THE ESSENCE OF CHINA: BEIJING, THE END OF THE ROAD

My next few days in Beijing were slightly odd. It was coming up to the time to say “goodbye” to one group of people, those with whom I had endured the phlegms and arrows of China. It was also time to say “hello” to a whole new group of people, those with whom I would be sharing cramped train space over the next few weeks as we crossed out of China, through Mongolia and into Russia.

We had one last organised event with my original group, a visit to Tiananmen Square followed by a tour of The Forbidden City.

Both, for different reasons, hugely evocative names.

As a young child, I recall blurry images of missiles being paraded in front of the Chinese leadership for the benefit of those in the West as if to say “ we have them and we are not afraid to use them” In later years, of course. A burgeoning democracy movement found its spiritual home in the same square and, when it was put down with ruthless efficiency by the authorities, the images were screened around the world and indelibly printed on the minds of all who saw the massacre that took place.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese government brook no discussion of such matters and our official guides denied all knowledge of such events. No mention is allowed in the media and the internet is scoured for any unauthorised release of images. China may be opening up, but it is at times like this that you realise that it is still a closed country. As a visitor, you see what they want you to see and hear what they want you to hear.

The square itself is pretty impressive. Built on the gardens of the original city of Beijing which was destroyed by Mao, it has a capacity to hold over one million people and is still the centre for many celebrations and concerts. A few days before our arrival it had been at bursting point as the people of Beijing celebrated the “one year to go” point for the 2008 Olympics.

With the fug of pollution that greeted us as we came out of the subway station, it was hard to believe that it would ever be ready to hold any sort of pastime that did not involve coughing up ones guts, but, as I said before, The Chinese government can do just about what the hell it likes and they are already putting in plans to clean the air over the next year. The have to as they have already been threatened with the cancellation of a number of events should the air quality not fall below tolerable levels.



Topping and tailing the square are reminders of China’s hard line past and its most significant leader with a Mausoleum containing the mummified body of Mao Tse Tung at one end and the instantly recognisable portrait at the other end.

Moa is more than just a dead political leader to the majority of Chinese, but his influence is definitely on the wane. While the older generation still revere him, almost to the point of divinity, to the younger generation with their exposure to Western culture, he and his school of thought are increasingly anachronistic. You can see this in the way they discuss him, the same way we might discuss Churchill, a piece of history which impacted greatly on where we are now but has little relevance.

You can also see it in the cluster of high end shopping centres that surround the square filled with every brand name you can imagine feeding the increasing hunger of the growing Chinese middle class for luxury goods.

I spent half an hour walking around the square. My thoughts, inevitably turned to the anonymous man with the shopping bag who became a symbol of the failed push for democracy as he stood in silent challenge in front of row after row of tanks. No one is quite sure what happened to him but it is pretty certain that the Chinese leaders did not give him one of the luxury apartments they kept aside for their cronies.



After our brief stay in the square, our guide took us into The Forbidden City. Again, I am not your history teacher, go and look it up. However, it is fair to say that it is huge, far bigger than one would expect even from reading about it and watching interminably boring films about Emperors who ended up as gardeners.

It is also fair to say that it is one of the more hateful experiences of my time in China. It is impossibly crowded and filled to every corner with tour groups, primarily Chinese, who follow dutifully after their flag waving guide who is, inevitably barking instructions to them through a megaphone. Even, that is, if the group is about 8 inches away.




Half an hour of wandering around saw me right royally pissed off at being shoved from pillar to post. So, I decided to take my leave of the group and head off to find some forbidden stuff of my own in the form of some of the more unusual snacks offered on the streets of Beijing.



This city’s “Snack St” is very different from those I had seen in Chengdu and Xi-an. This one specialised in things on skewers and what things on skewers they were. Starfish, seahorses, silk worms, lizards and, most challenging of all, scorpions still wriggling on their sticks as they waited to be sizzled on a hot plate. I tried a few, well you are forced to aren’t you? But, I wont claim that they were anything other than disgusting. A case of “been there, done that. Wont be doing that again”

After that, I needed to take the taste away with some less unpleasant options so headed across the road to what I thought was optimistically named “Gourmet St” What I found was possibly the best food court in human imagining. An enormous space, probably the size of a couple of football pitches, stretching out into the distance and filled with stalls selling food from every part of China imaginable. Spicy Sichuan hotpots, Cantonese roast goose, silk road noodles and mutton soups, fiery Hunanese fish, stir fries, dumplings, braised pork knuckles. You name it, it was there.




Food is obtained by a pre paid swipe card which you hand over to the stall in question from which they deduct the amount of the meal. The amount on the card can be kept indefinitely or, at the end of your meal, you can get a refund of any money left on it.

The quality is exceptional and the owners of the stalls all holler amiably at you to come to their stalls as opposed to their neighbours. It is all enormous fun and large plates of food with the inevitable “bin pijou” cold beer, costs little over £1 a time.

Another nap and a shower, much needed in this intense heat and humidity, saw me refreshed and ready to meet up with the group for another take on the Beijing duck. This time, a more formal version at a well known restaurant on “Ghost St” so named because of the parade of white lanterns which line the streets.

In this version, the skin of the bird is separated from the flesh and then rearranged back on top in a pleasing design. It is less greasy than the previous more home style version and, once again, six of us managed to demolish two birds alongside a whole slew of other dishes.





And, that was about it for that group. The next day, we all went our own ways with the prerequisite promises to keep in touch.

For most of my companions, it was home or on to other cities. For me, it was limbo land as I stayed in Beijing to hook up with my next group of fellow travellers to head up to Ulaan Bataar.

But, that’s for next time

Oh, but there is, of course, some more wonderful 'chinglish' for you to enjoy

THE ESSENCE OF CHINA: BEIJING, WE ARE READY
It is not until the train from Xi-an grumbled into Beijing West train station that you begin to realise the enormity of the task still facing the Chinese before they host the 2008 Olympics.


It is not the colossal amount of building work still to do. They will sort that out because they can, of course, throw unlimited labour at it. And, the Olympic stadium is almost finished and very impressive as I found out.


It is not even the much discussed vile levels of pollution. The Chinese government is all powerful and can, as it plans to do, simply ban all cars from the city for a month beforehand without anyone batting a eyelid.

Nope, the real challenge is, as I have mentioned before, the people. People who, while capable of being individually charming, are on mass a challenge to every Western sense of decent decorum.

Beijing West is one of the busiest train stations in the world with over half a million people coming through there every day. For some reason, there were only two small gates through which we could exit and, the Chinese being what they are, there was no sense of order with every single soul trying to get through at the same time. We had, by this time, gone quite native and were pushing and shoving along with the best of them. I am not proud to say that, with the help of Big Red, I must have knocked a number of people to the ground as I fought my way to the exit. Otherwise, I would still be there to this day.

The Olympic big wigs will never see this sort of thing of course, but God help any poor ordinary person who comes into Beijing by train. Welcome to China.

Also, god help them if they try, as we did to get a taxi. The local authorities have put in a queuing system to try and bring some order to the chaos but, the locals just seem to ignore it. As we stood patiently waiting for a cab people jumped in front of us, tried to push us to one side or even grab our bags and throw them out of the way.

Again, none of our group would be particularly proud of the fact that we had to become quite aggressive and almost physically move people out of the way until we forced ourselves into a couple of cabs and gave the driver the instructions to get to our hostel.

Ah, the cab drivers, there is the next interesting rub. The Beijing authorities have, apparently, given the local cab drivers lessons in English with nearly 100 basic phrases so they can help visitors for the Olympics. That is all well and good. First they have to persuade the cab drivers to actually do any work. They are, if truth be told, the most pathologically lazy, useless gang of layabouts I have ever encountered. Once you can actually get a cab (usually only by going to a hotel ) trying to persuade them that taking you anywhere is worth their while is painful in the extreme. They feign ignorance of the destination, they gesticulate wildly for you to go away. Oh, and of course, the spit a lot.

In the end, we soon learned, that you have to get in the cab, if and when you are lucky enough to find one, and stay put. Don’t move just keep repeating the destination and show them a map with the name written in Chinese script. Eventually, and we could be talking fifteen minutes later here, they will figure out that it would be easier for them to stop spitting and smoking, do a few minutes work and then get rid of you in exchange for cash.

The Chinese have an official anthem for the Olympics which gathers pop stars from all over the country, Hong Kong and Taiwan who sing optimistically “ We Are Ready” All I can say, on my introduction to Beijing is “ No, You’re Not”

By the time we got to the hostel we were all exhausted and pleased that our rooms were ready and we could freshen up. I was tempted to go for a long sleep, but, instead decided to go for a stroll through the local neighbourhood of our accommodation close by Beijing’s other main train station.



The air was surprisingly clear, primarily because there had been five days of continuous thunderstorms just before our arrival which had served to clear the pollution. But, the heat was still well into the 90o’s and the humidity made sure that I was drenched again about five minutes after leaving the hostel.

Looking for some shade, I dipped down into one of Beijing’s legendary hutongs. These are rabbit warrens of small alleyways and passages where communities were formed around wells (the word derives I am told from the Mongolian for well)



Many of them have disappeared and more still are under threat from the incessant development, but some, like the one near our hostel, now have protected status and give a glimpse into Beijing’s past with their street vendors, store front restaurants and, of course, the noise and the smells.

After an hour or so, I was shattered and headed back to the hotel to do some writing and have a kip before we headed out for our first meal in Beijing, Beijing duck.

Now, this is one of those dishes we have all tried at home in our local Chinese restaurant. The ones I have had in London have been quite good. But, nothing compared to this. There are different levels of restaurant serving this dish in Beijing from the very high end to more family style places.




I was pleased that our first experience of it was at one of the latter. A casual local restaurant where two ducks were soon demolished by our group before we saw the chefs come out to enjoy a soup made out of the remains.



After a relatively early night, we were all up at the crack of dawn to head out to see, well, what else but the Great Wall of China.

Again, I am not going to go into detail about the history, you can look it up. Suffice to say that the notion that it is visible from the moon is total and utter bollocks.

It is well over 6000km long and much of it remains in disrepair from when farmers stole rocks and foundations to build walls over the centuries.

Some sections, primarily Badaling, have been repaired to pristine delight and are, of course, filled with tourists following flag waving guides. It is impossible here to get any sense of what the wall would once have been like.

Fortunately, we had chosen to visit two more remote sections, Jinlangshing and Simitai, some three and a half hours drive from Beijing and, after being dropped off by our driver, we began what turned out to be the best part of five hours hard slog along sections of the wall that were in almost total disrepair.



It was worth it though. There were almost no other people on The Wall apart from elderly old women who popped up every now and again with the offer of “water, Cocoa Cola, Beer” and for big chunks of my time on The Wall I was almost totally alone.





It is one of those all too rare “pinch me” moments and I have to admit having a slightly teary moment when I recalled that my beloved mother always said she wanted to visit. I am glad I did and I did it for her as much as for me.



By the time we reached the end of the journey we were, unsurprisingly, all dead beat and the bus on the journey back to Beijing was filled with the sound of snoring.



A magical day.

That night, I had decided that I had already had quite enough of sitting on beer crates eating noodles and had planned to head to The Peninsular Hotel for a meal and a couple of cocktails. A few of my group decided to join me being equally in need of a bit of pampering.






The food was good, the cocktails were not. But, as I sat there, in a comfy leather chair with a cocktail in one hand and my other deep in a bowl of nuts, I realised that this is my world and there is nothing wrong with it. The more seasoned travellers in my group may have helped me through some of my more troubled moments ( particularly on the boat and the train journeys) and I may now be able to weild a rucksack with the best of them, but here, in the swathe of luxury that was The Peninsular's bar, I was really at home. So there.

THE ESSENCE OF CHINA: ALONG THE SILK ROAD TO XI-AN

It begins to hit you just what a vast country this is when you realise that, for all our travelling and train journeys, we were still in Sichuan Province.

But, not for much longer.

Another train journey (remember, we promised not to speak of them again) saw us arrive in the late afternoon in Xi-an, a former capital of Western China before the unification under the first emperor and gateway between China and the West along the legendary Silk Road.

For a lot of reasons the city felt very different from those we had visited before apart from, of course, the pollution, which still fugged the air like a heavy blanket and the difference was immediately noticeable in the food.




After a brief bit of orientation to find local laundries, supermarkets and internet cafes, I headed off to find Xi-an’s Muslim quarter. A legacy of its trading past, it comprises a few city blocks to the West of the Drum and Bell Towers, the city’s most famous landmarks and houses restaurants and shops selling a vast array of knock off merchandise.

The main reason to go, however, is the food and A quick stroll around the quarter soon found me face down in a bowl of cold noodles doused in sesame sauce and a bowl of Pao Moa a local soup made of mutton, broth and crumbled bread.










The other main reason to go to Xi-an is of course, to see The Terracotta Warriors. Now, I am not going to tell you the history. If you are so inclined, you can go and look it up on Google. I will tell you, however that it is just as impressive as you would imagine it to be, both in terms of the warriors themselves and the buildings in which they are housed.



I was, as you may have gathered by now, more interested in the food and that evening, our meal was slightly grim dumpling meal which saw us sitting between a table of people from Birmingham and a table from Oakland who made a toast to Starbucks. The food however was not bad with over 20 types of dumplings being brought to the table. A particular favourite being a slightly sweet version with walnuts





a few of us were still hungry and went of in search of rou jia mo, what are, to al intents and purposes, Chinese hamburgers. Pork is chopped with spices and then shaped in a patty before being served inside a flat bread with toppings of spiced vegetables. With a cold beer, they are an amazing treat and I had to go back to the well one more time and have another couple of the things.



The people in Xi-an certainly know how to have a good time and every evening they gather in one of the main squares to watch a fountain show which involves most of the kids running around beneath the showers getting soaking wet. Further along we came across another group of older people who get together every night to dance to a rythmic drum band.







If they know how to have a good time, they certainly don't know how to make wine. One of my travelling companions persuaded me to try a bottle of Great Wall Wine. One of the most disgusting think I have tasted ( wait until I get on to fermented horse's milk) No wonder they mix it with coke.


We were only in Xi-an for one more day before heading off to Beijing, so don’t have too much to write about it. It was a fun stop and my last lunch there saw a few of us head back to the Muslim Quarter to gorge on a whole leg of mutton with some flat bread to mop up the juices.

Just enough sustenance to last me the final train journey of this particular trip to Beijing.

Obviously, much more to tell about that in due course.

Oh, just in case you thought I had forgotten. Here is a little bit more wonderful "chinglish" for you all

THE ESSENCE OF CHINA: THE DAY WE TOOK THE TRAIN

Please do me a favour

If anyone ever tells you that taking the train is a romantic thing to do, please knock them to the ground and then jump up and down on them an awful lot. Perhaps even until they stop breathing and then, call me so I can come around and give them an extra kick just for good measure.

It is not romantic, it is not even fun. It is a hateful, horrible, dirty, unpleasant way to travel and that is in the West. In China, multiply that horror factor by about ten fold to take into the account the habits of the Chinese and you may just be able to imagine the misery I felt on my first over night train journey in China.

First of all, just to make sure we were extra ripe before we got on the train, a journey in a small bus which rattled unpleasantly on the scabby roads for four hours before depositing us at the station at which we would board the train to take us to Wuzho at the beginning of the Three Gorges section of The Yangstze River.

The “pleasures” of what was about to come were first experienced when I went to visit the bathroom in the waiting room. Now, I expected squat toilets, I was even clued up enough to expect that the smell could kill a charging tofu at a hundred paces. What I did not expect was that the squat toilets were all open so that everyone did their, er business in full view and about a foot from their neighbour.

Obviously, I am of the delicate sort because this tightened my sphincter muscles like a virgin nun’s legs in a room full of drunk navvy’s and I suddenly lost all urge to do a No2, well perhaps ever again in my whole life. It did not, however seem to disturb the locals one jot and they were happily squatting down while the sounds of plentiful evacuation filled the air.

One resourceful chap seemed to think that this was also the chance to complete the circle of life. So, as he emptied, he also filled up at the other end by chowing down on one of the pot noodles readily available from the station counter. I would be hard pushed to argue which end made the most slurping noises.

It got worse, of course it did

Then we got on the train to find our “hard sleeper” carriage. No simple matter because the notion of queuing is as alien to the Chinese as environmental campaigning. The polite Englishman in me soon lost out to the righteously indignant traveller using Big Red ( remember, I call him that because he is big and he is red) to knock people out of my way with no care if they were elderly, infirm or in the nascent stages of life.



Chinese trains have a number of classes of travel ranging from a hard seat, through hard sleeper to soft sleeper. We had chosen the middle option which we were told was “comfortable” for an eighteen hour journey. They lied the dogs, oh how they lied.

Our tour leader, Jackie, stood opened mouthed when we boarded the train. It looked like this was rolling stock from WWII. Each grimy compartment was open to the carriage and held six bunks, three on each side with the top bunk being about a foot from the top. In lieu of air conditioning was a small spluttering fan which provided about as much movement in the air as waving a small postage stamp.

Well, as you can imagine, prissy little moi was on the point of a huge hissy fit and was about to kick off on one until I remembered some of the therapy I had spent so much money on over the years (I knew it would come in useful one day) and went to my “happy place” My happy place for the record is The Library Bar at The Lanesborough Hotel in London where I can be found sitting in front of the fireplace sipping on my second pre-dinner cocktail. It is not and never will be on a train.

In a calmer state I took my place on the middle birth just as the lights went out and the train grumbled its way out of the station. The heat was unbearable and an attempt to cool things down by opening the window let in a huge slug of diesel fumes covering all of us in a thin slimy black film of goo.

I finally managed to doze off helped by the clickety-clack of the wheels against the tracks but was awakened what seemed only minutes later by what entered my dreams as the sound of a lawnmower but in reality turned out to be the elderly man on the bunk below me voiding his rheum on the floor.




Now, I shall return to the subject of spitting ever such a lot in the next few posts, don’t you worry your pretty little heads. But, for now, it is enough to say that spitting is probably the number one Chinese past time. Not any spitting mind you. Not a polite removal of spittle from the mouth in a discreet fashion. No, lordy no. This is spitting summoned up from the soles of their boots and snorted wherever they damn well please. In the case of my compartment mate, right on the floor next to my sandals.

The sound of spitting is the soundtrack to my travels in China, but as I said, I shall come back to this topic on a regular basis, so never you mind.

It was getting light by now and the locals were getting ready for their morning ablutions. Each carriage has two small sinks and two toilets that are to all intents and purposes holes leading to the track. I had wondered why just about every man, woman and child seemed to be carrying a cigarette when they headed in the direction of the facilities imagining that the marketing of Camel Joe must have been extra successful. I soon realised what was afoot when I went to the bathroom myself. They were holding them in a vain attempt to disguise the smell.



Within about twenty feet of it, you become aware that they are approaching, within ten feet, your eyes begin to water and by the time you are five feet away, your skin feels like it is peeling off. The smell is inhuman and locals and tourists alike were coming out of the cubicles a strange and frightening shade of green.

One of our party even wretched as she approached.

My bladder informed me, however that I had no other option and I opened the door. At the suggestion of one of my fellow travellers, I sent in an advanced party in the form of a spray of deodorant before stepping inside.

In the name of all that is holy, I pray that none of you ever have to go through what I went through.

We will speak of this no more. It is time to keep silence on this matter. Well, until the next toilet story.

It is no great shock to learn that such a journey does quell one’s appetite and I had little stomach for my own pot noodles, purchased the night before. The thought of that toilet, the constant background noise of people snorting and spitting and the thought of our friend squatting with toilet paper in one had and pot noodle in the other took my desire to ingest food right away.

Jackie seemed unbothered by all of this and bought a bowl of rice and vegetables at a short halt in the journey.


She offered me some and I wish I could say that it was delicious and made the journey all seem worthwhile. But, I did not touch a bite. I was far from certain that I would keep it in my stomach although, by the state of the carriage by this time, I don’t think anyone would have noticed if I had redecorated in bile covered pebble dash

We were all a bit miserable by the time the train pulled into Luzhuo in Sichuan province from which our journey up the Yangtze would begin. It was three in the afternoon, we all looked like we were about to audition for a minstrel show and we had not eaten properly for hours.

Just the time to take us on a tour of the Three Gorges Dam then, eh?

Like prisoners waiting for the journey up to the Big House, we all climbed wearily aboard our local bus to be greeted by our local guide, James who informed us that we would be ‘enjoying” a tour of the damn project.



It is impressive enough with over…………. Oh, to hell with it. If you really want to know how large and catastrophic it is, go and use Google.

We were prodded out for some slightly less than energetic strolls around the park by our guide and around the information centre which held less allure than a shower and a decent meal. But our spirits were raised enormously by the sight of more fabulous “chinglish” which raised a smile even from me who was very much in the slough of despond.




To the amusement of the group I also informed them at this point that my next trip after China was on The Trans Siberian Railway. Oh, how they did laugh.

Finally, thank The Lord, we were summoned back and taken the short journey to our boat from where we would begin a three day journey up the Yangtze.



More of that later, however, for now, just remember what I said at the beginning. If anyone ever tells you that they enjoy travelling by train. Well, you get the picture by now.