China Travel to Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai China Slide Show – Images by Lee Foster by Lee Foster Fascination with China arises partly because the country has so many people, over 1.3 billion, one fourth of the world population. Many travelers want to see how these people live and what they think. Since the “Open Door” policy in China went into effect in 1978, countless North Americans have visited the country. The Chinese manifest one of the oldest continuous cultures on the planet, flourishing for 5,000 years, including over 2,000 years with a written pictoral language universally readable within the country. China has reached peaks of cultural attainment that equal, or surpass, anything that Western European societies or America have achieved. Some of the seminal developments include the creation of paper, gunpowder, and movable type. The size and diversity of China also allures. Among countries, only Russia and Canada are larger. The perennial attractions of travel to China and elsewhere have always transcended, for me, the temporary restrictions against travel for political reasons that some critics urged. If the world traveler restricted travel as an expression of political disapproval of current leadership policies, then many countries would be vulnerable, not the least of which would be the United States itself from time to time. The modern social experiment in Chinese life is an amazing phenomenon to meditate upon. While Chinese society has mobilized in the past to produce goods in substantial quantities for an emperor, now the Chinese focus their energy on their own well-being, attempting to provide adequate housing, universal education, access to medical care, and childcare. The success of these policies, especially wide-scale education, has produced a massive educated elite in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and elsewhere that makes China a formidable force in the modern world. The level of prosperity evident in modern China is astonishing. My selected route of exploration took me to Beijing, the modern capital; Xian, the ancient capital; and Shanghai, the dynamic port city. Beijing: The Modern Capital Beijing struck me, at once, as an imperial city, whose rationale for existence was political rather than commercial. Beijing means, in fact, the “northern capital.” The city lies inland without a large, navigable river. It is strategically valuable rather than commercially advantageous. The road in from the airport begins the cluster of impressions. Wide avenues spread out in vast, rectangular grids. The city is huge, roughly 40 miles square in only its central part. Getting from one site to the next occupies considerable time. If construction of the modern subway system had not destroyed the ancient city walls, the regal effect would be more complete. A few sections of the city wall remain. The major sites to see here are the political monuments, especially Tian’anmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Summer Palace. As befits a country with the largest population in the world, the focal heart of China, Tian’anmen, is said to be the largest square in the world. The square covers a hundred acres and accommodates a half-million people. I saw many ethnic minority families from China’s outlying provinces posing to have their pictures taken at this major pilgrimage site. Adjacent to the square is the 9,000-room Forbidden City, used by the Qing dynasty royalty until their overthrow in 1912 and so named because commoners were forbidden to enter the area. From the rostrum at the Forbidden City you can look at Tian’anmen, just as Mao Zedong did on October 1, 1949 when he proclaimed to the multitudes, “The People’s Republic of China has been founded! The Chinese people have now stood up!” Walk around Tian’anmen and the Forbidden City with a guide, easily obtainable at your hotel, so that you will understand more fully what you see. Tian’anmen, so open to the world and the future, contrasts with the Forbidden City, a monument to the insularity of China’s past. In the Forbidden City, be sure to see some of the museums, such as the Emperor’s Clock Museum or the Qing and Ming Dynasty Art Museum, which includes an exquisite ivory boat presented to the last powerful royal female ruler, Empress Dowager Ci Xi, on her 60th birthday. You might also experience private revelations here. While I was leaving the Qing and Ming Dynasty Art Museum, out hobbled an elderly and elegant lady in black, whose feet had been bound, as a child, and were now so petite that she appeared to be walking on her toes. The practice has been outlawed since 1949, but was thought to be a mark of beauty in earlier China. Away she walked, an apparition from the past. The Great Wall, an hour-and-a-half north of Beijing, stuns the imagination because of its massive size. See the Badaling or the Mutianyu sections to have a scenic encounter with this engineering masterpiece, said to be one of the few man-made objects visible to astronauts from outer space. The wall was built between 476 B.C. and the 14th century A.D. During one particularly vigorous building period, some 300,000 workers labored for a 10-year period in the 3rd century B.C. to build much of the 6,000-kilometer wall, which stands as a symbol of China’s historic efforts to bolster itself against outside attack rather than embark on adventurous conquest. The emperor who organized this great labor force was Qin Shi Huangdi (221-206 B.C.), the first unifier of China. The Summer Palace is a pleasure house in Beijing adjacent to a lake, built in 1888 by the crafty Empress Dowager Ci Xi. Today the Summer Palace, a park for the people, stands as a monument to imperial excesses. The most blatant of those excesses is a large marble boat commissioned by the Empress Dowager with funds that were supposed to be expended on building a royal Navy. This was another of the mismanaged affairs that left China weak and vulnerable to foreign partitioning in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As a contrast to grand monuments, it is interesting to do a tour of the way all the common people lived until recently. This is possible in the Xuanwu district and is called a “hutong” tour, available through Beijing tour agencies. Some of the 20 million people in Beijing still live in these one story buildings in neighborhoods called hutongs. On such a tour you can see a kindergarden for children, how local food markets work, and even visit private homes. My tour went to the home of a Madame Zuo Shu Xian, an elderly lady living in a cohesive though primitive setting. Gradually, the hutong life is being replaced by tall apartment buildings, but the hutong in the Xuanwu district will be preserved as an historic district. When selecting monuments to see and tours to do, know that you can visit only two or three in one day. Beijing is so vast that much time goes into commuting between the monuments. Impressions of Beijing Among dominant impressions of Beijing (and the rest of China) I would list: *Safety. Generally, in Beijing (or China) I did not feel concern for my personal safety. As the Chinese sort out their internal matters, foreigners are not a target of hostility. There is a genuine friendliness towards North Americans. Inflation and the large numbers of migrating people seeking work present an underlying stress that could create chaos if the economy ever deteriorated. Theft is not a major concern in China. The level of overall prosperity is rising dramatically. No drug underclass preys on travelers, as in some European and North American cities. I felt safer in Beijing than in many other major cities in my experience. *The bicycles. There are millions of bicycles, although the automobile now exerts a growing presence. Long bicycle commutes, sometimes an hour’s ride, bring people to their work. Busses and subways supplement the basic bike transport. Bicycle gridlock sometimes occurs at peak hours. *The construction. Beijing has built thousands of high-rise apartments and office buildings. For the 2008 Olympics, Beijing rebuilt much of its infrastructure to show off its progress to the world. *The dust. On my most recent Beijing visit, during the rainy month of August, the skies were clean and the city was luxuriant with foliage. However, Beijing is a relatively arid environment, subject to winds from the Gobi Desert blowing in suffocating dust storms. It was dusty on an earlier visit. The massive forestation programs in and around Beijing have lessened the overall dust problem. As the millions of trees planted in Beijing mature, the city assumes a park-like appearance along its handsome boulevards. Still, dust masks are a part of the local apparel in the dry months. *The prosperity and modernity. The stores and markets of the Chinese cities I visited were full of food and consumer goods. The average Chinese earns enough Yuan, their unit of currency, to cover rent and food. Apartment rental costs are often fairly moderate. Education and medical care are manageable, and child care is affordable for most people. Rice and vegetables, the staple foods, are plentiful. About half of disposable income goes to food. There is money left over for consumer goods because retirement pensions are generous. Citizens feel fairly secure about basic necessities, even though exotic consumer goods, such as cars, are out of reach for most people. The outwardly visible prosperity level is rising. Almost all Beijing households have a color TV, the most prized home appliance after the sewing machine.