On our last day in Beijing we packed it in. We started early, and hit the Forbidden City.
It's big and crowded and kinda sad. There is a small garden in the section that would have been very private to the emperor (and his hundreds of concubines and hundreds of eunuch courtiers) but most of the place is big paved plazas – very grand, but not at all beautiful.
The buildings are in a mixed state, some restored to a shiny newness, some rundown, some under scaffolding, but nothing demands venerance. It's old, but uninspiring. As is the curation, which mostly consists of stating the obvious “this building is x meters tall and made of wood:. The ambivalence of the reigning communist regime is palpable. On the one hand it's a remnant of a history they tried to erase, but on the other it helps fuel their nationalist agendas (plus it pulls in big tourist bucks).
From there we hit the “Temple of Heaven”. This was a bit involved, as we had planned to go to a little market and then cross into the park. Well, the market is now underneath a new building still under construction, and the park is surrounded by a large wall with only four entrances. Public spaces here are rarely open to the public.
We mostly skipped the temples themselves (far better examples to be found in Japan and elsewhere), and took in the gardens. Here, like the gardens around the lake at Hangzhou, the Chinese aesthetic for conquering nature rather than simulating and enhancing it (as with Japanese gardens) work against them. The space simply doesn't feel sacred to me. The trees are all planted in nice neat little rows, the flowerbeds are blocks of color along the walkway, and the grass is demarcated from the walkway by a little fence whose unmistakable message is that the people belong on the path, not lounging about in the grass. Throughout there is the background of music, which is piped in to outdoor speakers set all along the walkways.
The emperor here was “The Son of Heaven”, but to me, this architecture doesn't give reverence, it demands reverence. “We, the builders, are to be raised up above. It is our glory and power that are being reflected”, not our humility or deference to heaven.
On our walk back to the street we passed a cadre of gardeners bent over the flagstones weeding. The grass is off limits, but there is a large treed expanse with a sort of gray brick paving, but each brick has a oval hole in the center. These aren't home to any flowers or turf, just dirt. The impracticality of having to weed dozens of acres by hand a non-issue in a land with a billion laborers.
A four dollar cab ride took us clear across the center of the city (gotta love a depressed currency) to the so-called Lama temple, reportedly the 'best' example of a Tibetan temple outside Tibet. It was very nice, and has a HUGE Buddah carved from a single tree. It was empty of the Chinese tour groups everywhere else. The Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven are evidently “appropriate” sites for Chinese to visit, whereas the Tibetan temple was clearly not sponsored. However, there were quite a number of Chinese (including ethnic Han) there. Most interestingly were those who got out of their super-expensive luxury cars (including some with white license plates) and made incense offerings... There is a 30% luxury tax here, and other fees make a $50,000 car cost $100,000 or more – a kings ransom in a country where average wages are sub $100/month. But private cars get blue license plates – the white plates are government issued cars. At one point we saw a nice new black Audi which even had blue and red lights in the grill – not police, just political pull. The kind that says “get the hell out of my way” to everyone in front of you in traffic. It would seem there is a significant population of rich and powerful who indulge “the opiate of the masses”.
Other notable denizens of the temple were the monks (100% Han) including one particularly bored teenager who slumped wide-legged in his chair, exasperated at the time when he flicked his wrist to look at his shiny fake rolex. Obviously his shift was far from over.
The next day we were off early, and not a moment to soon for us. Mongolia!
