beijing city guide: Attractions
The Marble Boat in Beijing's Summer Palace, one of Beijing's most popular attractions. © Glenn Beanland Lonely Planet Images
Forbidden City
The Forbidden City, off-limits to most of the world for 500 years, is the biggest and best preserved cluster of ancient buildings in China. Although the 'hundred surnames', or hoi polloi, are now permitted entrance, its original owners, the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasty, insulated themselves from the masses and maintained a rigid one-way communications flow. Regal fiats from the nerve center of the country were delivered to peasant subjects beyond the wall by eunuchs and other powerful court officials. No communications flowed the other way, thus re-enforcing the difference between inner and outer, secrecy and openness, the divine and the mortal, subject and emperor.
The old world of beautiful concubines and priapic emperors, ball-breaking (and -broken) eunuchs and conspicuous wealth, still hovers around the lush gardens, courtyards, pavilions and great halls of the palace. Most of the buildings are post-18th century; there have been periodic losses due to an injudicious mix of lantern festivals and Gobi winds, invading Manchus and, in this century, pillaging and looting by both the Japanese forces and the Kuomintang. A permanent restoration squad takes about 10 years to renovate its 720,000 sq m, 800 buildings, and 9,000 rooms, by which time it's time to start all over again.
Summer Palace
The Summer Palace with its cool features--water, gardens and hills--was place of choice for vacationing emperors and Dowager Empresses. It was badly damaged by Anglo-French troops during the Second Opium War (1860) and its restoration became a pet project of the Empress Dowager Cixi, last of the Qing dynasty rulers. Money earmarked for a modern navy was used for the project but, in a bit of whimsical irony, the only thing that was completed was the restoration of a marble boat. The boat now sits at the edge of the lake in all its immobile and nonmilitary glory. The Palace's full restoration was hampered by the disintegration of the Qing dynasty and the Boxer Rebellion.
The place is packed to the gunwales in summer with Beijing residents taking full advantage of Kunming Lake which takes up three quarters of the park. The main building is the lyrically named Hall of Benevolence & Longevity, while along the north shore is the Long Corridor so named because it's, um, long. There's over 700 m (2,300 ft) of corridor, filled with mythical paintings and scenes. If some of the paintings have a newish patina to it that's because many of the murals were painted over during the Cultural Revolution.
Tiananmen Square
Forever sullied, Tiananmen Square lies at the heart of Beijing, and is a vast desert of pavestones and photo booths. Though it was a gathering place and the site of government offices in the imperial days, Tiananmen Square is Mao's creation, as is Chang'an Jie--the street leading onto it. Major rallies took place here during the Cultural Revolution when Mao, wearing a Red Guard armband, reviewed parades of up to a million people. In 1976 another million people jammed the square to pay their last respects. In 1989 PLA tanks and soldiers cut down pro-democracy demonstrators here. Today the square is a place for people to wander and fly kites or buy balloons for the kids.
Surrounding or studding the square is a mish-mash of monuments past and present: Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace), the Chinese Revolution History Museum, the Great Hall of the People, Qianmen (Front Gate), the Mao Mausoleum, where you can purchase Mao memorabilia and catch a glimpse of the man himself (when his mortuary make-up isn't being refreshed), and the Monument to the People's Heroes.
Tiantan Park
Tiantan Park is an icon of such enduring value that it shorthands the entire city. The park's classic Ming architecture gives it heaps of symbolic value and the name has been used to brand products from tiger balm to plumbing fixtures, as well as decorating a plethora of tourist literature. It's set in a 267 hectares (660 acres) park, with four gates at the cardinal points, and abounded by walls to the north and east. It originally functioned as a vast stage for solemn rites and rituals.
All of the buildings in the park, including the Round Altar, the Imperial Vault of Heaven and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests are tangible conversations between the gods and mortals. Unlike the 'she'll be right, mate' chookpens slapped together by Uncle Nev, these buildings are carefully thought out paeans to ancient gods and beliefs; fengshui, numerology, cosmology and religion all played a part in their original construction, and the result is an awesome display of god in the architecture and the devil in the detail. Tiantan Park remains an important meeting place and many city dwellers start the day with a spot of t'ai chi, dancing or game-playing in the park. By 9 a.m. the park reverts to being just a park so get there early if you want to see what Beijingers do before breakfast.
The Great Wall
The Great Wall, as a metaphor, has gone through a few restorations in its time. When it was originally built 2,000 years ago by the Qing dynasty it was a sturdy 'No Trespassing' sign directed at neighboring kingdoms, but for many years it was also seen to represent xenophobia and national insularity writ large. For centuries it remained neglected and forgotten, until 18th century Europeans, infatuated with progress and artifice, appended a 'Great' to it and sat back to marvel at man's prehensile capacity to build Bloody Big Things. Today it's a tourist attraction, half Wonder of the World and half Kitschville, but to many Chinese it's just a wall. They seem to reserve for it--and the foreigners who come to marvel--a kind of bemused tolerance. To peasants in rural areas the Great Wall is less majestically known as 'old frontier.'
The majority of visitors climb the wall at Badaling, along with the tourist packs, the touts, and the sellers of reclining Buddhas with lightbulbs in their mouths. If you want to experience the wall far from this madding crowd, you'd do better to travel a little farther afield and take a walk on the wilder side of the Huanghua section, 60 km (35 mi) north of Beijing. It's a classic and well-preserved example of Ming defense with high and wide ramparts, intact parapets and sturdy beacon towers.
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