The dragon is sleeping no longer. China, the once-underdeveloped giant of Asia, is coming on strong.
Twelve years ago, when I last visited, Beijing was a colorless, low-rise city whose citizens all wore blue Mao suits. Few women dared to wear makeup, jewelry or high-heeled shoes. Not many private automobiles were seen on the roads, which were mostly filled with bicyclists and trucks. Only two modern high-rise hotels existed, and I didn’t see a single neon sign.
Today, building cranes reach high into the sky in every quarter of Beijing, new high-rise apartments and office buildings are creating a concrete forest along the three ring-roads that now encircle the city, far fewer bicycles and far more cars run on Beijing’s streets, women wear stylish outfits, dozens of hotels offer western-style service to tourists, and the Mao suit is practically a museum piece.
Even more amazing: Beijing now has a Hard Rock Cafe.
Similarly striking changes were visible in the other Chinese cities I visited this spring. Chongqing, where Vinegar Joe Stilwell commanded the thousands of planes that flew over the Himalayan “Hump” during World War II, recently annexed the entire county in which it is situated and now proclaims itself the biggest city in the world with a population of 30 million. In Xian, known for its terra cotta soldiers, the city’s massive old walls can be seen from a new perspective — the windows of high-rises. On the Yangtze River, the world’s largest dam is taking shape; when it’s completed, the river’s backed-up waters will inundate 13 cities, 140 towns and 1,352 villages and displace 1.3 million people. In Wuhan, a large city most Americans have never heard of, Sunday traffic was as busy as rush hour in any large American city, and an enormous amount of building construction seemed in progress.
But for those who have visited China before, it is in Beijing, the once-conservative capital of the country, that the changes seem most astounding. It is as if Beijing society, wound as tightly as a spring, suddenly snapped when the country’s communist leaders opened the country to capitalist enterprise.
Western businesses rushed in, teaming up with the Chinese in joint ventures to build and manage hotels, factories, retail complexes and other developments. Beijing now has more than two dozen McDonald’s, plus all the other usual suspects — Burger King, KFC et al.
And when visitors go shopping, they are no longer limited to Friendship Stores, the shops that accepted only special money issued to foreigners. Visitors can shop wherever they please using yuan, the normal Chinese currency; China did away with the special foreign monetary scrip two years ago.
For tourists, such changes make a visit much more pleasant. Many more western-style hotels are in place, and the service and facilities in five-star properties are on a par with the best hotels anywhere in the world. I had no trouble buying such mundane items as Breath Savers and emery boards in the Shangri-La Hotel, and one Sunday afternoon the China World Hotel imported an entire symphony orchestra to play for high tea.
Improvements in infrastructure make the going easier for tourists as well.
A new six-lane expressway, for instance, cuts the time required to drive from Beijing to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. The highway, complete with western-style directional signs and toll gates, opened in October.
Such improvements are important to Beijing, because it is only for such monuments as the Great Wall that visitors come to China’s capital city. Once the visitor has climbed atop the Wall, toured the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square in town and the Summer Palace on its outskirts, there’s little of tourist interest here. Beijing, let’s face it, is not a Paris with pleasant sidewalk cafes, ambient avenues, abundant cultural events and trendy nightlife.
Tour groups are inevitably taken to visit cloisonne-making and jade-carving factories, which just as inevitably have large sales outlets on the premises. The making of these typically Chinese works is fascinating to watch, but many tourists come away feeling they’re being politely hustled.
That feeling is reinforced when you discover that the cloisonne musical balls that cost $5 in the factory shop are sold by sidewalk vendors for $2.
The highlight of any trip to Beijing, though, is a visit to the Great Wall, about 60 miles north of the city. On the way there, tour buses usually stop at the Ming Tombs. Years ago, when visitors were permitted inside one of the tombs and walked along the so-called Sacred Way, a visit was worthwhile. But today, only a ceremonial gate and a museum are on the tour, hardly worth the trip.
In fact, tourists have expressed so much disappointment in the Ming Tombs that the government, in the hopes of enticing more tourists, has built other attractions in the area. Among them are a wax museum of the Ming Dynasty, opened in 1993, a golf course, amusement park, aquarium, archery range, shops and restaurants. I can’t imagine, however, an American visitor traveling 10,000 miles to go to a Chinese amusement park.
Two or three sections of the Great Wall are accessible to visitors based in Beijing, but the nearest and most visited is at Badaling.
Here visitors can ascend to the top of the well-restored wall and hike as far along it as their hill-climbing spirit dictates. The story of the 3,000-mile Wall is well known: that it was built 2,000 years ago as a defense line to keep out the invading Mongols, that it failed to block Genghis Khan, that many sections of it no longer exist.
At Badaling, the wall snakes over ridge after ridge, sometimes disappearing from view, then reappearing on a far-off hill. Sometimes it takes so circuitous a route that you wonder why its builders didn’t simply bridge a couple of chasms rather than following the ridge line so strictly.
So many visitors come to Badaling, especially on clear days, that the experience becomes more an exercise in crowd mechanics than a pilgrimage to one of the world’s great monuments. Dozens of souvenir shops have sprung up for a couple of blocks around the entrance to the wall; there’s even a 360-degree theater showing 15-minute films of the wall. Sidewalk hustlers are constantly imploring visitors to buy tacky doodads, and at a couple of spots you can have your picture taken atop a camel.
It’s no different at the great monuments in Beijing, where a legion of vendors accosts visitors as they approach the Forbidden City or Temple of Heaven. Once inside the gates, however, visitors can proceed without interference.
So named because only court personnel were allowed within the compound, the 40-acre Forbidden City reportedly is the largest palace complex in the world. It is indeed extensive, several great open squares, three royal halls standing atop three marble terraces, several marble bridges, intricately carved marble slabs and other features. Visitors can peek into the throne rooms and living quarters of the emperors and their staffs.
Twenty-one emperors lived within the Forbidden City’s 32-foot-high walls, including the last boy emperor, who died in 1911. You can see the throne room where the cunning Cixi, the concubine-turned-dowager-empress, hissed her orders to the boy emperor from behind a screen.
Three times as large as the Forbidden City is the Temple of Heaven, where China’s emperors came to pray. It is not simply one temple, but several connected by long marble walkways and surrounded by extensive park land.
Particularly interesting is the 16-foot-high Round Altar made of white marble. Each of its three tiers — symbolizing humankind, earth and heaven from bottom to top, respectively — has rings of stone in multiples of the imperial number nine. They total 243. Adjacent to the altar is the Echo Wall, 208 feet in diameter, so named because you can hear a whisper from the opposite wall.
The last and largest blue-tiled temple — replicated in smaller scale at Disney World’s Epcot theme park — is where the emperors came to pray for a good harvest.
Also in the heart of town is the infamous Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese army put down a student uprising in a bloody 1989 confrontation. The square, an enormous, unrelieved rectangle of concrete, is peaceful now, but 1989’s images of tank vs. man are hard to erase.
It was in Tiananmen Square eight years ago this summer that thousands of students seeking government reform were attacked by army troops, and the ramifications of that incident still divide China. Students known to have taken part in the protest were jailed or not permitted to continue their studies; some were China’s brightest young people.
Aside from the site itself, nothing remains in the square to remind of the 1989 incident. The 33-foot-high replica of the Statue of Liberty built by the protesting students was torn down immediately by troops, and no tank tread marks or scorched areas can be seen today.
So, by default, visitors’ attention tends to gravitate to the great monuments that flank the square.
At one end is Tiananmen Gate, dating to the 15th Century, where Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Opposite it, photographers stand ready to take your photo with the gate and its huge portrait of Mao as a backdrop. A flag ceremony is held there daily at sunrise and sunset, with soldiers marching in precise formation. The times are posted by the flagpole.
When Mao Tse-tung died, a huge mausoleum was built on the square. Although his reputation today is tarnished, his mausoleum attracts long lines of people waiting to view his body. Adjacent to the square are two other major buildings: the Great Hall of the People, home of China’s congress; and the Chinese Revolutionary History Museum. Oddly, the Great Hall of the People can be rented out; my tour group had dinner there on a previous visit.
Situated on a lake on the outskirts of town, the Summer Palace is a vast collection of royal structures ranging from tea booths and pagodas to pavilions and a marble boat. Each bears a name that conjures visions of peace and relaxation: places like the Hall of Infinite Space, the Bridge of Embroidered Ripples, the Garden of Harmonious Virtue, the Hall of Dispelling Clouds and the Hall for Listening to Orioles Sing. Many of these are linked by the Long Corridor, a half-mile-long walkway along the lake. Two of the most famous features are the Marble Boat, built by the Empress Cixi with funds earmarked for the Navy, and the lovely 17-Arch Bridge, which takes visitors from the mainland to the island Temple of the Dragon King.
Although it’s possible to tour Beijing on your own by taxi or subway, nearly all short-term visitors are members of a tour group. The language barrier is simply too difficult to cope with otherwise.
It is wise to remember, however, that tour leaders are government employees. Our guide in Beijing, the daughter of a foreign affairs official, never strayed from the party line and was easily moved to give righteous explanations of government policy — as, for instance, in defending the government’s blatant disregard for human rights and its bloody response to the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.
Withal, the Chinese people have great pride in their country, their improving way of life and their personal integrity.
That was brought home to me through personal experience when I inadvertently left my expensive camera and lenses in a taxi on my last evening in Beijing. Luckily, I had a taxi receipt, so the Shangri-La Hotel was able to track down the taxi driver and arrange to have him return the camera to me.
Neither Deng Ming, the driver, nor Hu Jianjun, the general manager of the Dan Nong Taxi Co., would accept any reward. They wanted the incident to serve as an example to other drivers.
Can you imagine that happening in New York?
THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU GO
How to get there: Most airlines reach Beijing through connections in Tokyo. United and Northwest are the two American airlines that serve the city.
Documents: A passport and a visa are required to enter China. For visas, contact Visa Office of the Chinese Embassy, 2201 Wisconsin Ave. N.W., Room 110, Washington, D.C. 20007. Or call 202-338-8688 or 202-338-6688. To receive information by fax, dial 202-588-9760.
China tours: Many tour operators offer packages that include hotels, meals, sightseeing and travel within China. Consult a travel agent for details.
Currency: The yuan, trading at 8 to 8.3 to the dollar. Spend all yuan within China; it is not readily converted to dollars outside the country.
Dining: Chinese dishes bear no resemblance to the so-called Chinese food in America. The Chinese are excellent cooks, but what you eat will probably be unfamiliar and may include exotic dishes like seaweed and snake.
Information: Consult a travel agent or call China National Tourist Office, 350 5th Ave., Room 6413, New York, N.Y. 10118; 212-760-9700 (for touch tone phone users) or 212-760-8218 (for rotary dial phone users).
