Thursday, July 12, 2012

BEIJING – We’ve just wound up a full, footsore day of exploring that  
began with fields of beautiful pink and white lotuses and evocative  
ruins of YuanMingYuan, took us up the rocky cliffs and through the  
crowds of the New Summer Palace and ended with a nauseous Will asking  
to cut short our “Night Walk” along a row of street vendors hawking  
everything from grilled silkworms to curled snakes to dog stew.

We loved YuanMingYuan, the Old Summer Palace, also known as The Garden  
of Perfect Brightness. We arrived there early, chasing away the last  
remnants of jet lag, after a long subway ride. We shared the wide  
paths of grey paving stones with walking pairs of older Chinese,  
meandering past ponds of hundreds, even thousands, of flowering lotus  
plants with thick pink and red buds and wide, stunning blossoms. Will  
climbed all over the ruins of the enormous European-style palaces that  
were destroyed and looted during the Opium War in the late 1800s, and  
robbed of their marble and other building stones several times since  
then. The guidebooks had little to say about the Old Summer Palace,  
but it was a highlight of our trip so far – moody and memorable, and a  
rare place of quiet and introspection in an incredibly crowded city.

We went from there by a slow, slow cab through awful traffic to the  
guidebooks’ ballyhooed New Summer Palace, which turned out to be a  
first-class tourist trap, overwhelmed by tour groups, including  
schoolkids who swarmed Will and wanted their picture taken with him.  
The place was devoid of signs or maps, and we wound up going in  
through the North gate, which required that we clamber up a steep  
rocky cliff to a succession of not-so-pretty temple-style buildings,  
in heat nearing 90 degrees. When we reached the top, we looked down on  
Kumming Lake, which was jammed with tour boats, paddle boats and all  
manner of  other craft. Whatever charms the New Summer Palace offers,  
they were lost on us, and after a sweaty 90 minutes making our way  
along the lake, past a huge and extremely ugly ship made entirely of  
marble, we exited the New Summer Palace by running a gauntlet of men  
trying to coax us into so-called “Black taxis” (unregulated ripoffs),  
people hawking peaches, watermelon and water bottles with unsealed tops.

From there we made our way to highly respected Beijing University,  
where we wanted to see the Sackler Museum. The university strictly  
controls access to non-students (noisy tour groups had worn out their  
welcome), and we had to go to two gates to get inside. Unfortunately,  
we entered through the east gate, and the museum and its fine  
collection of ancient artifacts was all the way across campus next to  
the west gate. It was a long walk, by a trio of tired, hot and hungry  
Portland-based tourists. The campus wasn’t a scenic stunner, either,  
although there was a pretty lake, and the Sackler building, among a  
few others, was a fine-looking building. The collection was just okay,  
but we saw some really cool things, including an ancient “oracle  
bone,” a cattle scapula thousands of years old, marked by the first  
ancient Chinese writing.

We had the damnedest time getting a taxi outside the university gate,  
and one driver that we flagged down simply drove away when we told him  
we wanted to go back downtown to our hotel. We managed to flag down a  
second one, after missing on a dozen or so, and Courtenay was so tired  
and flustered that she and the driver had a confusing (and in  
hindsight comical) exchange that ultimately led us back to the subway,  
where we wanted to go, and we had an air conditioned and nice ride  
back. The short walk back to the hotel was interrupted by a too-brief  
rain shower, that drove all the locals to cover. We marched bravely  
through the hard, warm rain — Oregonians, at long last, in our element.

And now this, from Will:

Hi,

So, we woke up … WAY too early and we set off to this place called the  
old summer palace. We got there and it was like a park… a realy big  
park. And I’m thinking, where are the ruins? And then mom’s like OMG a  
lotus flower. And then we keep walking and there are MILLIONS of Lotus  
flowers.We eventually found the ruins and you are allowed to CLIMB and  
they are cool.

Then we leave  and go to the NEW summer palace and it is SO crowded.  
And so we have to climb this HUGE mountain. And I think COOL. But mom  
and dad are probably thinking that is way too big. And then we start  
to climb and instead of taking the stairs they followed ME and we end  
up actually CLIMBING the mountain. After that mom is pretty miffed. So  
we leave on the way out I got a copper turtle/lion. It was cool. Then  
we get lost and we take the train to this university. And I get MAD we  
walk for miles just to find this museum that is not worth the walk.  
Then we try to find a taxi we get one but the driver was a JERK and  
would not take us anywhere. Then we finally get back.

OK, I’m finally getting tired. Goodbye, Love Will.

 Of course, there are many, many small moments captured only as the  
fleeting memories of travel – the kindly Chinese woman trying to coax  
Will into taking her subway seat, the sweet hotel staff chatting with  
Courtenay and Will in Mandarin and English, the hard-to-shake sight of  
a man towing a deformed adult child in a wagon and begging for money,  
the bright neon of Beijing after nightfall, and the welcome cool and  
quiet of our room after a long, hot day of exploring.