widened and pedestrianised and is a riot of high-rise neon consumerism and fading Olympic decorations (which are always paired with recent earthquake disaster photos and commemorations on large displays). Its not quite the consumer excess with morning tai-chi and outdoor ballroom dancing of Shanghai’s Nanjing St. but it comes close.
The old city walls are now demolished to make way for broad and traffic-choked ring roads with highly efficient and fast-growing subways beneath. Our organized road travel was arranged among the intense peaks – as you would in Los Angeles or Bangkok. I took a “light rail” metro trip around the northern suburbs where traditional houtongs (walled villages) are being relentlessly bulldozed to create mock-Baroque-Mexican-Gothic-Tudor-Romanesque-Chateau “style” high-rise new towns linked by subways and freeways to the old city centre. The city government has “restored” one down town houtong for tourists like “Old St” in Shanghai. Everything new is old again in a vaguely Disneyfied kind of way.
Inside the central ring road, trolleybuses still rule, but every so oftern the wires disappear and the buses run on batteries – through the main shopping mall (to better appreciate the graphic neon through thick smog without the interruption of wires?) and across the main east-west road. This would seem to be so that wires don’t interfere with the odd passing tank or missile as the nation gears up for the 60th Anniversary military parades through the city and Tiananmen Square.
South of the downtown shopping area is the old French church of St Michael’s. Last time I saw this building it was used as a store and the crosses from both steeples had been sawn off. As with many other churches in China, the crosses have been restored (using mass produced identical metal moulds) and the church and surrounding old foreign embassies have now become historical monuments. Many of these are now used by security police, as they are within 500 metres of Tiananmen Square…
Mao’s portrait still dominates the Forbidden City and the Square, with young uniformed guards standing stock-still to attention (as they do outside of every public building), eyeing the tourists who are mostly Chinese and wandering over from seeing the pickled Mao in his mausoleum. Severe guards also man the second entry arch which used to lead to a long grey walk into a further series of walls and increasingly ornate pavilions. These days it commences with an obstacle course of souvenir “opportunities” of escalating crassness. The Forbidden City itself has been “made over”, in parts, for the Olympics, including “traditional” “dress-up costume” photos if you are so inclined, but it remains spectacular.
The only crisp, fine day we experienced in China, with a genuinely blue sky over remnant fresh snow, was our walk along the Great wall at Mutianyu: which is not the usual tourist circus at Badaling. We were early, and for about an hour were the virtually the only people along a kilometer of restored fortifications with clear views of the turrets snaking kilometers of mountains in both directions. This was a rare moment of spectacular, reflective peace away from souvenir sellers, happy snapping tourists and dirty brown smog. Naturally the Chinese are seeking to “improve” the experience with an intrusive chairlift to the top fortification and an extended slippery-slide to whisk fortunate tourists back to the pancake shops and souvenir hawkers in the valley below. Our slow walk of the wall was sparkling, Winter peace.
But if you are going to Beijing(as I know some of you were contemplating) you must not miss Saturday morning in the parkland surrounding the Temple of Heaven.
After two weeks in China the daily morning rituals of public exercise had become familiar, but this is public celebration and performance: an amplified competing cacophony of group exercise on a grand scale. And far more heartfelt and moving than organized or paid performances. Just strolling the park is a meander around domino players, ribbon-twirling ladies’ rhythmic gymnastics, elegant performing partners tapping bats and ribboned balls, and “come as you are” outdoor ballroom dancers, duets and choir ensembles with traditional and modern wind instruments, harmonica duels with dancers from the crowd, lines of old ladies in wheelchairs catching up on gossip and avidly watching the massed crowds, a Chinese middle-aged “Elvis” with wraparound shades and slicked black hair schmoozing on portable amplifier with passing ladies… I gave up my ticket to see the Temple so I could stay in the crowd which was milling around an ageing drummer, harmonica and flute band and rousing community singing by a massed puffer-jacketed “choir”. The tunes, passions, relative ages of the performers, hand clapping and communal song sheets seemed to suggest that these were the old, shared revolutionary songs and everyone (who could read the sheets) joined in the rousing choruses. Women in the crowd took it in turns to dance in the circle surrounded by the “band”. Each song started gradually with one random player commencing the tune, the drummer catching up, harmonicas joining in, and a gradual growth of singing as the crowd recognized a familiar song from another time.
Younger kids just watched, bemused: this was another world for them, as it is for us.
Not-so-pleasant crowd participation was at Beijing West station on the following morning. This is the most intensely jostling, crowded, confusing railway station (and I’ve been in one or two…) I’ve experienced: something to do with external doors being kept shut against the blistering cold forcing huge crowds down narrow fire stairs and into monster queues trying to secure seats/berths to travel home for Chinese new year. There are just not enough monster 18 carriage trains for the crowds. Last year sudden ice storms caused the shut down of electric trains leading, amongst other things, to a crowd of more than a million sitting in the square outside of Guangzhou station for several days waiting for a train - any train – to turn up. And Chinese Officialdom’s way of dealing with crowds is to build high-fenced mazes to keep people milling and moving (who knows where?) in the hope that some sort of movement will reduce frustration.
Once in the Beijing West Customs Hall, bureaucratic peace and order prevailed. All was uniformed smiles as we were invited to press a smiley button on the Immigration desk if we were happy with the service. Noice!
And once again we Foreigners were locked into our train (DDR-from-Berlin-across-East-Germany style) for the 25 hour express trip to Kowloon in an air conditioned train where the Beijing crew kept the ambient temperature at a bracing 9 degrees. In the buffet, a local bloke translated the sticky plastic menu pictures for me using (the relevant) animal noises while skilfully dismembering a whole fish with chopsticks and open mouthed teeth, before tooth-picking his teeth behind a modestly covering hand.
And for breakfast: it IS possible to eat runny breakfast fried eggs with chopsticks by only getting 70% of the yolk stuck in your beard.
With no “Three-year-old-from-Hell” on board, a laced-curtained-antimacassared compartment to myself, a history of The Rape of Nanking for “light” reading and almost enough tissues to manage a very snotty Chinese head cold… the journey south from Beijing to Hong Kong drifted pleasantly along… and the now fraying electric-blue puffer jacket with the now-busted zipper was carefully placed to remain on the luggage rack in Kowloon long after I had walked back past the Falun Dafa protesters and into a taxi for the pub in Mongkok.
Some other Food Notes for your consideration:
Chinese “pizza”, ladies’ fingers and steamed tripe in “Muzzy St” in Xian are excellent, before dessert of deep –fried persimmon cakes: YUM!
The main product of Pingyao (apart from identical hotels adjacent in the same street causing great amusement as foreigners – late at night – stumble into the wrong guesthouse demanding their room key) is the packaged slow-corned ox or bullock meat, salted for 3 to 6 months. It comes in small squeeze-packs and looks and tastes like slightly gelatinous corned beef: rather good on longish train rides if you have tired of pot-noodles mixed with Chinese Railway thermos water.
Multicultural grazing at Shanghai-Pudong Airport: KFC cappucino, KFC hot egg tarts, adjacent to a “Desk Of Advice”. (I want that sign in our school foyer).
A guest house lunch: sweet and sour lotus roots with red and green sour-pickled cherries: acid overkill, but gooood!
Refried potato and rice noodles: looking like Neopolitan spaghetti but with a sweeter and more subtle taste and texture.
Sticky rice balls – also deep fried and subtly sweet in another guest house. (The accompanying maize wine is a once-in-a-lifetime experience: don’t, unless you are overly fond of the taste of Benadryl).
Was the buffet car in the Beijing to Kowloon Express the only one in China to run out of rice?
Pingyao Café Sign:
“Coriander Cows Calves
Roasted Pigs Elbows”
The best duck dinner was in a local suburban restaurant in Beijing with the most searingly, foully, odoriforous toilets. No-one was ill from this meal, possibly due to the 70% proof liquor which accompanied the meal.
Other Useful Stuff that I have Learned in China:
Sometimes the language barrier is just insurmountable, and no amount of pointing and miming can make sense of things. Why, for 90 minutes, did all taxi drivers refuse to take any of our group from the Goose Pagoda when we showed them the address of our hotel? Did eventually find out when one misguided but kind driver took pity on us, then became utterly gridlocked at the City Wall. The main street is all dug up for a new Metro and New Year’s day crowds had blocked the city. We left our morose driver with a generous tip at the City Gate and trudged through stranded buses and cars to our hotel. The taxi and driver may still be there…
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We saw Beijing Opera and some amazing acrobatics in Beijing(in a new performance designed by someone who seems to have seen rather too many gladiator movies), but the BEST choreography was the traffic cop at Bei Dajie intersection in Xian. This fella knew he was good, as he strutted on his white-striped podium, back rigid, butt in, chest out, arms robotic, “day glo” gloves covering impeccably poised orchestral conducting forefingers and thumbs, face also robotic but impressively disdainful with balletic rhythm and “death stares” at any errant pedestrian or driver. What was especially impressive was his partner at street level, one metre away, perfectly synchronized and performing the same aerobic routines with matching strut and style, pivoting around to remain always to the right of his leading man. We watched, riveted, for some time. There was no gridlock to be seen at this intersection!
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Shanghai and Beijing and Hong Kong are full of tourist scams where someone approaches you to practice their English, but really they want to sell you: “watches, T shirts,tea ceremony, “I am artist would you like to see my work “ (at great expense), Nice Girl For You, foot massage? (or something more interesting), nice suit?... You get the general idea. It’s only in tourist areas where the most persistent beggars seem t be: I got tripped and crash-tackled by two “frail” women-with-babies in Shanghai’s People’s Square, managing to outrun the loudest crone. An approach to “speak English” is occasionally genuine and rewarding: like the 20 final-year high school students in Xian who had been sent into Drum Tower Square to practice their English on a foreigner. We sat quite happily on the steps as I was questioned by 5 students for their assignment as 15(!) others prompted them and their teacher took photos. They’ve threatened to send them to my school’s emal account which should at least entertain the office staff. The other interesting “bail up” in the street was Amy in Beijing: she works for a steel importing company and has been told by her boss to improve her English of lose her job. This was another interesting half hour in Starbucks (which is every-bloody-where) doing a Q&A. Poor Amy quite possibly struggles through English conversations with flat Australian intonation now…
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“Chinglish” signs are an easy target for humour, as sign writers in China cast their way through the linguistic strangeness of English dictionaries and thesauruses to find those not-quite-right meanings in translations. As travellers who are baffled by Chinese script, we’re grateful that they do, and the end result often has a style and elegance unseen in usual English signage. Some favourites:
“Take care of your children and don’t have them lost” - Jin Sheng Tourist Advice
“Guard your treasures” - train washroom advice
“PAY ATTENTION TO PUBLIC HEALTH” seems to be the frequent sign which has nearly wiped out public spitting.
“Please take care of everything in your room. If you Mangle it, you will have to pay for it. Do not bring tinder into the hotel in case of fire you will be fined. We know for sure this hotel will make your tripin this city the indelible memory to rememb. Service with motion. Action with heart.” - This is the introduction to the Datong Hotel Welcome Book which was placed strategically next to the minibar of condoms, dental dams and a special “wash for vigor”.
“No striding on battlements” - Pingyao City Wall
“Do not use toilet while train is stabilizing”
“Children below 1.2 metres in height and mental patients are admitted only under custody”. – Shanghai Public Park Rules sign.
… and through the pervasive and often breathtaking smog is the regular large sign on tollway bridges: “DELIVER CLEAN ENERGY TOWARDS HARMONIOUS WORLD”
“And So We Are Here”: on a wet day in Taipei, and the travel diary has just reached Hong Kong, where I spent a day or so recovering from the Chinese cold, in the hope that my temperature would be low enough to pass the “health sensors” for entry into Taiwan. I don’t want to experience RAAF Man’s adventure in Hangzhou Airport at the start of this trip when he was compulsorily referred to the local government hospital with a high fever with only a slim Mandarin phrasebook to assist him.
You really know that you are not at all well when the CNN coverage of US Senate Approval Hearings for potential Secretary of State: Hilary Clinton become deeply fascinating (through the foggy head). Even the Chinese government’s anodyne CCTV Channel 9 started to look vaguely interesting and informative.
So why Taiwan? I think that the attraction is like that of Berlin or Belgium: it’s a nation of historical ambiguity. “Colonial” buildings are Japanese Showa architecture. The Taiwanese didn’t ask to become “Nationalist China” led by the losers, reprobates, runaways, desperates and thieves from the 1949 revolution. Mbiguity is external and internal: Formosan Aboriginals didn’t want the “gentle” domination of Chiang kai-Shek following 1949, and the country is politically volatile with free-ranging daily papers gleefully reporting amazing corruption and impeachment cases: the previous Prime Minister is in jail for real estate fraud and bribery.
On my first visit here, just the occasional conversations on the street or in restaurants were very friendly and open and informally inquisitive. They still are. This is also a small “nation” that actively bribes small nations to become diplomatic “friends” and is currently mired in a very public scandal where millions of dollars have been syphoned off by intermediaries who had promised to “buy” certain Nuigini representatives to commence diplomatic relations. The intermediaries have run off with the money.
Those casual daily conversations didn’t disappoint this time either: from the former army major who owned a steakhouse in Kaohsiung and plied me with local beer and stories of working on American bases in Thailand during the Vietnam war, to the Aboriginal man on the train who is currently an unhappy surgeon in the Taiwanese navy, to ongoing discussions with the chef and waiter at a friendly Japanese restaurant about whether Sydney or Vancouver will be better bets for a fast escape when mainland China moves to really dominate Taiwan (They have investment properties in both places…)
Meanwhile, China is “protecting” Taiwanese ships from pirates off the coast of Africa (whether the Taiwanese want it or not) and Chiang Kai-Shek’s successors in the old and corrupt Kuomintang party are seeking some kind of working relationship with China, as the “Taipei Times” edititorialises against it: all fascinating!
Meanwhile the Chinese government has sent pandas to Taipei Zoo as the latest friendly move. The souvenirs are everywhere. You have been warned.
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Some multinational corporate advice for travelers: Maccas for clean sit-down toilets (but bring your own tissues…); Starbucks for an extended “sit” in the winter warmth to write postcards or type emails undisturbed, if you must!
And lastly: hotel shampoo is a quite acceptable detergent for 4 weeks of hand washing of one’s smalls: the realities of the “joys” of travel.
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So, good night from Ximen (pronounced “semen”) in Taipei, just around the corner from the “STD Central Office” (clinic). My travel agent maintains his interesting sense of humour…