4. Ticking boxes

The following day, Tee, short for Teresa, whom Five-foot and I were friends with at university, arrived from Singapore for a work conference. She had a couple of days to kill, and had never been to Beijing, so had decided to see some of the sights before the conference kicked off. A generous, albeit slightly tired smile greeted us when she was finally allowed through the arrival gate at the airport. Being of Chinese descent, Tee’s New Zealand passport had been considered suspicious by the authorities who had an issue with letting her through. Tee being a constant traveller, her passport was beginning to fill up with stamps, and she said this was the most difficult and time-wasting border inspection she’d endured. They may have suspected her of being a Chinese citizen who’d fled to New Zealand for asylum, the fact she spoke little Mandarin making the situation even more drawn out.

We ate dinner in the central city, at a bar that was televising rugby from New Zealand.

At the end of the game, we went to another bar, passing a roadside courtyard with a large group of people ballroom dancing the evening away. Tee was allowed to take a photo for posterity while they continued with their activity, partnered up and moving to the sounds of the portable stereo sitting on a table nearby. Kids were involved, as were teenagers and young adults, but the bulk of the participants were middle-aged and older.

Seeing that reminded me of the old dances my mother used to drag me along to in the church hall when I was young. It always seemed hokey and an old person’s pursuit, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I didn’t have the guts to dance in public though.

We took a seat in an outdoor section of a bar sipping a chilled beer each and were interrupted by touts selling DVDs and roses. A young boy asked me if I wanted to buy a rose for Tee, which was slightly embarrassing.

Tee was someone I’d always wanted to have a relationship with. She knew it, as did all our friends. It was probably the one thing Five-foot would never hassle me about. She had told me on a few occasions that we would be no more than friends. I declined offering her a rose despite wanting to do so as I didn’t want to embarrass her.

We searched for another bar or a taxi to take us home, whichever we stumbled across first would be the option we took. Before we found either, we walked past some road workers. As one man scraped stones and grit around with a rake, another poured hot tar from a bucket that had been resting on a gas cooker on the footpath. Once he’d done that, more stones were dumped on top from a wheelbarrow and spread out. I’d never seen this hands-on method of road maintenance in New Zealand, although maybe I’d just been oblivious. When a taxi came by, our evening out was over.

The next morning, Five-foot, Tee and I hired a car to go to Badaling, THE place to visit the Great Wall.

The same man who we hired for both trips to the airport drove us through the countryside, with busy narrow roads lined with trees which fortified crops and plantations beyond. Three-wheeled trucks carrying anything from people to dirt slowed our progress more than once, which didn’t suit our driver. He overtook on blind corners and took advantage of the grass verges between the road and the trees as much as he could.

Homes beyond the outskirts of the city, built of brick, concrete, or a mixture of the two stood in a state of disrepair in contrast to the apartment complexes in favour in Beijing. Paths and driveways of gravel or well-worn dirt allowed farmers to cycle or tow their wares to and from the roadside, the fruit and vegetable stalls serving to slow the traffic further.

After a while we left the narrow roads and reached a major motorway, the driver paying our toll, and we were soon in another mad dash, cars swerving from lane to lane, as we climbed the mountains nearing our destination. Turning off the motorway at Badaling, the Great Wall stood before us, and the road atop the formerly secluded mountain was lined with restaurants, souvenir merchants, and small food and drink stalls. The parking lot, filled with tourist buses, cars and taxis, bustled like an inner-city shopping mall at Christmas.

Crowds streamed onto and away from the wall, each person fighting their own private battle with whoever was in the way, and we joined the herds having bought our tickets and stepped onto the refurbished stone structure. The wall ascends towards two separate peaks in opposite directions from the entry gates so we chose one mountain and began stepping it out.

Stalls were stationed every fifty metres or so, selling t-shirts, stamps, and other collectibles, with stereos roaring out Chinese pop music for everyone to enjoy. Disposable cameras, jade carvings, and photograph services were also on offer, which those working there reminded us of by drawing out megaphones or yelling as we went by.

Chinese tour groups gathered around their megaphone wielding leaders who spouted the importance of the walls impregnable fortification or of the walls importance of rebuilding it to rake in foreign tourism and trade. That sounds slightly absurd but literally, as Five-foot translated, discussion regarding the money-making revenue of the national monument is the sort of thing Chinese tour leaders actually recount rather than the Wall’s historical significance that some may be interested in.

A Chinese tour group of thirty or more people was a sight in itself. Men wore polo shirts, dress pants and shoes, as if visiting the local country club, while women climbed in Sunday dresses and high heels. Neither sets of footwear seemed a match for the challenging traverse of the wall. Many of the women held hands, maybe to help support one another. The tour leader carried a flag of corresponding colour to the hats those in the group wore, and they gathered around him or her when he or she stopped, like the messiah with the great message.

The Wall is extremely steep in areas, with steps and handrails in the form of chains fashioned to help the droves of people climbing up or down. There are areas of the wall that are near polished stone and can be very slippery. It wasn’t odd to see people slip and topple over on the steeper areas. Luckily, with so many people around, there was always someone to break your fall.

As the climb got higher people began to turn back. There seemed to be a point at which only a few continued. Tee broke a strap on her slip-ons, which weren’t conducive to climbing the Great Wall with ease. She chose to not go any further, and Five-foot stayed with her while I continued beyond the crowds.

The quieter sections of the wall, which could be found by climbing higher than most others wished, had speakers playing Kenny G-like Muzak, filling what some people would consider a void. A serene spot exemplified by a serene soundtrack. It felt like it was produced by Hollywood.

At the top, I paused to take photos, looking for ways to keep people out of shot, but it was impossible. Stretching across the semi-forested dry mountain ridges, the wall carried people across mountain ridges into the distance for as far as it went.

I got to the end of the refurbished section of the wall, a stylised stone fence stopping any ability to step out onto the wall in ruins, which snaked across the ridges further into the distance. Hoping to one day get to walk on a section of the wall in that condition, rather than the more marketed option which was underfoot at the time, I headed back to the others who had received an impatient call from our driver.

Tee stopped at a stall, as she wanted to buy a stamp with her name in Chinese calligraphy. As the man at the stall fashioned her stamp, using a small set of files to delicately scrape her name onto the bottom of the small marble block, he looked her up and down and asked if she was Chinese.

“No,” she replied.

“Ah,” he said, smiling. “That is Y25 thank you.”

After her conference, Tee and I battled the foot and road traffic as we walked from her hotel discussing the fear factor of crossing the road that hadn’t really diminished despite the, ahem, best efforts of the cops. Policemen guarded cars from pedestrians in the inner city by waving flags to allow people to cross streets and blowing on whistles telling us to wait. I thought they probably wouldn’t be needed if they could get traffic to stop at red lights.

Marble bridges and dark red walls at the northern end of Tiananmen Square direct the way to the city’s entrance to the north. The portrait of Mao Zedong, the father of Communist China, looks over the crowds from his vantage point above the gates that lead to a courtyard beyond and the gates to the Forbidden City at the far end. Tee went to buy our tickets, while I tried to look cool by leaning on a fence.

The gates opened a few minutes later, and we were let inside the largest museum I had ever been in. The place was so large and since we had arrived so early, we managed to avoid crowds for a couple of hours and had the place essentially to ourselves. It’s difficult to describe the Forbidden City, as it’s the sort of thing people who are interested in need to see rather than hear or read about. With the buildings, bridges, moats, pathways and gates all preserved, it’s like travelling back in time. It’s a great place to see the structural designs and intricate work that has been at the centre of Chinese aristocratic culture. Dragons and lions, mythical creatures and snakes adorned wooden buildings, doorways and marble fences, and were contrasted by the areas of gardens and trees amongst the tiled concrete jungle.

The only entry and exit points to each courtyard are gates that automatically bottleneck crowds, which is probably why shops are set up there. Available from these shops are umbrellas, Mao books, maps and other stuff that tourists may find useful for three minutes. Apart from those areas though, the whole place was serene and without constant interruption, it was extremely easy to relax and chill in the various parks and quiet corners.

Imagining back to a time when the side alleys and houses were teeming with activity, the city was probably a home to many, its own little universe, existing without much interruption from the outside.

Tee had to get back to the hotel to catch her ride to the airport at around midday, so we made our way to the front gates. By this time Chinese tour groups had arrived and each gate and bottleneck was filled with people, which slowed us down remarkably. It also began raining and the shops were on hand to sell umbrellas to the previously unprepared. The typical Kiwi lad, I was only in a t-shirt and shorts, but it wasn’t cold so I didn’t bother buying anything. Tee figured they were cheap, so she forked out Y10 for an umbrella that took ten minutes for her to open hence she was drenched by the time it was up anyway.

With the bottlenecking and rain, and mass of umbrella spikes wavering around at face height, the close-knit areas soon became a dangerous place to be as, by holding hands, the women seemed to attack in formation. Ducking and weaving, putting my many years spent playing touch-rugby to the test, I managed to get out the gate without serious incident.

We passed the audio tour guide desk where tourists could hire a tape explaining the Palace’s sights. The English version of the audio tour was recorded by Roger Moore, a man famous worldwide for playing James Bond. Under his photograph at the desk the Star Spangled Banner was displayed. The flag of the United States of America represented a well-known British actor. While this was humorous to me it wasn’t surprising, as being Caucasian in Beijing had led to many locals asking me if I was “Meiguo ren”, or an American person.

“Bu shi,” I would say, “Wo shi Xinxilan ren.” Hopefully, this means, “No I’m not, I’m a New Zealand person.”

The expectation for Caucasians to be American wasn’t completely out of ignorance though, as for the most part, Americans tended to make up many of the foreign tourists I met in the city. Maybe it also had much to do with Chinese television programming, which seemed to have more American influences than those of other foreign countries.

Tee caught a taxi to the airport from her hotel where Five-foot had joined us for lunch.

I was quietly pondering the strained friendship we had. I still wanted a relationship with her, even though Tee had told me on numerous occasions she wasn’t interested. I was like a puppy with a Frisbee about this. I wondered why I couldn’t give it up.

“Did you go up Prospect Hill?” Five-foot asked, both of us waving as Tee looked out the rear window as her taxi disappeared round the bend.

“No,” I said. “We didn’t have time.”

“You’ll have to get back there.”

What you’re supposed to do is enter the southern gate of the Forbidden City, exit from the north, cross the road and go to the gates of Prospect Hill. As Tee didn’t want to miss her flight we’d skipped the hill, so I returned a few days later.

On the square inside the gate, a twenty strong group of women were performing folk dances armed with handkerchiefs and fans that people had to sidestep and dodge before being able to climb the hill. At least there were no umbrella spears because things could’ve got ugly. The manmade hill, constructed from the dirt dug to form the moat of the Forbidden City a few centuries ago, is covered in trees and shrubbery, and was an effort to climb. By the time I reached the top, I was puffing away, probably testament to price of ice cream rather than how big the hill is.

Panoramic views of the entire city were available as I took a walk around the small temple perched on top of the hill. To the north and east I saw what looked like low built homes and shopping areas, to the west, the bar and restaurant district which surrounded a lake, and directly south, a wonderful view of the Forbidden City, and in the distance, Tiananmen Square and the surrounding government buildings.

Beijing, I could see, is extremely flat and, other than the small lake in the western central city, there are no natural landmarks in any direction. The high-rise buildings began a surprising distance from the city centre, the major international metropolitan city that it is. For a few kilometres in each direction, there is low built housing, Hutong, and other smaller structures. The most striking of the buildings viewable from the hill, to me, were the government buildings by Tiananmen Square, only a few storeys high, but taking up a large area. In the distance, in all directions, around where the brown smog haze began to dominate, high-rise apartments and hotel buildings sprouted up like mushrooms.

Five-foot later told me the central city has rules against building anything so high that it detracts from the older historical places, such as the Forbidden City and government buildings.

While I was sitting at the top of the hill with dozens of other tourists, an old woman walked up to me pointing at my bottle of water. The bottle was nearly empty, but I didn’t understand what she was going on about. I offered her the last of my water, but she waved it away. She said something, and walked to the end of the building, leaving me to enjoy the views. She was still hanging around a few minutes later and, when I finished the water, she walked up and collected the empty bottle. She was going to recycle it for the money.

I’m not sure if it showed but I felt sad that this elderly Chinese lady had to stoop to recycling rubbish for the pittance of cash just to feed herself. She was chuffed though, offering a healthy if toothless smile and practically skipped along the lines of tourists looking for more plastic bottles.

It was a quick lesson in a couple of realities. The first being social welfare was not high on the agenda of this socialist republic, and the second being, once I’d finished my bottle of water or coke, someone would helpfully collect it before I had to look for a rubbish bin.