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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Crouching Gudgeon, Hidden Blushes.” |
The first thing that hits you when you get to Beijing is the fact that everything is being rebuilt. They say you can judge how well a city is doing by the amount of cranes on the skyline, well this place must be doing the best of any place I have ever seen. Literally hundereds of cranes dot the skyline. And to be fair a lot of building needs to be done, as this new era for China shows the scars of its poor history in its delapidated buildings. The sky is grey with pollution but I read that they are aiming for more "blue sky days" than they had last year ( about 100 ).
We were the only westeners in the city and it didn't go unnoticed. Shouts of "hallooo" came out of many shops and we were stopped in Tian'anmen square to have our pictures taken by some excited looking out of towners. Lyndsay now thinks she is a pop star! Tian'anmen square is enormous covering 40 acres at the heart of the city. It is surrounded by very oppresive looking buildings and men in uniform march all over the place ( as they seem to do all over China). As with all of Beijing there is no litter anywhere, and you cannot go two streets in any direction without seeing a street sweeper. The street can be falling to pieces and yet it still gets swept.
The Forbidden city (next to Tian'anmen Square) is where the King used to live. He and his staff never left the compound. In it were himself, his staff (eunochs who carried their severed balls around in a pouch on their belt) and his concubines. All ten thousand of them!! From what we can gather I can see why the King was in no rush to leave this place. It is full of temples such as "temple of tranquil harmony" and "temple of heavenly consciousness". All very good until Lyndsay went to the Temple of Bladder Harmony to discover that Mr Shanks never came to China, leaving instead just a hole in the floor. This resulted in Crouching Gudgeon, Hidden Blushes.
We slept well in Beijing, if not at the right times of day due to jet-lag. One night we were treated to listening to the Olympic training of the ping-pong team against our wall using cricket balls to strengthen their arms. Lyndsay thought it sounded more like a headboard banging against the wall but I am sure this is untrue!
The food, on the whole, sucks. But Lyndsay keeps admiring herself in the mirror convinced she has shed a few pounds. Even so we snuck into a pizza hut for some western food like a couple of starving animals.
The Great wall is enormous and the kind of thing that has to be seen to be believed (see pics). Emperor Mao said that any man who made it to the top of the wall would be a hero. Well he must have been related to a mountain goat as it was far too high and steep for us ever to completely mount.
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