Forbidden City

Posted on December 16, 2017 by Francis

The word ‘forbidden’ came to mind three times to me on our last day in China.

The first time was when we entered one of the world’s largest squares, Tianamen, which translates as ‘gate of heavenly peace’. The events which happened in and around this square in 1989 were not directly mentioned but their evidence exists in the security presence and the fire extinguishers which are there in case anyone commits self-immolation.

The buildings surrounding the square – the national museum on the east, the great hall of the people on the west, the monument to the people’s heroes in the centre of the square, the CPR founder’s mausoleum, the portrait of Mao on the gate itself and the heroic statues of the people’s struggle – all bore witness to China’s ambiguous history, continually re-written and reassessed.

The second ‘forbidden’ was the city itself: a huge palace complex with almost a thousand separate pavilions, temples, shrines and pagodas. It was forbidden because one could only enter or leave it under the emperor’s orders. For five hundred years this was the political and ritual centre of the Chinese empire and the heart of the Dragon throne.

We entered via the gate of divine might and crossed through courtyards and more gates and visited more pavilions until we were quite exhausted.

I loved the names given to the various buildings: the gate of supreme harmony, the palace of heavenly purity, the hall of mental cultivation and last but not least the palace of tranquil longevity.

The palace complex is a square kilometer in area and dates back to the fifteenth century and the emperor Zhu Di. It also happens to be the largest assemblage of wooden buildings in the world.

The third ‘forbidden’ was my unsurprising association of this city with that of Puccini’s last opera ‘Turandot’ which was first performed in the palace in 1998, directed by Zhang Yimou. (There is a sensational video of it on YouTube).

The vastness of the spaces and the setting sun reflected in the imperial yellow of the roof tiles created a last and lasting impression of this all too puzzling but ever fascinating country.

There are more Chinese than English speakers in the world today. The Chinese economy was very strong in the eighteenth century before a hundred years of shameful colonial invasions and the more recent political turmoil.

China is once more the political and economic power it once was, and more. Changing and growing so fast it has the most extraordinary contrasts, summed up perhaps in that image of a blind musician set against the forbidden city’s sunset reflected in the moat surrounding it and the vista of new transport links and gleamingly tall buildings in the background.

Finally we should thank our brilliant guide, known to us under his western name of Allan, who enabled our group of thirty eight to fully enjoy and appreciate our unforgettable journey through the wonders of China:

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A Heavenly Temple

Posted on December 15, 2017 by Francis

Isn’t it the cases that some of the world’s most beautiful buildings are circular in shape? In Italy the Pantheon and Bramante’s tempietto come to mind. Perhaps even Bagni di Lucca’s Demidoff temple may be included in this list. Going both through time and place Stonehenge and the Sanchi Stupa are other supreme circle-based buildings. In February this year we were at Auroville’s Matrimandir which is a modern interpretation of the round shrine, this time encircling a golden sphere.

China’s greatest example of a round edifice is Beijing’s Temple of Heaven which we included in our visit to that city last month.
Dating from the fifteenth century the temple, which is Taoist and dedicated to harvest ceremonies, was built by emperor Zhu Di who was also responsible for the forbidden city. Through the centuries the temple has been restored and even partially rebuilt as these models show.

However, the temple’s essential structure remains the same.

The Temple of Heaven actually consists of three buildings. The famous circular one is the hall of prayer for good harvests. Rising from a square base representing the earth the three-gabled round pagoda represents the heavens.

There is also a single-gabled building known as the imperial vault of heaven and a mound altar which was used for the actual sacrifices.

Apart from the symbolism of circle and square the sacred number nine recurs in various architectural features of the altars. Furthermore, the hall of prayer has four inner pillars representing the four seasons and twelve outer pillars for the Chinese months and hours.

The temple complex stands in an attractive area of parkland which is very popular with Beijing’s inhabitants who take their children or meet up to play board games.

It really is a most beautiful structure, perhaps the most beautiful I saw in my visit to China.

(Of course, round buildings are not only confined to those serving a religious function. Just think of igloos, Mongolian gers, railway roundhouses enclosing turntables and pavilion tents. I, for one, would be very happy to live in an energy-efficient, easy-to-clean circular house!)

A Wall that Unites

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Francis

This is one wall which unites rather than divides. Yes, the great wall of China gathers the world to see it. We managed to explore and walk a small stretch of this extraordinary construction at Mutianyu. They say one can see the Great Wall from space (actually one can’t) but who wants to try to do that when it’s so much better to touch and walk along it!

The Great Wall is everything it’s cracked out to be and more. It’s simply awesome and once you set your foot on this stone dragon-serpent weaving its way up and down some of the most beautiful mountain landscapes you feel you’d like to walk on and on…and on.

There are people who have done this but it would take some months since the wall and its tributaries is over 5,500 miles long. China’s state administration of cultural relics states that the wall is actually 13,170 miles long! The problem about measuring the great wall is that some parts of it get eroded or have their bricks removed for building houses, parts of it get rediscovered after lying under the northern desert sands and parts are being restored.

There are over 7000 watch towers punctuating the wall. I think we managed to get through about ten of them. No matter. The day of our visit was splendidly blue and we truly enjoyed our experience on what must be mankind’s biggest construction project.

Started around 1000 bc in the Qi dynasty the wall was continuously added to up to the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644 ad. It was the terracotta army emperor who conceived the idea of one great wall by joining up the various sections already in existence.

One might ask how many troops were required to defend the wall against Mongol invaders. Apart from the obvious answer, a lot, one needs to add that the wall served as a customs barrier and communications network. It was both a barrier and a message line.

It was wonderful to walk our little bit of the wall, admire the construction, view the lovely scenery and come across people from all over the world. I thought about those who feel that buildings walls is about keeping people out. I felt quite the opposite on the Great Wall.

Before leaving the wall area we explored a very disneylandish cave.

The evening was taken up by some great food including Peking duck and a spectacular acrobatics show.

We were now approaching the end of our Chinese adventure and we still had to enter into the forbidden city….

Drums and Hutongs in Beijing

Posted on December 13, 2017 by Francis

Beijing’s drum tower, known as ‘gulou’, used to announce the time to the imperial capital’s inhabitants through the sound of its drums. It still does but the beating of the immense drums on its upper storey is more of a spectacle now.

The tower was built in 1272 in Kublai Khan’s reign and must have been familiar to Marco Polo when he visited the Khan, who is also well-known through Coleridge’s evocative, unfinished poem.

The drums are reached via steep and somewhat irregular stairs but the drumming ceremony is well worth attending for its veritable beating of time!

What is also marvellous is the view from the tower’s balcony. One really gets the feel of an older city with its hutongs or traditional dwellings and alleys.

Opposite the drum tower is the bell tower where we attended a tea demonstration and ceremony conducted by a lady who made no bones about making fun of some of the westerners present. Fortunately, she was so prettily witty that they could hardly take offense!

We were then plunged into a large area of hutongs which we visited using a traditional Chinese cycle rickshaw of a type similar to those which have become so popular now in London’s Covent garden area.

Just in time the Beijing authorities have realised what a tremendous heritage they have with their hutongs and many areas are now government-protected. A hutong consists of low rise buildings originally placed around well or ‘hutong’. Alleys connect the various residences together. They are built facing south to capture the sun and are introduced by little gates.

We were cordially received and shown around a characteristic hutong dwelling and very pleasant it was too. Indeed, some westerners have adopted life in a hutong and, no doubt, there will be a time when such dwellings will be highly sought after and gentrified.

A similar phenomenon has occurred in several parts of London where formerly slum areas like Hackney and Spitalfields are now much sought after.

I sincerely hope that Beijing’s remaining hutongs will be truly preserved. The thought of an increasingly high-rise China is not particularly appealing to me….

Beijing’s Summer Palace

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Francis

I had imagined Peking, or Beijing as it is now called, to be a city enveloped by smog and high-rise buildings. I’m sure that these phenomena do afflict the Chinese capital but throughout our visit the weather was beautifully blue and clear and I found a city much more laid back than I ever imagined.

We arrived via our high speed rail link from Xi’an. China now has the world’s longest high speed rail mileage: over 14,000 miles compared to the UK’s less than 500 miles. OK, China’s a bit bigger than the UK but that’s still no excuse for the country which invented the iron horse. George Stephenson would not be pleased.

The empress dowager Cixi continues to be a controversial figure with her mixed support for both traditional values and reforms. Some even accuse her of having put an end, through her ambiguous policies, to the Chinese empire. Certainly, Cixi was the only dowager empress to wield power ruling ‘behind the curtains’ (in mandarin ‘chui lian ting zheng.’)

There are, of course, many other world historical examples of women wielding the real power behind supposed male rulers. (Sisi, Lucrezia Borgia and the Queen Mum come to mind). Cixi, however, remains a supreme example, not least because she was behind the restoration and expansion of the summer palace which is on the outskirts of Beijing and because her death in 1908 left a China in chaos and ready for revolution.

Unlike western palaces, which tend to consist of one main block, Chinese palaces are made up of a variety of pavilions and courtyards. They are, in effect, miniature royal cities.

The origins of the summer palace date back to the Jin dynasty of the twelfth century. The palace gardens were greatly expanded in the 18th century when an entire artificial lake, Kunming, was excavated with its spoil used to create longevity hill crowned by a pagoda.

We walked down a gallery half a mile long and decorated with some beautiful naturalistic scenes.

At the end was a remarkable marble vessel used for entertainments by the empress.

The whole area was delightful and we could have spent much more time exploring the palace’s various pavilions and pagodas.

Only afterwards did I find out that what I had visited was the new summer palace. There had, in fact, been an old summer palace of even greater beauty with matchless artistic treasures. It had been destroyed, together with many court servants, by a punitive English force led by Lord Elgin in retaliation for the murder of two British envoys to the Chinese court. The ruins of the old palace remain a thorn in the side of many Chinese to this day and are certainly a part of British imperial history many of us would wish to forget. The opium wars behind these events are, indeed, a very sorry episode.

A pleasure garden

Spreads its perfumes around me

While an empire falls.

Of Wild Geese and High Speed Trains

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Francis

As a former imperial capital there is much to discover in Xi’an. We visited the old town where we found an elegant house which once belonged to a high official of the court, Gao Yuesong. The house compound, complete with ducks, gave us a marvellous insight into upper class life in dynastic China.

Our evening concluded with a spectacular show where dancing, pageant and acrobatics were mixed in a sensational potpourri.

Next day we returned to the classroom where we had a try at chinese pictograms. Needless to say some pupils tried harder than others but the teacher was truly excellent and got order back to a potentially unruly set of students!

The little wild goose pagoda was one of the oldest buildings we visited in China and dates back to the golden age of the Tang dynasty of the eighth century AD. 141 feet high the pagoda has exquisite brickwork and is so-called perhaps because of the wandering monk Xuanzang who travelled along the silk road collecting buddhist texts before returning to Xi’an – just like a migrating goose, in fact. The gardens and the orchestra contributed to the truly delightful ambience of this lovely temple.

We could have spent so much more time in Xi’an but it was now the hour for our next and final stage of our adventures: a journey on the high-speed train to Beijing….

Xi’an’s City Walls

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Francis

Besides its terracotta army Xi’an is also famous for its walls. In ancient times a wall, known as ‘chengqiang’, defined a Chinese city: no wall, no right to be called a city!

Regrettably, many of these walls were knocked down in more recent times. Beijing’s walls, for example, were demolished in the 1950’s. (Incidentally, Italy, which had the highest number of walled towns in Europe, suffered similar vandalism in the nineteenth century when the walls of such cities as Milan and Florence were knocked down to make way for Paris-style boulevards.)

There are still, however, some fine Chinese walled cities remaining today. For example, at Kaifeng, Pingyaio, Shanxi, Dali, Jingzhou, Xingcheng and Xi’an.

We visited Xi’an’s walls on our second day there and found them truly impressive. They are, like other Chinese city walls, built as a quadrilateral and extend, 40 feet wide and high, for almost 9 miles enclosing an area of about 14 square miles. The walls have all the features of feudal fortifications including gates, ramparts, barbicans, archery and watch towers, drawbridge and even a moat surrounding the whole complex.

Living near a walled town in Italy (Lucca), I was interested in a comparison. Lucca’s town walls are two miles long and are not as high or as wide as Xi’an’s. They also do not have machicolations as they were built when firepower had already been invented and their moat has been long since drained.

What the much smaller Lucca walls have, however, is rather greater charm: they support a beautiful avenue of trees and the majority of buildings within their perimeter are old and very picturesque. The city gates, too, are highly attractive. Xi’an’s walls, on the other hand, enclose a largely modern-looking city with ubiquitous high rise buildings and contrast heavily with their surroundings.

What the Xi’an city walls do have, however, is a length almost five times greater than that of Lucca (they used to be even longer in the Tang dynasty) and a more imposing and impenetrable appearance. They also have much better explanations of their features than Lucca’s walls.

We didn’t have the four hours it takes to do a leisurely stroll around Xi’an’s walls but we managed to get a good feel for them in our short time on them:

In the evening Xi’an’s city walls and their features are illuminated with multicoloured lights.

I wonder if Lucca’s walls should follow the same act? I somehow doubt it….

However, don’t forget: at one time Xi’an was at the start of the silk route and Lucca was at the end of the same route. A twinning of two walled cities perhaps?

The Terracotta Army Marches On

Posted on December 4, 2017 by Francis

As a kid I looked forwards to extracting plastic, free-gift Arthurian knight figures from our packets of breakfast cereals.

Later I was able to collect a few toy soldiers with reinforcements which included a centurion tank and transporter, a military ambulance, jeep, troops vehicle and howitzer.

These toys have long since vanished from my possession which is a little sad as they would certainly have considerable collectors’s value now.

The only soldier I actually managed to put together myself was the Black Prince, (modelled on his funerary statue in Canterbury cathedral), from an Airfix kit. I remember spending hours painting the heraldic symbols on this statuette. I wonder where that has gone to?

These thoughts came back to me as I gazed upon the the world’s largest model army, the terracotta soldiers and officials of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, dating back to the second century BC and only discovered by chance by a farmer, Yang Zhifa, in 1974.

It doesn’t matter how many pictures you’ve seen of this amazing archaeological discovery, certainly equal to that of king Tut. It doesn’t even matter if you return again and again (new discoveries are always happening): the terracotta army is one of the world’s most spectacular ancient sights. You feel as if the hundreds of individually crafted warriors around might, at any moment, take life and march once more after having stood to attention for over two millennia.

Of an estimated eight thousand figures around two thousand have been uncovered. Some are whole, others are in fragments, like that Airfix kit, waiting to be puzzled together. All were painted but, sadly, exposure to the climate has faded or completely discolored so many of them.

All army grades are represented: from privates to archers to battalion leaders and generals. In all cases the details are stunning, reaching even down to the threaded soles of their footwear.

In addition to the men (no women have as yet been found) there are horses and there were also wooden chariots but these have rotted away, separating riders from their steed.

In a separate building, however, two magnificent bronze chariots are on display and they are simply superb!

The most astonishing fact, however, is that what we see is just the tip of the iceberg. The huge hangar that protects the emperor’s army is merely an advance guard to Qin Shi Huang’s own mausoleum which has yet to be excavated! Archaeology is, in essence a destructive science and the Chinese have, rightly decided, to leave well alone for conservation purposes or, at least, until new techniques can uncover monuments without damage or decay.

What was China’s first emperor like? Accounts differ but one thing is sure: he was one of the powerful and ruthless persons who ever existed. Qin unified China, joined regional defences together to form the great wall, executed scolars he didn’t like and had their books burnt, built a national road network, excavated the Lingqu canal, had the workers who built his mausoleum buried alive so they could tell no secrets, survived several assassination attempts, standardised weights and measures, instituted a international philosophy denouncing Confucianism and went in for a mad quest for immortality, (don’t we all, perhaps?), involving the search for the elixir of life which, when he found it, poisoned him as it contained mercury.

Anyway the emperor’s terracotta army didn’t protect him against his (and our) greatest enemy, death but ensured him, instead, another kind of immortality for what I witnessed at the extraordinary site of Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum will remain in my mind for ever as it will remain in the mind of anyone else who witnesses this extraordinary monument to mankind’s quest for eternity.

The emperor death
marches inexorably:
all crumbles to dust.

Pandering to Pandas

Posted on December 2, 2017 by Francis

Artist and naturalist Peter Scott, the mastermind behind London’s wetland centre which we visited last month, was also closely involved with the worldwide fund for nature and designed its logo which is, naturally, the giant panda.

Having been deprived of giant pandas in England ever since Chi Chi died in 1972, (although there are two, Tian Tian and Zhang Guang, in Scotland), we were very keen to visit pandas in a research and breeding area near Chengdu.

Our visit there was yet another high point in our China exploration. Who cannot fall in love with this adorable creature (which the Chinese call bear-cat) and is a great example of how an endangered species can be saved (the panda is now described as ‘vulnerable’ instead of ‘endangered’).

We saw pandas playing with each other, resting on trees, having a good slide-down and gorging themselves on their favourite bamboo shoots. Fortunately, we got to the reserve quite early and found the pandas awake and active and the area not too crowded with visitors.

Let these pictures give some feel of our experiences.

A few points about giant pandas:

The panda used to live in the lowland areas around Chengdu but deforestation and loss of suitable habitat have driven them to the hills and mountains.

The panda anciently used to be carnivorous but now 99% of its diet is vegetarian and bamboo-shoot centered although it will accept other foods including meat.

The panda is very finicky about mating especially when it’s in a reserve hence the big problems zoos and centres have which they get around by using artificial insemination and now also frozen semen.

The female panda gives birth to twins, only one of which survives in the wild. There has been one known case of triplets. While we were there we saw a baby panda which had been abandoned by its mum and was under care.

Normally male pandas are the ones who don’t worry about their offspring, leaving it all to mum.

Giant pandas are not usually aggressive except when they are teased. Their bite is very strong, given they demolish bamboo for their diet.

Because of the low energy level of bamboos pandas spend most of their time eating them and, consequently, defecate around forty times a day.

Pandas in the wild have increased from under a thousand to an estimated three thousand in the last twenty years. There are around seventy pandas in world zoos today.

There is another type of giant panda with more brownish colouring and a smaller frame called the Qinling panda.

The panda was first seen by the west in 1916.

Pandas have been the best ambassadors in easing Chinese – western relationships after the difficult period of the 1960’s.

There is no direct species relationship between giant and red pandas although both live mainly on bamboo and have a false thumb called a sesamoid bone with which to hold bamboo. Here is the equally adorable red panda which is also in the reserve.

All-in-all, seeing so many giant pandas must surely have been not just a highlight of our China voyage but a highlight of our life!

The Greatest Buddha in the World

Posted on December 1, 2017 by Francis

Regrets are not good things to have in one’s life: as Edith Piaf sang ‘je ne regrette rien’. However, we all have still have regrets to some degree or other. I’ll leave out silly regrets such as not having reached the summit of Mount Everest or visiting the South Pole but there are two places I could have visited and which are no more.

One is Palmyra, when I hitched across Syria as a very young kid when the world seemed a safer place.

The other is Bamiyan with its giant Buddhas, again when I hitched across a friendlier Afghanistan. Both places are now, sadly, irreparably damaged by Islamist fanatics.

It was, therefore, a wonderful discovery that I would still be able to see the world’s largest Buddha (clearly, once the second-largest) and that this Buddha would be the nearest I would get to the destroyed ones at Bamiyan, as it was carved in rock and was of similar antiquity.

We headed on a hundred mile bus journey from Chengdu to Leshan’s giant Buddha. From the town we took a boat across the river, followed its course round a meander and there it was, the world’s largest Buddha!

Depicting the Buddha as Maitreya, the one that is to come and replace the present Buddha, a sort of second coming in fact, the statue is 233 feet high and was built in the eighth century AD by a monk called Hai Tong in the hope that the presence of the statue would have a calming effect on the rushing waters of the river it overlooks. Indeed, the stone deposited into the river from the cliff to make the monolith did manage to slow down the current and make the passage for boats safer.

I found the statue’s presence awesomely inscrutable. Was I questioning this supernal apparition or was it questioning me?

The Maitreya, edged by his acolytes, was both calming and disturbing. What was he thinking? What was I to think?

Meanwhile, the river flowed gently, protected by the watchful gaze of a past presence of the future, a statue fading into the cliffside from which it was formed until the Buddha became a cliff and the cliff a Buddha.

Impassive you look
upon a suffering world:
in your mind green thoughts

From London to La Costa (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Three

Category Archives: China