Till next time.

Codrin

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On Tuesday, I went on an organized tour with Tour Beijing at the Mutianyu Great Wall and the Underground Palace. I want to mention from the start that I have never got so much value off a tour. For only 30 dollars these guys did so much for us, it was surreal.

Chinese worker turning the jade stone is a craft

They picked me up at 7.30. We were firstly taken to a jade factory. We saw how jade stone is actually turned into statues, jewelries, and other crafts. Of course, I almost fainted when I saw the prices these guys were charging and let me tell you they were way out of my league. For a nice small statue, the gallery was charging 120 dollars which obviously made me think the only thing a reasonable person like me who is still a student and doesn’t make enough money to afford paying for classy jade stone crafts: no, no baby, I don’t think so!

Moving on, the next stop was the Dingling, or the Underground Palace, some 50 kilometers away from Beijing.  This is the burial site for 13 out of the 17 emperors of the great Ming Dynasty. As I reached this place, superstitions and history mingled together in an esoteric and unexpected way. Chinese people visiting this site would apparently not use the main entrances since that was reserved for the emperor and if any of the “regular” people walked on the main stairways, they would be doomed for eternity. In addition, one is not allowed to walk through the main door facing the gravesites because that is supposed to be the gateway to heaven. If someone does go through, it may never come back and his/her spirited would be trapped for ever in the afterworld.

Check out the size of this imperial throne

The story is nice, but the tombs themselves are a big disappointment in that they lack any esthetic value whatsoever.  What did make me smile for a while was the size of the imperial thrones. They are so big and wide. You can literally fit five or six people on one throne. Seeing three of them in one room was quite a view and was most likely the most interesting thing of that tour.

In one of the adjacent rooms to the tombs, now a small museum, I saw something that froze my smile for a second since I learned about it in school. And hated it. I saw the types of shoes girls had to wear if they wanted to marry rich young men in China. That’s right, the 7 centimeters shoes, the ones that would make a young girls’ toes break in order to fit into those inhumane shoes. Dis-gus-ting. Seriously.

Once we were done with Dingling, we were taken to lunch, somewhere in the vicinity of the Great Wall. The food was absolutely delicious. I was genuinely surprised since, again, the whole thing cost only 30 dollars.

And then, la crème de la crème: the Chinese wall. Let me be brief: if you have the chance to go to the great wall, do not be cheap bastards like me. I decided to use the stairs to walk to the top of the wall instead of the cable car. Pay those stupid ten dollars for the ride.

That being said, climbing on what the most amazing things ever built by humans was a delightful experience. Walking on the Great Wall is definitely a unique opportunity to turn a critical eye to oneself and to meditate on what we are collectively capable of if we unite our forces for a greater good. Sure, in this context, it was the Chinese who did all that, but I simply could not help feeling we are all a part of this project.

That’s pretty much all for now since I really, really have to go to bed.

Stay tuned for more stories from China.

And you’re welcome to take a look at the photo gallery here:

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Enjoy

China’s largest existing complex of ancient sacrificial buildings. Occupying an area of 273 hectares, it is three times the area of the Forbidden City. It was built in 1420 for emperors to worship Heaven. The principle buildings include the Altar of Prayer for Good Harvests, Imperial Vault of Heaven and Circular Mound Altar.

The Temple of Heaven is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is described by this organization as “a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations.”

Aside for pictures, I have to admit that this place and the social rituals and events that I witnessed here took me by surprise. I will write more about my experience at the Temple of Heaven later tonight. Until then, I invite you to enjoy the pictures I took.

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an ancient city alley or lane typical in Beijing, where hutongs run into the several thousand. Surrounding the Forbidden City, many were built during the Yuan (1206-1341), Ming(1368-1628) and Qing(1644-1908) dynasties. In the prime of these dynasties the emperors, in order to establish supreme power for themselves, planned the city and arranged the residential areas according to the etiquette systems of the Zhou Dynasty. The center of the city of Beijing was the royal palace — the Forbidden City. […]The main buildings in the hutong were almost all quadrangles–a building complex formed by four houses around a quadrangular courtyard. The quadrangles varied in size and design according to the social status of the residents.

I met a tone of interesting people today and the pictures will definitely reflect that. On a personal note, I must confess that I’ve been charmed by Beijing. Once I get to Hong Kong, I will upload some short movies as well. I have to postpone this for now since youtube is banned from China.

Until the next time

Codrin

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Way to go man! Not many foreign bloggers (i.e. not Chinese) do work that’s notable enough to make the Chinese state add their website to the forbidden list. So, I guess, congratulations are in order.

Update: The same applies to Wronging Rights.

In other news, another retarded article with an even more retarded title by Jeffry Gettleman from New York Times pisses me off even in Beijing. This guy might actually be the only person on this planet that will piss me off wherever I go. I don’t have time time to explain yet again that Gettleman is racist and that his work is a pile of crap. His latest article is called “Forest People Might Lose Home in Kenyan Plan.”
Read his shenanigans here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/world/africa/15kenya.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

For a more neutral and easy to follow account of the same event,  please see this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8363472.stm

Changing gears for a second,  I hate tofu with every fiber in my being. Yet last night, I had a delightful experience to that end. In the picture listed above you see a small pumpkin. Inside there’s tofu in a spicy pumpkin sauce. Delicious!!!!! That doesn’t change my view on tofu in general, but I had to be honest: I finally tried something with tofu which I did not find totally disgusting.

Lastly, the conference I’m attending in Beijing is going very well. Once I get to Hong Kong next week, I will upload some movies on youtube since we’ve been meeting with some very notable Chinese officials and I’ve been asking a lot of notable questions about Sino-African relations.

Stay tuned!  See you soon!