Sunday morning and we were quickly ushered out of our room; too soon in spite of the extra hour Brian had pled for as we hadn't checked in until nearly midnight. Fortunately we had time for a warm shower first and then we made our way back to the foreign teacher's dorm to see if any rooms had opened up. This time a different attendant was on duty and, unlike the night before, this one trusted Brian enough to grant us a vacant room. Brian was upset for a few hours afterwards because he learned there had been a room available the night we arrived in town but the kid on duty chose not to give it to us. Brian's goal during his summer in China has been to live on $100 a week, or about 800 yuan, which by the end of the trip I learned was quite reasonable. Blowing 220 yuan unnecessarily on a pricey hotel room took a big chunk out of that 800 a week. We stowed our bags in our new room and left to eat a late breakfast in the school cafeteria. I ate a couple servings of a pita-type bread, one with hash browns, the other with Spam. Rather greasy but filling.
The steady rain that had fallen all morning didn't deter our plans to visit Tiananmen Square. We caught a bus which seemed to take forever but likely only took 30 minutes. Along the way we passed an endless procession of shops - old and modern, hundreds of bikers - many of them carrying passengers (mostly women precariously balanced side-saddle on the back equipment rack - in dresses no less!), dozens of Chinese food restaurants (oh, to dream of tasting authentic sweet and sour chicken - drool, drool), plenty of poverty mixed with prosperity, at least four McDonalds restaurants, and hundreds more cars than I ever expected - many foreign brands I didn't recognize but also recognizable labels like Volkswagen, General Motors, Audi, and BMW.
The closer we got to Tiananmen Square the more the scenery changed. Small shops and cafes gave way to modern malls, expensive restaurants, and massive office buildings. When I say massive office buildings, I'm not overstating the imposing nature of these modern structures. Whereas Korea has it's share of tall buildings, they tend to be tall and narrow; the large buildings in Beijing impressed me as being equally tall but much beefier in shape. The size and the surprising actual number of buildings put a facade on Beijing that it is prosperous, modern, and open. And sprinkled among the various high rises are the occasional ancient temples and royal palaces. Don¡¯t forget to add an endless parade of bicycle commuters on even the busiest of roads and you¡¯ll have a rough sketch of Beijing.
We paused for a tasty lunch of kung pao chicken in an obscure back alley restaurant and proceeded to walk the remaining distance to Tiananmen Square in a drizzle of rain. By my imperfect estimate, Tiananmen Square is a third of a mile wide by two thirds of a mile long. It¡¯s nothing much more remarkable than a flat plaza flanked on all sides by the most imposing of government, historical, and cultural buildings. A simple pillar forms a monument of some sort in the center and the south end is framed by two dramatic stone statues representing and dedicated to ¡°the people.¡± (Of course the plaza is infamous for the "Tiananman Square Massacre" which was a government quashed rebellion in 1989 and the lesser known "Tiananmen Square Incident," a pejorative term for a similar affair which took place some years earlier at the same site, though on a smaller scale.) I was able to take a handful of pictures but they are unremarkable as the day was overcast and we were still battered by inconsistent rain. After an hour of milling around the square with a few hundred other visitors, we caught a the subway to the next site on our agenda: an ancient functioning Lama Temple.
This was the first real touristy place I visited, crowded with buses and camera-toting sight seers, from such unexpected places like Sweden. The pricey admission charge and the crowds made me wonder how it could still function as a temple but I got a few clues as we entered and walked from building to building. At the entrance to each structure lay a supply in incense and a place to kneel, bow, and worship, which we say a few visitors doing. Pictures inside the temples, as in most places we visited, were not allowed so I was limited to taking shots of the buildings which wasn¡¯t a bad consolation prize though I regret I wasn¡¯t able to capture the increasingly larger statues and idols we encountered as we moved from building to building, apparently moving progressively deeper into the overall sanctuary.
At the time (and as I write, now that my trip is over) I regretted not being able to better identify the differences between the various religious strains common in Asia. Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism, et. al. ran together in a blur and though I knew the many temples we eventually visited did not all belong to the same traditions, to me, as I suppose to most Westerners, I couldn¡¯t help but glob them all together. Brian called this site a Lama Temple which, he said, is associated with the Dalai Lama, though only in name. The Dalai Lama used to be the state-recognized leader of the religion but at some point he neglected or refused to pay some sort of homage to the government leaders and he was banished from China. (Though religion is supposedly prohited under communism rule, some groups are allowed to function as long as they somehow acknowledge the supremecy of the state government.) And although he still maintains his title, party leaders placed another in his stead who now functions as the official leader of the religion in China. (PLEASE recognize that this is a crude and likely imperfect description of a religion that is alien to me. Hopefully though it is putting the sites I saw into some sort of context.)
The Lama Temple was beautiful and inspiring for it¡¯s size, history, mystery but I was relieved to get away and walk down a nearby quiet, undisturbed street overgrown with trees and moss. We found a similar tourist attraction - an ancient government examination compound - that charged considerably less to enter and had fewer than half a dozen tourists in addition to our party of two. The charm here was plentiful - quiet gardens, mostly decaying structures in the midst of a few restored buildings, wild trees with long limbs and vines, and a stone moat surrounding the primary exam building full of green, stagnant water. The rain had ceased but the air was still heavy and oppressive so Brian and I paused for a good hour to soak in the solitude in attempt to appreciate the history.
Dinner that night included a pile of strange but tasty potato strings at a nice restaurant off campus. A stroll back to our dorm room with a pause to buy a phone card and some water completed our day and we were in bed, exhausted from walking, by 10:30.
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