The Last Day in Beijing (continued)
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From the bank I walked about another mile until I reached the metro station. From there I travelled to Qianmen station, on the south side of Tianmen Square. On the way a Chinese woman that spoke good English sat next to me and started a conversation. She asked where I was going and advised me on some places.
First I tried to go to the body of Mao Tse Chung (or however you spell it) after I had missed it yesterday. It was closed today though and guarded by soldiers. So I started heading south into the Qianmen area. I turned off the main road and wondered back streets, trying to see the real face of Beijing life.
Here the houses were simpler and there were some slightly dirty bits, but nothing like Dhaka. The roads were very narrow and not as well made as other places but they were still tarmac-surfaced, not dirt and mud. A few public toilets were dotted around . I went into one to use it. It was a fairly basic set-up. The urinal was a long trench that went into a drainage system below, and there was a row of squatting holes above a trench with small dividing walls about 2 feet high between. The sit down one they had at the end was innovative - a U shaped piece of concrete above another squatting hole. I wouldn't fancy having a shit there if there were other people there.
I found my way back onto the main road and continued south, bound for the Temple of Heaven. Occasionally I left the main road to wander around a market, but mostly I stuck to the road.
Feeling a little hungry now, I resisted the urge for MacDonald’s and bought freshly made food from the street. It was from a little mobile trolley with windows. Something that looked like pancake mix was poured and spread thinly onto a two feet diameter circular hotplate. An egg was broken onto this and spread around on top of the batter until it was cooked and looking thicker. Some black seeds that I didn’t recognise were then added. By this time the whole thing was kind of welded to the hotplate. So now out came the wallpaper stripper. This was used to lift and turn the huge pancake, impressively without it breaking. A viscous brown liquid that looked like molasses was poured on top followed by parsley, chilli power and a big pre-prepared crunchy thing. The crunchy thing was broken a little with the wallpaper stripper and then the whole thing was folded up and put in paper to be held. Three Yuan – about 40p. He handled the money with tweezers, which I guess is a good bit of hygiene.
After walking about another mile on the main road, I reached the Temple of Heaven. A little south of the Temple of Heaven was a wide canal. Even here there was a boat travelling along collecting any rubbish from the surface to keep the place looking neat and tidy.
At the Temple complex gate there were suddenly tourists everywhere. Most seemed to be in tour groups in matching hats or with badges following a guide with a matching coloured flag.
This was another big site, like the Forbidden City, and there was also a fair amount of open parkland in it. It had various temples for worshipping heaven and for ensuring good harvests of crops etc.
Generally tourists were just looking but occasionally a Chinese person would say a little prayer or something to what I guess was an important shrine.
One set of temples was housed inside a smooth circular wall. It is said that sound will echo around it and carry very well. If two people stand on the two far sides of the circle and speak near to the surface of the wall they can hear each other. Lots of people were attempting this but nobody looked like they heard any reply. This may have been mostly due to the hundreds of people making noise around there. One person was using a mobile phone, which I would say was cheating, but I guess that it was only so that he could tell his friend to speak now and check that they were both in position and ready. Modern technology, eh?
Later there were two young monks acting like all the other tourists, taking photographs of each other by various statues etc. It seemed weird to see people dressed like that but acting normal. I tried to quickly photograph them as one photographed the other and managed to spill the drink that I had just bought down me.
On the way to the exit there were lots of Chinese men playing cards on the wall. I presume that they were all playing the same card game. They certainly seemed to be taking it seriously and every game also had spectators.
In the grounds there were various ornate kites being flown and after leaving I even saw someone flying a big one from a footbridge over the main road. I walked quite along way back to near Qianmen station at the south of Tianmen Square and bought a melon on a stick to quench my thirst. A lot better than insects on sticks.
Tianmen square was closed off and lots of people had gathered nearby wondering what was happening. I joined them for a while. Soldiers were placed at intervals around the whole perimeter and a few troops of them were marching around the square. An old man was stood just inside the square talking to a couple of the soldiers who it seems were trying to get rid of him. It seemed that he wasn’t really all there and had difficulty understanding that he had to leave. Two civilians crossed the road and collected him. The road was also closed on this side of the square except for an occasional coach or official-looking vehicle and parked at the other end of the square were maybe a hundred coaches. A stream of people were coming from the coaches and over the road to the Great Hall of the People.
Later I found out what was happening. 13,000 Japanese were arriving at the Great Hall of the People for a program of friendship and reconciliation. A sort of large scale diplomatic offering of hands to shake and saying “mates?”. It went back to the times when the Japanese experimented on germ warfare using hundreds of Chinese prisoners as guinea pigs and then used germ warfare to attack China killing hundreds of thousands of people.
So I had to make a big detour around the back of the Great Hall, all of which was thick with security.
It seemed that there wasn’t going to be anything to see as all the policing and closures were simply part of the logistics of getting people in and out of the building safely and quickly. I did however watch for a while thinking that it may be a prime position for anti Japanese protests to break out.
A few years ago, pointing a camera at Chinese security forces would have been a very bad idea, but now times have changed and I took a few pictures. Plenty of other people were taking pictures and they even took pictures back of us.
I did, however, later notice one thing. When I went for my camera that was strapped to my belt at my hip and under my untucked shirt, it may have appeared that I was going for a gun. Maybe I should be careful with that in future.
I walked through some gardens nearby and then I got the metro to the northernmost part of the circular route and walked back to the hotel from there.
I got a few things at the supermarket for this evening’s solo meal. A roast duck, a small loaf of bread, a fruit jelly, two cans of beer and a carton of orange juice.
The soles of my feet were feeling bruised and my ankles were sore where the sandals had rubbed the skin raw. Even my thighs and knees felt like they had had enough and I felt thirsty and tired. What has happened to my stamina.
I relaxed in a hot bath with a book, a can of beer and Donna’s crisps leftover from last night.
When I got out of the bath I didn’t feel well. I hobbled across the room, got dressed and went downstairs to pay my hotel bill.
The rest of the evening I watched the movie Hannibal on the TV. I ate the jelly and drank the other beer but never got around to the duck sandwiches.
The next day (23rd Sep 2002) was the day for the flight back to Bangladesh. I woke at 5am and got a taxi at about 5:30am or so.
At the airport I paid the taxi driver a decent tip on top of the fare and he started complaining (in Chinese). I thought that he was refusing the tip and saying I paid too much. I just left the car with him still protesting. Then he came out after me waving the ticket showing what he had paid at the toll gate one the road. So he wanted more. But I pointed out that I had already given him more than that (something I think he hadn’t noticed) and then he got back in the car.
The airport was full of Japanese and altogether it took us about an hour and a half to get through check-in and security. There I met some of the returning Bangladeshis – Zeba Seraj, Nilifur, Gomosta and a couple of others whose names I don’t know. Also Glen Gregorio from IRRI was there but getting a different plane.
Before the plane I had a very expensive coffee and tried another piece of moon cake.
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