A Tour of China in Winter, 1a: Introduction, and the Tourist Sights of Beijing, by Howard Norfolk

A Tour of China in Winter
Part 1a
Introduction, and the Tourist Sights of Beijing

By Howard Norfolk
Original to Aquarticles.com

Preface
This series of articles is about my tour of China in December/January 2004/5. I saw lots of interesting things, and also checked out the public aquariums and aquarium shops wherever I went. This first article is not about fish! If you only want to read about fish, skip this and go on to Part 1b: The Beijing Aquarium.

Introduction
I had been to Hong Kong and Macau before, but this was my first visit to mainland China. I grew up with China being on the 'other side' during the Cold War. It had always seemed exotic, alien, and even a bit scary, so I wanted to see what it (or some of it at least) was really like.

I travelled with Mani, a friend from South India, who I met in India during my five previous tours of his country. He had been working in South China for two years, and had been e-mailing and telephoning me to say that I should come to China.

China has only been open to Western tourists since the 1990s. I anticipated language problems and difficulties in getting around as an independent traveller, so my first thought was to join a tour group. But there are very few organised tours in the depths of winter. The popular times to visit China are in the Spring and Autumn.

My travel agent therefore arranged a privately guided tour. We travelled to four different centres, and at each place we were met by a private guide together with a car and driver. We were guided around the standard tourist sights, and what also interested me - the fish and aquaria scene.

Our car in Beijing was a brand new Buick. Here is our guide 'Billy', our driver, and my Indian friend Mani.

Click on photos for enlargements, then go 'BACK' :

It sure was cold in the winter! Down to -10°C and snowy in Beijing and Xi'an, and not much warmer in Guilin and Shanghai. But the hotel rooms, restaurants and cars were nice and cozy, and one advantage of travelling in the off-season was that the tourist places were not too crowded, and we presumably got the pick of the guides.

Language was indeed a problem in China. Not quite as bad as I expected, at least in the tourist areas, since hotels, large restaurants, tourist facilities and many business premises had signs in both Chinese and English, and it was usually possible to find an English speaker. My friend Mani's smattering of Cantonese helped sometimes - he knew the word for fork, as in "Please bring me a fork as well as these chopsticks!''

But ordinary Chinese people - waitresses, shopkeepers, taxi drivers, policemen - understandably rarely speak English. Even if we had looked up the words, Chinese pronunciation is very complex, and of course writing the words in Chinese symbols is not too easy either, and place names are not in dictionaries anyway (although Chinese versions may be in guidebooks). So when we left our hotel without our guide, we made sure that we had the hotel's card with us to show the name to taxi drivers so that we could get back, and we also had our guide write down our list of destinations for us to show the drivers. I learnt this early on when we simply wanted to go to 'Tianenmen Square' but there was no way I could get the taxi driver to understand this. I had to go back into the hotel to ask Reception to write it down.

Tourist areas have signs in both Chinese and English. Sometimes they can be a little confusing...

...and sometimes they can be very confusing!

Beijing tour
I met my friend Mani in Hong Kong, and we flew north to China's capital, Beijing.

We took a day trip to the Great Wall, which was built in the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), rebuilt by the Ming Dynasty in the 14th Century, and then forgotten until recently, when sections were rebuilt for the tourist trade.

The Great Wall at Badaling, on a very cold and windy day.

Then on Christmas Day we visited Tianenmen Square!

Tianenmen Square is the largest plaza on Earth. It was extended in Mao Zedong's time by knocking down lots of old buildings, and can hold up to one million people in its 100 acres. I still remember those TV news clips of students backing down tanks during the demonstrations of 1989.

Tianenmen Square was not very hospitable on Christmas Day.

The Chinese are very patriotic - their Red Flag is everywhere.

This is the Chairman Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, where the Chairman's preserved body lies in a glass case. The case looked a bit like a fish tank, and I thought that a few fish (angelfish? red devils?) might have livened things up a bit.

The proletariat had to wait in line to see their hero's remains....

....Although somehow this princess seemed to get waved on through.

There were few Westerners to be seen, but this group of Tibetans didn't mind the cold weather as they posed for a photo.

At one end of the square, surrounded by a moat, is the palace of the Forbidden City, so-called because in the time of the emperors ordinary people were not allowed to enter. It was built between 1406 and 1420, and was where the emperors spent most of their time.

Chairman Mao still looks out over the Gate of Heavenly Peace, at the entrance to the Forbidden City. He used to address the crowds from the balcony above.

The palace had the auspicious number of "9,999" rooms, and was a township in itself.

The emperors' private living quarters and gardens are very nice.

We went back to Tianenmen Square on a sunny day.

Beijing is very aware of its pending 2008 Olympics - so much so that a clock outside the National Museum counts down the seconds until opening time. When this photo was taken there were exactly 1319 days, 7 hours, 59 minutes and 58 seconds to go!

The emperors got away from the summer heat by visiting their Summer Palace, in the "Park of Nurtured Harmony."

Man-made Kunming Lake is very scenic, even in winter.

Everyone was playing on the ice, including my friend Mani who is from South India and had never seen snow before. His 'snowman' looked like a Hindu temple!

An empress once squandered much of the naval budget on this marble boat, which never floated but was great for summer tea parties.

Another 'must see' in Beijing is the Ding Ling Ming Tomb.

....No, I didn't make up that name.

Here is the Ding Ling family.

They were interred in this vault.

We spent half a day at the Temple of Heaven Park...

The emperor came to this temple just twice a year, to thank the gods for the previous harvest, and then to pray for the coming one. Once, only the emperor was allowed to walk down the marble path in the middle, but now everybody does.