Cathy and I have been fortunate enough to visit many countries, but one which until recently never appealed was China. We have been to Tibet; this, of course, is part of the People’s Republic, but we didn’t see this as constituting a visit to China itself. All changed when we visited the Terracotta Warrior Exhibition at the British Museum. They were an amazing sight. It clicked with both of us simultaneously: we wanted to go and see the Warriors in their own abode, in Xian. A fellow visitor had done so and eulogized about the experience. So we wanted to go there all the more.
Having decided we’d go to China, we now had to find ourselves a trip. We investigated options available from mainstream tour companies. Then, at a travel fair, we stumbled across China Holidays, a company that deals exclusively with tours to that country. They were offering very similar holidays to the mainstream companies, using the same standard of hotel, yet the cost was significantly less. We booked with them a trip that took in Beijing, Guilin and Shanghai, as well as Xian, with an add-on couple of days in Hong Kong. They were always a pleasure to deal with, not something we have always found with the mainstreams.
‘I’d love to go to China if I could do it in an afternoon,’ mused Alan Bennett. Not, alas, an option. We continue greatly to enjoy visiting other countries but all too often getting there is no great fun: the days when air travel was associated with glamour have long gone. It was to be ten hours in steerage with BA. We consoled ourselves with lunch at Gordon Ramsey’s Plane Food restaurant in Terminal 5. I am no great fan of Mr R, being old-fashioned enough to think that people shouldn’t use four-letter words on TV, even after the watershed. But the meal was good and the staff friendly.
The flight took us to Russia and then roughly followed the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway (an unfulfilled ambition is to travel on that) across Mongolia and finally to Beijing. China is regarded as a developing country, yet one might not realize that if one confines one’s visit to Beijing. Its airport is the last word in modernity and our transfer into the city took us past many impressive hotels and high rise office buildings. Katie Melua informs us that there are ‘nine million bicycles in Beijing’, but the numerous vehicles that we saw were nearly all of the four-wheeled variety. It would be daft to say that it looked like a western city, especially with all the Chinese characters (though there is plenty of English language signage), but nor did it at all look like a Third World city. There was none of the searing poverty that one cannot help seeing in an Indian city, say. We only once saw a beggar; perhaps surprisingly, this was in Guilin. I will admit though that the places we went to were all very much on the tourist trail.
As usual we’d had hardly any sleep on our overnight flight and it would have been tempting to have gone straight to bed on reaching our hotel. Tempting but, we felt, unwise since we’d get out of kilter with local time. So we forced ourselves to stay awake until we’d had an early dinner, first taking ourselves to Tiananmen Square, which was a twenty minute walk away. This was at the very end of the celebrations that had marked the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. The Square was thus still filled with various exhibits and there were decorative columns, each representing one of China’s ethnic groups. The great majority of its people are Han Chinese, but there are 55 minority groups so there were 56 columns.
It was of course the anniversary of a Communist revolution that was being celebrated. But I had the feel that the celebration was devoid of ideological content. One searches in vain in present-day China for socialistic propaganda. One will though find plenty of western-style advertising and if one is into designer labels – I’m not – one will find, in Beijing or Shanghai, just about every conceivable shop that is devoted to selling them. This is a regime which still calls itself Communist, but the economic system over which it presides looks suspiciously like capitalism to me.
The Square continues to be dominated by a huge portrait of Chairman Mao. If one wants – we didn’t – one can go and see his embalmed body in the nearby mausoleum. It might be objected that a ruthless dictator is thus being commemorated. He was responsible for the deaths of more people than Hitler or Stalin, he unleashed the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, he tyrannized Tibet. The regime, though, has effectively repudiated its Maoist inheritance and if, despite his atheism, he is somewhere looking down on modern China, he must wonder why he went to all the bother of overthrowing capitalism:
‘I didn’t make a Socialist Revolution so that people could eat at MacDonald’s or KFC, and wear Gucci or Prada.’
Still, Mao remains a hero and his portrait is unlikely to come down any time soon. It seems to me that the Chinese people are immensely proud of what their country has achieved in recent years, and credit his revolution with having made that possible. Millions have been lifted out of poverty. In Tiananmen Square above all one remembers that this is no democracy and that the regime is capable of being brutal to its opponents. There is frequent resort to capital punishment – but Texas also executes rather a lot of people. But I did not have the feeling that the average Chinese feels himself or herself to be oppressed by the regime. Figuratively speaking the Yalu River, which separates China from North Korea, is a thousand miles wide. China has far more in common with, and close ties to, South Korea.
In my formative years, the fifties and sixties, Red China, it is true, was regarded as a rather scary place. The protest singer Barry Maguire, in warning us that we were all ‘on the eve of destruction’, invited us to ‘think of all the hate there is in Red China’. Certainly we encountered no hate. On the contrary, this is one of the friendliest countries we have visited. Even the airport officials were welcoming. And when, by the way, did someone last call it ‘Red’ China?
Our touring started in earnest the next day. It was to be a busy couple of weeks with every day taken up with visits. The China Holidays local guides in all four of our cities were excellent. They all used western names: Jenny in Beijing was followed by Allen in Xian, Wendy in Guilin and Isobel in Shanghai. They told us their Chinese names as well but, a poor do, I didn’t commit these to memory. First Jenny took us back to Tiananmen Square, which is the largest city square in the world. For a bit extra we ascended to above Mao’s portrait for a grandstand view of the Square, an impressive sight. Then we explored the Forbidden City, so called because in bygone days ordinary people were not allowed in. Nowadays it is a museum, a huge and fascinating complex with no less than 980 surviving buildings. Not long after, a rather more distinguished couple than us were to be photographed here - Barack and Michele Obama.
Beyond the Forbidden City is Beihai Park. This is dominated by the striking White Dagoba atop its hill and is well worth the visitor’s time. However, we were going there for lunch. This was taken at the renowned Fangshan Restaurant. The cuisine is from the imperial era and the decor and costumes of the waiting staff reflect that. We had an excellent meal in exquisite surroundings. I’d looked previously at some internet reviews which were all favourable, apart from someone who opined that it was a tourist trap. But sometimes places are popular with tourists because they happen to be good.
All of our meals in mainland China were included and, breakfast apart, the cuisine was always Chinese and we used chopsticks. I managed, but not in any elegant manner. The meals were on the whole good and some were very good, like the Beijing Duck Dinner to be enjoyed later today and the Dumpling Banquet in Xian. This comprised sixteen types of dumplings, all beautifully crafted. So there was one with a walnut filling that resembled a walnut and another with a duck filling that resembled a duck. I don’t eat fish but nevertheless admired the one that looked like a fish, complete with tail fin and a pea for its eye. A couple of restaurants veered towards the other end of the quality scale. There was one in Shanghai where the waiting staff wore roller skates and there was a delightful dancing show performed by two young girls on skates. Pity the meal wasn’t up to much.
In the afternoon we headed a few miles northwest to visit another of the most well known attractions in Beijing, the Summer Palace. Some three quarters of its area is taken up by the Kunming Lake. Around it are beautiful walks and gardens with Longevity Hill dominating the scene. We made our way through the shoreside Long Gallery which is just that, a little short of 800 yards so one of the longest galleries in the world. We took a dragon boat back across the lake. In the evening, after dinner, we headed to another part of the city to watch the legend of Kung Fu, catching a glimpse en route of the Bird’s Nest, venue of the 2008 Olympics. London has a hard act to follow.
Next day we headed out of the city to see the Great Wall, pausing on the way to walk along the beautiful Sacred Way, lined with enormous statues, in pairs on either side, of various types of animal, and the Ming Tombs. One can go inside one of these: nothing much actually to see, but I suppose that’s not the point. The section of the Wall we visited, Badaling, is the most visited and some might object that it is also the most touristy. But again one might counter that places are sometimes popular with tourists because they happen to be good - very, very good in this instance.
One is actually, at Badaling, still within the city limits of Beijing, but one is in a different world altogether to the populated area. The Wall here snakes through superb mountain scenery and as a construction is itself, well, great. One can easily escape the crowds if one heads up the challengingly steep section running west but we opted for the easier, though still in places quite steep, walk in an easterly direction along the Wall. On our return, the friendly owner of a teashop was happy for us to sit inside waiting for others in our party, even though we weren’t partaking of any refreshments. In the end I succumbed to a Magnum ice cream.
On the following day we flew to Xian but first there was more of Beijing to see. We started with the exquisite Temple of Heaven, which was all the better for being seen against a cloudless blue sky. Generally we enjoyed excellent weather in China, our trip being in October which is regarded as one of the best times, weatherwise, to visit the country. In the surrounding parkland there were people doing their exercises. This tends to be a communal affair in China; one sees hardly any joggers. There was also, in a scene that would delight the BBC’s Choir master Gareth, a choir in full flow.
Our final visit was to the hutongs. These are the traditional single storey dwellings that once covered large areas of the capital. Sadly a lot of them have been demolished in recent decades but, before one condemns too loudly, one might reflect on the demolitions and brutalist architecture that have blighted our own country. Today there is a vigorous conservation movement.
We had a tour of the narrow and picturesque streets, partly in a rickshaw, under the auspices of local guide Victor. The Chinese are generally regarded as short people and, being six foot, I expected to be towering over them. In fact there are plenty of quite tall Chinese, more so in the north, and in Victor’s case I was at eye to eye level. Our visit to the Hutongs, and to Beijing, finished with lunch in one of them. It was cooked for us by the lady of the house, with us assisting in the preparation of the dumplings, and was delicious. She spoke no English, and we, I hardly need add, speak no Chinese, but we needed no translator to tell us that it was a pleasure for her to cook for us.
From Beijing we moved on to Xian. This involved the first of our three flights within mainland China. One doesn’t always hear great things about such flights but ours were OK and there were no delays. Our tour company times its excursions so that they are always before flights, not in jeopardy if there is any delay. Our hotel in Xian was Le Garden. A rather odd name, neither one thing nor t’other – why not The Garden or Le Jardin? But the name, in whatever language, was apt because it boasts a delightful Chinese style garden, something of an oasis in the rather nondescript area of high rises, located away from the historic centre, in which the hotel is located.
Our raison d’être for being in China was the terracotta warriors – though we found a fair few other good reasons for visiting the country. The warriors are located a dozen miles or so outside the city. We paused en route at the scenic Huaqing Hot Springs. To get from the coach park to the Warriors required a rather tedious walk of about fifteen minutes past any number of trading establishments. Even inside the main display hall, when one assumes one has left the commercialism behind for a while, someone thrust some postcards in front of us and invited us to buy them. One cannot and indeed should not prevent traders from plying their wares. After all they have, like you and I, their living to make. But I would have thought the authorities could put a stop to them carrying out their activities actually inside the exhibition area.
All this did not of course detract from the magnificent sight that was spread out before us. That overused word ‘awesome’ is for once apposite. This is very much work in progress which will last for many years to come, as archaeologists uncover more and more figures, work requiring the utmost care and precision as they scrape away the debris of centuries. The story is well known: how in 1974 a couple of local farmers stumbled across these life size statues that date back to 210 BC, the work of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. They are still around and make their living by telling their tale though they are apparently somewhat resentful that all the glory, as they see it, goes to the archaeologists when it was their discovery that made the whole thing possible.
Virtually all visitors to Xian go there to see the Warriors but there is more to the city. I have mentioned the Huaqing Falls. On our return we went to see the Great Mosque. Offering as it does a fascinating blend of Chinese and Islamic architecture, it is nothing like one’s preconception of what a mosque should look like. On the following day, before moving on to Guilin, we visited the Big Goose Pagoda, which is what the city was best known for before they found the Warriors, and the city wall. Xian is unusual for a Chinese city in having its walls intact. They surround the historic centre and are remarkably wide. The energetic can walk or cycle right round them, the distance being some nine miles. In our case there was time for just a quick stroll, which took us from one of its towers to the next one.
Guilin is a pleasant city which has its own attractions but is above all known for the outstandingly beautiful scenery, created by distinctive karst mountains, that surrounds it. This might seem quintessentially Chinese but in fact one of the country’s 55 ethnic minorities, the Zhuang people, predominates here and we were in one of the five autonomous regions, which include, rather more controversially, Tibet. One is here getting fairly close to the Vietnamese border.
Our abode for the next two nights was the downtown Bravo Hotel, located on one of the city’s lakes. We attempted but failed to get ourselves moved to a lakeview room, these being apparently all taken, but were content with the room we did get, on the eleventh floor with a balcony. Much of the next day was spent doing a trip along the Li River, a journey of some sixty miles through the idyllic karst scenery, with the bonus that we had glorious weather. At the end of this excursion is the town of Yangshuo, which rather brings one down to earth. It is by no means unpleasant but it very commercialized and thus very much geared to the western tourist: on restaurant menus one is as likely to find lasagne or shephards pie (sic) as Chinese fare. There was not too much of this to be experienced for, after a quick stroll, we were transferred by road back to Gweilin. Here our excellent local guide, Wendy, managed to squeeze in one more attraction before dinner: Fubo Hill, which affords a splendid panorama of the city and its surrounds.
The day didn’t finish with dinner. We had a night-time boat trip through the city’s lakes. They are dramatically lit, all along their shores, by coloured illuminations, which make for a magnificent spectacle. Some of our more dogmatic environmentalists might object to the waste, as they might see it, of electricity, albeit low energy light bulbs are used. I am not of their ilk. I think we could all be consigned, if they had their way, to a very dreary existence, drab and austere with vegetarianism made compulsory and foreign travel frowned on. And I don’t know, nor indeed do I care, how many carbon footprints we expended flying out to China and back. Don’t get me wrong: I do care about the environment, take climate change seriously and like to think I do my bit towards saving the planet e.g. by recycling whatever I can. I have argued in these pages that we should to the maximum extent possible switch from air to rail and thus gradually phase out flights within mainland UK and to the near Continent. But freedom to travel is one of our most precious birthrights: we might be citizens of a particular state but we are also world citizens and the ability to experience other countries, other cultures, is to be prized and not given up (no-one after all jumped over the wall into East Berlin). And if one wishes to go to China, one must, unless there is the time and money to take the proverbial slow boat, go by plane. I am tired of environmentalists who try to make us feel guilty.
Getting back to Guilin, we greatly enjoyed our trip along the lakes, above all the cormorant fisherman. He was using a traditional fishing method in which trained cormorants are used to fish in rivers. The fishermen ties a snare near the base of the bird's throat which prevents it from swallowing larger fish, which are held in its throat, though smaller fish can be swallowed. When a cormorant catches a fish, the fisherman brings it back to the boat and has the bird spit the fish up. It is an enchanting scene. The fisherman does this for a living; if he can supplement his income by delighting tourists, that has to be good.
We continued the next day to our fourth and last city on the mainland, Shanghai, with visits, before finally taking our leave of Guilin, to the Reed Flute Caves, where, once again, lighting techniques are used to striking effect, illuminating the many and varied formations, and, a bit more prosaically, a silk factory where I bought a silk tie for £10. Serene and tranquil, adjectives that can justifiably be applied to the scenery around Guilin, are not often applied to Shanghai. On leaving the airport we were straight away caught in heavy traffic as we made our way into the centre. Isobel, our lovely local guide, wanted to find out about London’s congestion charge! She was very young, all of five foot nothing and just a tad bossy: ‘Come here, come here,’ she would instruct if she had something of interest to show us, and of course we obeyed.
If I have one criticism of our otherwise very good tour programme, it is that it did not include a visit to the Pudong Area, the area that lies across the River Huangpu (part of the mighty Yangtze) from the main centre. So we leapt at Isabel’s offer of an optional tour. A Shanghainese Rip Van Winkle simply wouldn’t recognize the place if he woke up today. Until twenty years ago it was mainly farmland and countryside. Now it is the financial hub of China. It’s skyline of high rise office buildings, above all the Oriental Pearl Tower (or TV Tower), has replaced the historic Bund, on the opposite side of the river, as the symbol of Shanghai.
This is a can-do city and the feel of raw energy in the air was almost tangible. Shanghai is not a place that cares to do things by halves. In the bad old days it adopted the most extreme form of Maoist Doctrine, as enunciated by the Gang of Four, three of whom were from Shanghai, the other being Madame Mao. Now it has adopted capitalism with some gusto. It has thrived and prospered as a result though in such a radical economic transition, there are bound to be some losers. If there is one thing above all that Shanghai doesn’t like, it is being outshone by Beijing. It had to put up with the fact that that city hosted the Olympics but at time of our visit it was preparing for its own chance to dance on the world stage, Expo 2010. We drove past the construction site on our way back to the airport.
Whilst in Pudong we ascended the 101-floor World Financial Center. There was at this time a building in Taiwan that was taller still but the Center boasted the world’s highest observation platform. This stretches between the building’s two towers and in places the floor is of glass. After dinner in a nearby restaurant, we did a river cruise which showed us Shanghai by night. Here we could contrast the Pudong on the one side with the Bund running along the other bank. The visitor might be reminded of Liverpool. That may sound an odd thing to say but the two ports consider themselves sister cities and the Bund’s European-style buildings were inspired by the fine architecture of downtown Liverpool with its Three Graces. There continue to be close ties between the two cities: the entrance to Liverpool’s Chinatown is graced by an arch given by the people of Shanghai.
We at last repaired to our hotel. We had upgraded to the five-star Le Meridien, located on pedestrianized Nanjing Road West, one of the city’s main shopping thoroughfares. We had a room high up which was so designed that, from our two windows, we could look either east or west, with a fine vista of the city, the towers of Pudong being just visible. A walk of twenty minutes or so in one direction along the thoroughfare took one to the Bund and in the other to People’s Square. This was formerly the site of the city’s racecourse but, after the 1949 Revolution, it was too bourgeois for the liking of the Communists so it had to go. But when China took over Hong Kong, it assured its citizens that ‘horses will still race’: the Happy Valley Racecourse, therefore, is still going strong.
We had a full day city tour the next day, taking in various attractions, including the Old Town, something of an oasis amidst all the modernity, and the Shanghai Museum, of which the city is rather proud. It opened in its present location in 1996 and is spacious and well-designed, with eleven galleries that span the millennia of Chinese history. It has a collection of over 120,000 pieces. We had just two hours so cannot say we did it full justice. The final day of our tour took us on an excursion to Suzhou which is some sixty miles away. Shanghai is, of course, one of the world’s mega-cities and the view was urban virtually all the way, with Isobel a couple of times managing to find a surviving rice paddy to point out to us. Suzhou markets itself as the Venice of the Orient, but this is overegging things somewhat: it has not escaped modernization and the centre is nothing special. But it is certainly worth a day or two of the visitor’s time. It really does have canals and we enjoyed a delightful cruise passing traditional Chinese dwellings. The city is also known for its many beautiful gardens. We visited two of these: the Fish Net, which is the smallest, and the Humble Administrator’s, which is the largest and is very impressive. The latter includes a bonsai garden and Isobel took pleasure in informing us that bonsai originated in China, with the Japanese being mere upstarts in this regard.
Our choice of travel guide books is normally either Lonely Planet or the Insight Guides. Whereas the former generally gives a ‘warts and all’ view, the latter, I rather think, is a bit more into promoting the given destination and their guide to Hong Kong does indeed extol its virtues. Yet even it concedes that ‘visitors complain that the people are brusque to the point of rudeness’ (yes, it was a surly individual who transferred us on arrival at the airport to our bus into town) and that they are the ‘most business-minded, materialistic, competitive and restless population on the planet’ (I suspect that’s true and it doesn’t produce a place of any great charm). We again upgraded our hotel, this time to the Peninsula, which is considered a world-class hotel. Even this somehow lacks charm. We have been fortunate enough to stay at comparable hotels elsewhere – Raffles in Singapore, the Oriental in Bangkok, the Nelson in Cape Town – and the Peninsula simply doesn’t compare in terms of atmosphere. (Please don’t think that because, very occasionally, we push the boat out and stay at a top hotel, we are one of the ‘filthy rich’. Ours is not a champagne lifestyle but, just occasionally, we treat ourselves to a sip.) Materialism rears its head. The reception area is crammed with shops and there was nowhere for us to sit in comfort when, at the end of our stay, we awaited our bus to the airport. Yes, of course other hotels have shops but generally these are discreetly located whereas here they are in your face. Their afternoon tea is supposed to be legendary, but we had had a far better one a few weeks before in a hotel in Berkshire! Nearby Nathan Road, one of Hong Kong’s main thoroughfares, is a strange and rather unappealing mix of the upmarket and the tacky.
The Peninsula is in Kowloon, the bit of Hong Kong which is on the Chinese mainland. We took the ferry across the Harbour to Hong Kong Island. Again the Marmite factor comes into play. Some eulogize this as one of the finest harbours anywhere in the world. All I could see was a mass of not very attractive tall buildings.
I am by no means against tall buildings: those in Shanghai do have a certain style and attractiveness whereas those in Hong Kong don’t, in my opinion. I might throw in New York as well and the marvellous spectacle of Manhattan viewed from the Staten Island Ferry. We took the Peak Tram. This sounded romantic, but it’s actually a rather ordinary funicular and one walks out at the top into a large concourse surrounded by tourist tat. Because we’d paid a supplement, we could go up one floor where the tat is left behind and one at last gets a view. But this was a case of seeing all those unlovely high rises from a different perspective. We also did two circular bus tours and with time limited we didn’t avail ourselves of the ability to get on and off. However there was nothing we saw that made us wish we had the time to go back. So, I didn’t love Hong Kong. But we were not sorry we went. It had still been interesting. And it came at the end of what had otherwise been a fantastic travel experience.
First published in VISA 90-91 (Apr-Jun 2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment