Changes in Longitude

Reconnecting

It’s raining today and a bit nippy so I am spending the afternoon in my hotel room trying to get some work done.  This morning however, I played.

Part of my reason for coming to Beijing a bit earlier than my colleagues, who come into town next week, was to catch up with Mr. Ma, an expert on Chinese architecture who I met on my last trip to Beijing.  He’s the guy who managed to get me a behind the scenes tour of the reconstruction of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in 2007.  We hit it off pretty well back then and we decided to get together this morning, which he graciously set aside for me.  His assistant Simone, who was our translator last time around, joined in as I hoped.  We spent about four hours shooting the breeze in their office and I had a wonderful time. 

Simone, Mr. Ma and yours truly

In the middle of our discussion on architecture and how it reflected cultural and political differences a call came in from America.  It was our mutual friend Richard from California working out some details for the group coming in next week.  So we all passed the phone around and had a grand time figuring out how to work out logistics while talking about the weather.  Richard had no idea I was there when he called.  It was just one of those happy coincidences that serve to tell you you’re heading in the right direction.

I’ve got no major insights to offer today.  But I did want to post a couple images from my visit to Behai Park yesterday.

Both images show individuals painting on the park pavement using a long brush and water.  The characters the lady is setting down are from some old poem she knew.  If ever you’ve tried to write a Chinese character you know how hard it is to do with the grace and subtlety necessary.  This lady is not only writing the poem with her right hand but also doing its mirror image with her left.  No small trick that.

 

The gentleman is painting the stylized images of the Chinese zodiac and doing it rather well to my eye.

What is remarkable to me is that these folks know what they are creating has a life measured in minutes for all too soon the water they laid down so carefully will evaporate to fall as rain somewhere else.  They don’t care or if they do, embrace the notion.  They are not plying their craft for eternity but rather for the moment.  It is not for profit but for a moment of joy. The act gives them pleasure and the product hands it off to those passing by.  That’s not bad for a little bit of carefully applied water.

Strolling in the Park

Beijing smog as seen looking down on the Forbidden City from Jing Shan

Well, this is unprecedented, two posts in one day.

Today started hazy, progressed to overcast and threatened rain all afternoon.  I wish it would just rain overnight just to clear the air.  Beijing’s legendary smog was out in all its magestic splendor today.

After breakfast I headed of to Jing Shan Park otherwise known as Coal Hill directly behind the Forbidden City.  For those of you not familiar with Chinese city planning, behind always means north as every city or major complex, like the Forbidden City, is entered from the south.  The park is centered on a hill made from the tailings from the construction of the moat around the Forbidden City.  It’s topped by a square pavilion which is flanked on both sides, on lower points along the east/west ridgeline, by pairs of smaller pavilions.  The ones closest to the peak are octagonal and the ones furthest round.  On the flat ground behind this manmade peak are numerous pathways and open paved areas.  This is where I found all the fun.

I love Chinese parks.  Not so much for their design and architecture, which are impressive, but because they are the family rooms of entire cities.  So much goes on there.  Just this morning I saw groups doing Tai Chi, others manipulating balls on what look like racquet ball rackets while dancing, the typical ball room dancers and the amateur musicians who feel they must let everyone hear their inarticulate performances.  There were the usual groups of hacky sack players (the local version of a hacky sack has feather much like a shuttlecock) and badminton aficionados.  There was also a huge group doing something I’d never run across before.  Literally hundreds of people spread out around one guy who shouted out something.  All the folks echoed him while clapping to a beat of one sort or another.  It sort of reminded me of the cadence calls troops use to while exercising or running in formation.  As best I could tell the whole thing was more or less planned but folks came and went as they pleased and joined in or not as they saw fit.  You could hear these folks all over the park and no one seemed to be phased by the noise.  The erhu players and the guy doing his personal version of karaoke didn’t care one bit.  I was impressed and hung around the group for awhile until it appeared someone was about to suggest I join in.

A small portion of the cadence callers

After wandering around Jing Shan Park I hoofed it over to Behai Park.  I’d never managed to get there before but had heard it was worth the time.  It was.  The park is mostly one big lake with a fair sized islet at its south end and a walkway around the entire lake.  The islet is dominated by the White Pagoda (Bai Ta) first built in 1651 and repaired numerous times over the last three centuries for damage caused by earthquakes.  The structure itself is masonry but is surrounded by many small timbered halls and temples.  It is reached via a long, steep stairway on the south or connected winding paths from the other cardinal points.

The long path around the lake also has numerous timbered buildings along it course and several arched marble bridges so common in China.  In the northwest corner of the park is a cluster of timber framed buildings dating back to the 1700’s.  There are five pavilions that sit on marble platforms just off shore.  They are reached and connected by marble bridges and causeways.  It’s really quite beautiful.

A little further off is one huge temple called Xiao Xi Tian built from 1768-1770.  It is enormous and the sign says it’s the largest square planned temple in China.  I’ve no reason to doubt this.  The perimeter is a series of ten square wood columns on each side.  These form a small porch and support the lower roof.  Inward of these is a series of eight huge round columns that form the perimeter support of the upper pyramidal roof.  The inside is amazing in both its execution and scale.  Rows of massive columns dwarf the individual.  Rather than go on much further I’ll just leave you with an exterior shot of this amazing building.  It really is quite humbling.

Xiao Xi Tian

First Impressions

Last night I thought I might nearly be over jet lag but I was wrong.  It’s now 2:00 AM local time and I’m wide awake.  I guess for less that 48 hours since leaving home I’m adjusting well enough.  Since I usually get up at 5:30 AM right now my body clock’s only about 4 hours out of synch with local time so that’s not bad.

I now have a cell phone, albeit it a used one, that I can now call home with.  It was nice talking with Wynter and the girls yesterday.  It’s generally our tradition when Wynter or I is on the road to call home at bedtime to say goodnight to Marit and Mattie.  I got the phone early on Sunday morning here and spoke with them before bedtime on Saturday night back in Texas.  We now have it figured out that I’m thirteen hours ahead of home.  If it wasn’t for daylight savings time I’d be twelve.

I headed off to the Tiananmen Square are after that.  I spent the day visiting all the historic gates around the square and doing my best to properly photograph them.  It’s no small task.  They are so large and hemmed in by other structures that you never can get a proper perspective.  I spent a fair amount of time at the old south city gate (Zhengyangmen) and the small museum within it.  It was quite well done and a good history lesson on old Beijing.  My only disappointment is that the upper balconies were closed off so I could not get the perspective of the square I was hoping for.

Zhengyangmen

The square itself was interesting.  As it was Sunday there was a very long line to visit Mao’s tomb, a building I consider to be surpassingly ugly.  Nonetheless, there were many in line willing to take the considerable time necessary to pay their respects to the Chairman or at least have the opportunity to tell folks back home that they did.

I have been to the square several times and this was the first time there was considerable, visible security around the square.  In years past you just walked on to the square through any number of openings in the low metal fence that surrounds it.  This time you were shepherded through one of several screening areas where everyone was searched and all bags were x-rayed.  It wasn’t quite as bad as US airport screenings but it was still rather disconcerting for me.  I wasn’t expecting it.  There were plain-clothes cops all over the place and it wasn’t much of a task to figure out who they were.  All were fit, in their mid-twenties or so and wearing dark track suits or light jackets and blue jeans and an unsmiling visage.  These were in addition to the many uniformed members of the Peoples’ Army who are usually there (it is a national monument after all) and the typical local police force.  I also noticed that each uniformed guard of the People’s Army had a full size fire extinguisher at his feet.  I never noticed this before.  Given that the only things combustible on that square are the usual cigarettes, guide books and empty soda bottles I was surprised.  After some thought I realized that one form of local protest involves setting oneself ablaze.  I sincerely hope there is some other reason I’m missing.*

After the rather oppressive security on the square and at Tiananmen Gate itself (Which I bought a ticket to climb up the stairs to and was totally disappointed.  The museum up there seemed to consist of some old furniture used by China’s leaders for meetings of import at some point in history.  After a few minute the plain clothes guys creeped me out so I left.)

I was pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere in Sun Yat-sen park to the immediate west of Tiananmen Gate and the Forbidden City.  It is comparatively new, having been built around 1920 to honor Sun Yat-sen, an important 20^th century figure in Chinese history. He led the founding of the Republic of China marking the end of dynastic rule in the 1910’s.  The government he founded was overthrown in China and fled to Taiwan as a result of the communist revolution but he’s still honored as the second most important modern Chinese leader after Mao.

Like most Chinese parks it had the formal pathways, pavilions and gardens you’d expect.  But that’s not what I found most comforting after the oppressive security of Tiananmen.  It was the young families playing jump rope or catch with their kids.  It was the young lovers snuggling on the park benches and the old couples walking around enjoying a sunny day.  And it was the grand parents lovingly posing what is probably their one grandchild for a photograph by the usual landscaped pond.  Forget its long history, future potential and all the rest.  This is really the China I love.

Posing the grand-daughter for a picture. 

*At first I was reluctant to actually include that last bit about self-immolation thinking it a bit dramatic. This morning in the Global Times I was reading at breakfast there was an article about two farmers in Jiangsu Province did exactly that over a land dispute with the government.  Yikes.

Back to Beijing

At the rather ridiculous hour of 3:00 AM CDT yesterday (I think) I started my most recent journey back to China.  Checking in at the airport was fairly painless as was the two and a half hour flight to Newark to catch the long haul flight to Beijing.

As best I can tell, the flight will be half filled with us of European heritage and nearly all the rest Chinese.  So far I’ve met three China adoptive families much like ours.  Each is taking their pre-teen daughters back to their country of birth for a homeland visit.  I know folks in the adoptive community don’t all agree that this is a good idea but personally I think it’s very healthy.  In our case it certainly was.  If nothing else, it shows our children that not only are we willing to travel the earth to bring them home but we are just as willing to make the same journey to help them find themselves and connect with a past that we cannot and should not hide.

Amazingly they are already calling our flight for boarding.  I guess when you’re filling a plane with over 300 people it takes a bit more than ten minutes.  Time to wrap up the cord and repack my backpack.

I love the electronic maps they now have on aircraft so you can keep track of where you are.  We just crossed over Baffin Bay just west of the Davis Straight, the entry to the fabled northwest passage that mariners sought through the 18^th century until they realized the ice was not going to allow them through.  Of course if they’d hung around another couple hundred years they might have managed to get through during a particularly warm summer.  Now though we just get on a plane and in well under a day we arrive in the Orient that those early explorers were trying so hard to reach in wooden boats with canvas sails.  The great Canadian songwriter Stan Rogers said it all more succinctly than I have in his song Northwest Passage:

Westward from the Davis Straight tis there was said to lie

The sea route to the Orient for which so many died.

Seeking gold and glory leaving weather broken bones

And a long forgotten lonely cairn of stone.

Unless I miss my guess we’re well above the Arctic circle now passing over the northwest corner of Greenland.  It’s cloudy down below so there’s not much to see.  But I’ve got Jimmy Buffett playing through my headphones, I’m warm, recently fed (and for airline food it wasn’t bad) and on my way to familiar ground.  Short of being as far away from my wife and children as I’ve ever been since we all have shared our last name I could not be much happier.  According to the map we have 8 hours and 19 minutes until we reach Beijing.  Life is good.

Well, I’m here and getting some rest.  My first impression is that not much has changed but knowing China, it has and I’ve just not noticed yet.

Time for some sleep.

PS. Please ignore the odd tense changes and incongruities.  I wrote this as I went along and the present became the past and I coudn't keep up and am too tired to worry about it at the moment.

Over the Pole

I leave for my fourth trip to China tomorrow morning on a 6:00 AM flight out of Houston bound for Beijing.  For the first time the routing will take me over the north pole instead of across the Pacific.  Unless I'm mistaken, I'll be in daylight for the entire trip whereas my earlier flights to China were done entirely under the cover of darkness.  I'm still not fully comfortable with all the weird things that come up during long hops to the far side of the earth. But I'm looking forward to getting there.

My entire purpose on this trip is to research and document historic Chinese timber framed architecture.  I'll be visiting some old haunts like the Forbidden City and The Temple of Heaven while checking in on new ones in and around Beijing. Hopefully I'll have plenty of time to photograph things more carefully than I was able to in the past.  My hope and expectation is to use the new information I gather for a series of articles on the subject.

As well as I can, I will be posting here over the next three to four weeks.  My internet access will be good in Beijing but may be sporadic once I start moving around with a group of fellow travelers after April 6th.

One exciting thing for me is that I have been invited to present a lecture at Tshinhua University in Beijing on western timber framing to architecture and engineering students and faculty there.  Tshinhua is the oldest and considered the premier university in China so I am looking forward to meeting some of the best and brightest of China in my own chosen field.  I'll be doing that on April 2.

Unless I'm mistaken, the next time I write here, I'll be in Beijing and a stones throw away from Tiananmen Square.  

Let the games begin!