Our Hostel was tucked away in a distant corner of town behind a plethora of roadworks and building work, undoubtedly in preparation for the Olympics. Outside the front of our building was a little road and beyond that a stream which resembled something from a sci-fi movie. Evey 15 metres or so, on both sides of the water, a lantern hung about a meter above the surface. Inside each lantern was a black-light tube, surrounded by an electrified cage. It must have been some sort of anti-mosquito thing because they were forever crackling as another beastie bade farewell to the world. But behind the faint sound of tiny screams was a constant humming sound that made the place feel like the year 2250 or something.
The lanterns, despite their futuristic ambiance, failed in their purpose as every time we returned to our room, we had to brush a mat of mosquitoes off our door, waiting for our blood. Oddly, our door seemed to be the only one they liked which we never got to the bottom of. A combination of the mosquitoes, the sledgehammering on the other side of wall, which was causing the bathroom tiles to fall off, and the distance from the metro led us to move to another hostel that was actually further out yet, but much closer to the metro line. Also, every day we walked to the metro line from our new hostel we passed a little old man, making hot crepes with jam and spring onion stuff inside them. These became our staple breakfast food. The only thing wrong with our new hostel was that every day when the temperature got up, the drains really began to stink and our bathroom would become quite unbearable - don't bother making the obvious comment on this one.
We arrived in Beijing on the Thursday night, and Friday morning headed down to the Indian embassy to sort out our visas for India. By the time we found our way to the correct place though, the line was as long as they had time to process and we were told to come back on Monday, which would give us our Visas on the Thursday. This meant we had a week to enjoy Beijing and to see what it had to offer us. Unsurprisingly, it had quite a lot and we had a good time seeing some of the obvious sights and just hanging about. We popped down to a bar one night in the student district to watch a band billed as 'acoustic punk'. We concluded it was closer to rock and roll with a useless singer. We spent a night down at Hou Hai lake, which is, unsurprisingly, a lake. Around its rim is a band of bars and restaurants and a pedestrianised road which means that it was occasionally possible to walk side by side, between bouts of traffic.
We had a barbecued dinner in the beer garden of a pub one night before popping up to the Jazz cafe where we watched the band give up half way through every song they sang. Meanwhile, people were outside buying little red paper lanterns which they would then set a tea-light candle inside and watch as the heat from the candle lifted the lantern off into the sky, sometimes tumbling back down again or landing in the lake. Sadly no burning fire balls were to be seen suggesting that the designers had actually thought the whole thing through properly - something that cannot be said for the underground network.
The underground trains in Beijing are quite good really, there is plenty of trains that ply the three lines and presumably plenty more waiting to fill the three new lines that have not yet opened for the Olympics. The people are really funny though. For whatever reason, it is of paramount importance to the Beijing'ers to get a seat and this will lead to crazy crushes to get on the train and get that one seat that has just cleared. Two people will both sit down at the same time, squeezing the other person off, other times they will sit on the victor's knee in protest till the weakest person gives up. There is no end of shoving to get down a carriage if someone stands up early, a wise move because if you're not already running on the spot when the doors open to get out, you'll likely get pushed back in and miss your stop. If you do manage to get off the train you next have to negotiate the platform and stairs, where the layout is absurd. Signs lead you up stairs, where at the top there is a turnstile operating in the other direction, and queues of people entering and leaving the station have to cross over each other where, with a little more thought to the direction of the escalators, it could have been avoided. Despite all this madness off and on the trains, there is a general civility towards old people who are often given a seat by a younger person. The same also happens for mothers with toddlers but that is most likely because you never want a Chinese toddler being held anywhere near you.
They don't have nappies here. Not disposable ones, not washable ones, no nappies. The trousers that the children wear are not joined in the middle at the crotch. There is a waistband, and two legs and a great big gap where any articles that would otherwise fill a nappy just plop out on to the ground. It is a perfectly common sight to see a toddler squatting on their hands and knees doing their business before mum turns up with a tissue and lifts it up off the road like someone back home might do for a dog. We've even seen the odd child being held up by mum or auntie, pointing directly away from themselves, legs akimbo, and scooshing like a water pistol across the street. We haven't seen what happens on a train or in a restaurant but it must happen there too. Everywhere you look in China, there are little children running around with their wee back sides hanging out in the fresh air.
We went to see the Forbidden City which is where Emperors lived for millennia and the subjects were never allowed to enter. The complex is huge with hundreds of buildings and courtyards and a very manicured garden at the back. We spent most of a day wandering around under the burning sun and imagining how it might look without all the scaffolding. It would seem that despite the big posters everywhere for the Olympics which read 'We Are Ready', they're not quite there yet after all. In fact they're no where close but no doubt it will all be done and working come the big day. The Olympic slogan which we found to be much more illuminating is the 'One World, One Dream' - no space for personal ideas in that one then. Of course, in a communist mind set, that slogan would seem appropriate, except that in Beijing there is no communist mind set anymore. There is a huge gulf between the rich and poor, and it is only moving in one direction. Traffic lights and regulations don't apply if you get driven around in a black Audi, where your chauffeur can go or park where he likes. We saw a fleet of stretched police limos - with flashing blue lights on the roof, presumably for those emergency situations. It seems that anyone who is important enough can get a set of flashy lights installed behind their grill as time after time black Audi's would go past with a family in the car or just someone popping out to fetch a new jacket, with lights and sirens all going off.
There remains though, a sense of what the old communist thing was supposed to be about - pomp and ceremony. During a speedy stroll across the city, which we foolishly thought would be easier than the crush hour on the metro, we got stopped from walking any further along the pavement. As we stood there, in an ever increasing crowd, looking across to a mirror crowd 100 meters in front of us, five armed soldiers paraded out from a building, across the pavement and up to a flagpole (just one of very very many in Beijing) and proceeded to lower the flag for sunset. Five minutes later, all was down and done and the men and the guns went back indoors with their neatly folded flag and we could all carry on.
There was one other flag lowering that we saw as well and it happened just as I was trying to get a photo of the flag at full mast with everything that was around it. At first I was disappointed at having missed my opportunity but then realised that if I quickly ran round to where they were I might get a couple of nice photos of the soldiers and the flag getting folded and all that stuff. I ran around to where I wanted to be. There were two soldiers hoisting the flag down, a couple more standing ready to help fold it and the sergeant chap supervising the whole ordeal. The sergeant clocked me approaching, so I knew I didn't have a lot of time to get the shot that I wanted. Sure enough he starts to walk over to me, the camera is in the wrong setting. I fiddle with the wheel on the camera he is now passing behind me. The camera's taking a while to find the focus, am I going to have time to get the photo or is he going to stop me first. I get the photo. I can feel him looking over my shoulder though so I decide to take another one, nice and wide, to show my intentions were safe, no need to confiscate anything or throw anyone in jail. He then says something to me though I can't understand it and then he shouts to his men. I am literally sweating buckets here, the photo was most definitely not worth this. Then with a beaming smile, he gestures his hand towards his men who have suddenly stood up double straight and are holding out the flag all perfect for a picture. It was brilliant. I got a few quite good pictures but the best two are the before and after shots when he shouted to his men to stand up straight, where in the first they are all slouching and very disinterested.
We expected Beijing to be really quite smoggy but in actual fact it was one of the cleaner Chinese cities we have visited. Children here are growing up with shadows and know what clouds are. On one of the best days, we took a tour out to see the Great Wall. Tours aren't our thing but this one was different. Most parts of the wall where people go are fully recreated modern concrete things built on top of, and for ever obliterating the original wall. The experience is no more authentic than if Disney World had made it itself. Also, the crowds of people are just ridiculous. We have seen parts of the wall where it is just a massive structure of elevated bodies all squeezing past each other, trying to avoid souvenir sellers. These sellers will by all accounts target one couple and walk with them until they leave the wall because they have a greater chance of a sale at the very end by constantly chipping in with little facts and leading the way for those who don't know how to interpret a sign and a straight path. We knew we didn't want to be a part of this but found by accident, a tour that gos to what they call 'The Secret Wall'. What followed was two hours on a minibus, after which we got dropped off at a field with a guide who then lead us for about 30 minutes up through the gorse until we arrived at an old section of wall that no-one else goes to. It was great. It was real. No concrete, no crowds, no noise, no sellers, we had it all to ourselves and walked for a couple of hours along it before coming back down through another field and going to a house for lunch and a beer.
On our way out to the wall in the minibus we encountered a hold up on the expressway. At first we didn't know what it was. Then we saw the outside lane was coned off and full of sand - a big oil spill we thought. If I've manage to get across the disregard for rules of the road, it should come as no surprise that what plenty of people saw behind these cones was a free lane of road allowing them to jump the queue. What those drivers didn't see though, that we did, is that while they sat on that sand trying to push back in, their tyres were literally melting off their wheels. It turned out a tanker had ruptured in a position that I can't understand, except by a collision in some crazy overtaking maneuver. Whatever it was carrying was particularly toxic, melting everything including the traffic cones and a pair of boots that someone had obviously jumped out of pronto when they saw what was happening to them. The front cab of the tanker was half disintegrated as the fluid had all poured down it and the image was quite something to fully take in, it seemed an impossible sight without the aid of computer graphics.
We got our Indian Visas and were ready to leave Beijing. There were two towns we wanted to see before we would have to return to the city from where we would next be flying into Tibet.
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