Day 4 - Palace to Hutong living

I think our tour group has decided that the haze we have encountered everyday in Beijing in not natural, but rather smog. We have not seen the sky the whole time we have been here. This made it very difficult to take decent pictures of the Summer Palace today. This 400 year old palace got it's name because the Emperor who built it and his entourage spent the summers there. It's only 20km from the regular residence but the major feature is a massive man made lake in the middle of the expanse. Beijing is essentially as flat as a pancake, except for two sizable hills which are totally man made on Feng Shui grounds. The amount of earth moved in these endeavors is tremendous. Yet being surrounded by the tens of thousands of visitors to the temple today, I got a sense of the possibilities of human endeavor if so many could be harnessed.

On leaving the palace we got a bit of a fright when some plain clothes police pulled our driver and guide aside for questioning. Our tour group went silent. Not understanding the language and expecting the worse, we waited a good 20minutes before one of the police started to talk to us. He wanted to know who we were and how much we had been charged for our tour. He spoke broken English (which the locals call chinglish) and told us he and his team were from the traffic police. They were doing some random checks on tour operators so as to the protect the rights of visitors to Beijing.

Bummer I thought, I could have had a brilliant sermon illustration if I had been detained by the secret police in a dark Chinese jail, sucking rice trough a straw after being beaten senseless by the boot of a died in the wood communist general. Anyway Ocean got back in the mini van and said ah that happens a lot. Meanwhile our driver got hauled away for not having an up today's license to drive as a tour operator, and the rest of our drive was done by a plain clothes man. We may never see him again!!!!!!!

After lunch at a western restaurant, with food we westerners are supposed to eat, mum and I took a ride to visit a Hutong. The best way to describe a Hutong is as a traditional dwelling of city living people. It is characterized by extremely narrow streets and lots of people living in small spaces. There is some running water to every house, but 90% of the community relies on the communal toilets and baths that are found on most streets. We were driven around the labyrinth by rickshaw and our young female guide Suri, traveled with us on her bicycle. We ended the rickshaw ride by being invited into a local residents home to drink tea and talk with the father. Turns out the family had had continuous ownership of the courtyard for over 150 years, and there are four generations of 12 people living in a space half as big as my town house for one. Our visit was a highlight as we headed out of the Hutong past retirees playing mahjong, while dodging bikes of all shapes and sizes.

Tomorrow we leave Beijing and fly to Xian pronounced Zianne.

Ben & Mum


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Location:Beijing