Attention, Comrades

Warning: This entry may be a bit of a ramble.

How to describe the Beijing trip?

The easiest way might be by comparison. Today (Monday), I spent the day teaching English to children.

Last Monday, I climbed the Great Wall of China.

Of course, the comparison isn't fair, since vacation time outranks non-vacation by definition alone.

To evaluate the trip, then, we need to break it down into its base components:
the tour and the city.

Let's start with the tour.

As most people who are reading this probably know, I am not entirely bereft of experience in the group travel industry. Most of that experience, however, has come from the tour guide perspective, rather than that of the customer.

Anyhow, the tour was good. Not great, but very good. The essence of group tours, though, is such that to a large degree very good is the best you can hope for, in the sense that there will always be questions of time allocation and sights to see, etc, so you aim to please as many of the people as often as you can. Had I been on my own, I wouldn't have gone to the tea shop or the jade factory, but then neither would I have been staying in a 5 star hotel out in the suburbs of Beijing. I've always been happy with hostels- they're cheap, centrally located, though they don't have the swimming pools and bowling alleys our hotel did.

It was fun meeting new people and making some friends, but I've decided to prefer make my own through a new place, exploring at my leisure and at my own pace. While it's convenient simply to be told to be back at the bus at a certain time, it also removes a considerable of the chunk of the free-spirited wanderer mythos with which I strive to imbue myself at all times.

Beijing, then. The Forbidden City (home of the Chinese Royal Family for countless years) reminded me a lot of Versailles simply because of the sheer size and arrogance of the operation. "L'état, c'est moi," indeed. The thing that has often amazed me about monarchies is not so much the fact that people throughout history have proclaimed themselves definely superior to the masses, but that the masses have acquiesced and agreed with them. And while I realize that a large part of this was determined by which hand was holding the sword, let's face it- there was (generally) only one Emperor at a time, but he (and on occasion, she) controlled a hell of a lot of sword-holders.

But yeah. Setting aside the political thoughts (I've always maintained that standing in front of Versailles is the easiest way to understand the reasons for the French Revolution), the Forbidden City is fascinating because of its size...and here I was going to offer some thoughts of dubious originality and interest, but I've just come to the decision that even if it is possible to eliminate politics and social philosophy from the picture, to do so would be absurd and/or irresponsible. The entire palace complex (all 720,000 square metres) was constructed to hold the source of absolute power, and if you fail to acknowledge that when beholding, you are missing out on human history at its most basic.

The Great Wall of China can be viewed through much the same lens, but offers more panoramic and astoundingly scenic photos. Lots of stairs, and a definite highlight of the trip. For me, at least, the Wall was symbolic of an empire with all the positive and negative connotations therein, while I found the Forbidden City to offer more food for thought on human hierarchy and our willingness to subjugate ourselves to others, or have them do so to us. But what do I know.

The Great Wall of China goes on forever, if not in the literal sense then in the figurative. We didn't climb it for very long, but it was enough to get the slightest glimpse of the immense time and effort that went into its building.

From a tourist point of view, the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are the two structures that will remain at the forefront of my memories, but a conversation I had on the last night definitely bears mentioning.

A few of us tourists were making our way to the hotel bar when we noticed our tour guide at the front desk, and so we invited her to have a beer with us. It wasn't a particularly long discussion, but it meandered well, as all great discussions do. We were asking her for her thoughts on the present and the future of China, and in a nutshell this is what she said:

"when you look at China, you see a lot of problems. We don't have free speech, and people are thrown into jail for criticizing the government. But for us, we see that this is the best it's been in a thousand years."

It's an interesting way of looking at the situation. Not to look at it history in terms of years or decades or even centuries, but millennia. It's a slow, gradual, process. That day we had taken a rickshaw tour of a hutong, a traditional Beijing neighbourhood, and we had met a septuagenarian who lived there. I asked what was the greatest change she had seen since she was a child, and she replied that now food is plentiful and affordable.

Is this Mao's doing? Would China have better evolved under free-market capitalism? I have no idea.

I've picked up a biography of Mao, though, and hopefully that will give me some clues.

I'll try to come back to this and add more thoughts and commments over the next couple of days, so if you come back to reread this don't be surprised if it's been changed in some way.