Sights of old Beijing, or not

Beijing, that old city of the Emperors. Such are the lanterns and lights that grace the night.


The houses are dilapidated, although caged birds continue to adorn the windows.


Common folks eke out a living, selling hot and spicy Beijing food.


Tourists are a common sight these days, not in the days of the dynasty, when the red devils are shunned and vilified.


But hold on, they sell Rojak in Beijing. Since when? Nope this is not old Beijing. Where is this then?

Forbidden City

The Forbidden City - the home of Ming and Qing Emperors for over 500 years, is steeped in Chinese history, culture and superstitions (referred to as Feng Shui today). It is not for me to give a full account here of these historical aspects of the Forbidden City - you would do well to pick up one of many books specifically describing this City.

One thing I can say here is that the City is HUGE - Chinese emperors of yore really lived it up! But then we should be mindful that the Emperor not only had his home here, this was the place to conduct the affairs of state, administer the Imperial Examinations and worship the God(s). Before we had our SOHO, the Chinese Emperors have already invented it, only it was not small.

As you enter the City, there are small little exhibit halls, each charging a small entrance fee, that showcase various aspects of Palace life and culture. In my opinion, these are probably not worth your time, though the money is not an issue. Each of these are priced as low as RMB5 per entry.

You can also eat at one of the many 'eating places' in this City, which occupies the buildings outside the Palace proper. Be forewarned - the food tastes terrible though the portion is huge. And if you are a stickler for clean toilets, you are in trouble. There are public toilets, but they emit a strong stench, probably because the cleaners can never clean them due to the constant stream of people using them. Also there are not many toilets to start off with. If you have a weak bladder, the Forbidden City is indeed forbidding.

While most of the outer perimeter of the Forbidden City is free for your to roam free of charge, entrance to the Palace (also known today as the Palace Museum) proper will set you back RMB60. It is worth the money though. The history of this Palace goes back hundreds of years that unless you are a history expert, it will be impossible for you to know or understand what you are seeing. You can rent a talking machine, which you can sling around your neck, that gives you a running commentary of various parts of the palace. It costs RMB10 for a Chinese version, RMB50 for an English version. There are other language versions too. But you need to pay a refundable deposit of RMB100. I almost rented one, but, in retrospect, I must thank the lady in front of me in the queue. She took so long that I gave up waiting. I found out later that a 'live' commentary was much better - and cost not much more. So we entered the Palace with nothing but the guide map that came with the entrance tickets in hand.

As in most places of interest, you get accosted by people offering their services, either to take you on a 40 minute tour, or something. They can be parasitic, but you must remember that you are in a foreign land, so no matter how irritated you get, you must maintain a degree of civility and politely refuse. They will still come after you, but these people are just trying to make an honest day's living, so bear with them. They aren't that bad. They are offering a service, they are not there to rob or anything - at least that's how I see them.

When you enter the Palace, there are guides dressed in blue who will offer a one and a half hour guided tour of the Palace grounds for RMB150. They will even offer to take a video of the entire guided tour, using their video camera, or even yours, if you have one. If you use theirs, you'd have to pay RMB50 for the DV-Tape, which is quite cheap. So the video-taping is not an extra above the RMB150. If it rains on that day, you can get an umbrella rent-free! Just pay RMB20 per umbrella, which will be refunded entirely to you when you return them the umbrella at the end of the tour.

These tour guides are professionals. We learnt that they are trained and need to be certified before they can act as guides. Because they go into some historical fact during the tour, they must be accurate with their commentary and also be able to answer tourists' (your) questions. Our lady guide came across as well trained, warm, and knowledgeable. She also learnt from her past customers who had expert knowledge on some remote bits of history at certain exhibits. These she readily shared with us. Now, that's humility and an acknowledgement that no one person knows it all.

At almost the end of the tour, in the place where the Empress and concubines lived, there is a Souvenir shop. Remarkably, our guide left us to our shopping because we wanted to browse around. Normally, a guide would tie up with some retail shop. In this case, it wasn't part of her itinerary, but she gave us the space and time.

At the end of the tour, we have to sign off on her 'ticket' and give her a rating - 'Excellent', 'Satisfactory' and 'Poor'. She was a great guide, and for all her effort, we rated her 'Excellent' and on top of that, tipped her RMB100!

I don't know about the machines, but this personal guided tour was definitely worth the price! The only thing I missed was her name. But never mind, we took a photo with her.

People's Square

I had a great day at one of the most famous, and perhaps also notorius, places in Beijing - Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City - once the home of China's emperors.

The notoriety that Tian An Men Square acquired was quite recent - 1989 to be exact, when hordes of Chinese congregated onto the vast Square to agitate for democracy. China was just only recently being opened up to the world, but this demonstration was too much for the authorities. The result was that the Chinese government sent in the tanks to disperse the crowd and sent Zhao Ziyang, then-Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party, political exile for sympathizing with the demonstrators. He never recovered his political position - he died in 17 January 2005 - still under virtual house arrest.

Today, the Tian An Men Square incident, dubbed 6-4 (because it fell on June 4) - when the crackdown by the Chinese Authorities broke up the demonstration and arrested key student leaders - is still being remember by thousands of pro-democracy people, particularly in Hong Kong SAR. Today, this Square is peaceful which belie that June 4 day. A Mao Tse-Tung (or Mao Zedong) Memorial - formally named the "Chairman Mao Memorial" - is being renovated to honour the founding father of Communist China, and no doubt in preparation for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, when the world will descend on Beijing.

The square is patrolled by the Police (Gong-An), but there is nothing sinister in this. The Gong An do not look intimidating at all - they are there to preserve order, which is well and good. The Square is huge and surrounded on all sides by Roman-columned Buildings - the National Museum, Chairman Mao Memorial, the People's Parliament Building, and not least of all, the Forbidden City (Gugong), which was the home of Chinese emperors for over 500 years. The last emperor - Pu Yi, was only 3 when he ascended the throne and was kicked out at 5 when the Han Chinese overthrew the Qing dynasty, first in Wuchang (in Wuhan) in 1911 and subseqently gathered speed in other parts of China.

Although the nationalist Kuomingtang (KMT) took over where the Qing Empire left off, it didn't quite consolidate China until the Communist Party of Chairman Mao Zedong came along. In 1948, the Communist Party of China constituted a united China. The KMT had to settle for the island of Taiwan. These and similar twists and turns in the history of China demonstrate the truth of the saying:

"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide" - (Luo Guanzhong, circa 1600 during the Ming Dynasty, writing in Three Kingdoms)

Picture: Monument to the Heroes. Situtated in the middle of the Square.

First into Beijing

Finally, after a journey that began this morning at 8am at Changi Airport, I arrived at Beijing Capital Airport. Beijing is a busy city. It is also, unfortunately, a hazy city. The air quality leaves much to be desired. The number of people from foreign lands must have increased an order of magnitude since Beijing and China in general, opened up to the world.

Even so, going through customs at Beijing was a breeze. There was a whole row of customs booths available - maybe 50 or so of them - all manned - to get the hordes of travelers through. One interesting feature at every booth is a voting panel. Commuters can express their rating of the customs officer serving them as they wait to have their documents checked and verified. And the customs officers are very efficient and fast. I didn't have enough time to figure out what the panel was about before I was cleared - it was that efficient and fast.

In some other airports, for example, those in Malaysia, the customs officers seem to take pleasure in making commuters wait in line and wait in front of them as they check the travel documents - at least that has always been my impression for one or two times I have used KL International Airport (KLIA). And even when multiple booths are available, not all of them are manned even when the crowds come in.

But back to Beijing. I didn't lose a single luggage and was well out of the airport in a jiffy. Taking a taxi is very much like that in Changi Airport. You line up for the constant stream of taxis coming into the pickup/waiting area. In some airports, you have to fight for one. I had no problem communicating my destination and was off and out of the airport in double quick time - just like in Changi.

The journey was also quite smooth and fast. We only encountered heavy traffic as we moved into the city proper. The one thing of concern in Beijing is the air quality. It is bad, really bad. That's when you start to make comparisons with Singapore. Whenever travelers remarked that Singapore is sooo... clean, we take it for granted. But these visitors are not being patronising - just being honest. Compared to Singapore, Beijing has this pall of dust all over the city, starting even from the airport. I was getting worried for the two kids who are traveling with me. Both of them have a history of asthma.

We arrived at our hotel - the Howard Johnson Paragon Hotel, just across from the Beijing Railway station - in slightly under an hour.