A Week in the 'Northern Capital'

With nearly 3,000 years of history (evidence has been found of settlements here dating back to the 1st millennium BC), Beijing is one of the grand old capitals of the world. And since much of that history has been exceptionally rich and colourful, Beijing is replete with gorgeously picturesque palaces, temples, pavilions, and gates. Some of them – like the 8,000-odd rooms in the Forbidden City (the erstwhile Imperial Palace) – are a must-see on any tourist’s itinerary. The same is true of the Summer Palace, the pretty but now alas rather sadly commercialised palaces along the banks of the serene Kunming Lake. However touristy and crowded they may be, the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace are impressive in their sheer scale and ostentation.

Just a trifle less touristy is the exquisite Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven, set in a large and tranquil park that is a perfect backdrop for the beauty of the temple complex. Another temple that draws crowds, though less than Tiantan, is Yonghegong, a Tibetan Lama Temple that boasts of a magnificent 18 m tall statue of the Maitreya Buddha, carved out of a single block of white sandalwood.

Size, in fact, does seem to matter a lot in Beijing’s best known attractions. The quiet and interesting museum of bells at Dazhong Si houses a bell that weighs 50 tonnes, while the Bell Tower of Beijing has a bell that tops even the Dazhong Si bell – at 63 tonnes. While you’re in the vicinity of the Bell Tower, it’s also a good idea to scoot across to the neighbouring Drum Tower and admire the 25 drums there, a couple of them pretty massive.

There’s more to the city, of course. Magnificent old gates like Qianmen; age-old hutongs, old streets that snake their way into the heart of historical Beijing; and the forbidding buildings that surround the infamous Tiananmen Square, still haunted by the bloodshed of the past. There’s the Ancient Observatory, set up at the orders of Kublai Khan; the succulent roast duck of the Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant, patronised by just about everyone from Zhou Enlai to Kissinger; and the chance to watch a performance of Chinese acrobatics or martial arts at the Lao She Teahouse. And if you still have time and energy, you can notch up a trip to one of the Seven Wonders of the World – the Great Wall.

Quick Tips:

The most vital thing you need to know when visiting Beijing is that very few people speak anything other than Chinese. Some people connected with the tourism industry – including tour guides, hotel staff, souvenir sellers, and the like – will usually understand some English, but don’t depend on it. Practise gestures, learn a few basic Chinese phrases – a regretful "Wo ting bu dong" (I don’t understand) is good enough to get you some sympathy – and help – from people who see you struggling. It definitely turned a previously taciturn cabbie turn into a beaming pal who couldn’t do enough to make us happy! On a more pragmatic note, get someone from your hotel to write down the names of important sights, restaurants, your hotel’s name and address, and so on, for you. Days Hotel and Suites provides this on a printed card for all guests; very, very useful.

A few more tips to help you get the most out of a trip to Beijing: firstly, always bargain. For the more popular and cheap buys like snuff bottles, fans, porcelain figurines, and the like, shopkeepers can begin at prices that are more than double of what they’ll eventually settle for, so persist.

Secondly, try (you could possibly do this through your hotel’s concierge) to find out opening days and times for sights. A number of sights – or sections of them – are currently closed for renovations in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, so it’s wise to know what to expect.

Thirdly, avoid major sights like the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace on weekends, when they’re packed with local families out on a picnic. Keep less touristy attractions – the Bell Tower, the Drum Tower, the Ancient Observatory, etc – for Saturdays and Sundays.

Fourthly, always wear very comfortable shoes. Many of the sights in Beijing require either a lot of walking (the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace), or climbing (the Bell Tower and Drum Tower) or both (the Great Wall). Although a lot of women actually seem to do their touring of these sights in high heels, it’s not something I’d recommend.

Last but by no means least: do not drink water from the tap. Although some hotels (including the one we stayed at) have a 'drinkable faucet’ in the bathroom, the Beijing municipal authorities admit that water from the tap is definitely not potable.

Best Way To Get Around:

Beijing offers transport options to suit just about any budget. What will probably govern your choice of transport is where you want to go, and how fluent you are in Chinese. The bus network, for instance, is extensive, touching even fairly little-known places buried deep in Beijing. It’s also economical, though irritating during rush hour traffic jams, when buses move at a snail’s pace. The main problem with buses is that the signs are all in Chinese.

A more tourist-friendly option is the fast and efficient Beijing Subway. Although it’s fairly limited in area, the Subway connects a lot of the main attractions, including Yonghegong, Tiananmen Square, Dazhong Si, and the Drum Tower. The network consists of three lines: Line 1 (straight across the heart of town from east to west); Line 2 (a loop around Line 1); and Line 13, which connects the north-west to the north-east of town. Tickets on the Subway cost 3 RMB per person per journey. You buy a ticket at the station, and it’s valid till you get out of a Subway station – which means that you can even switch lines on your ticket, as long as you don’t emerge from the station. Note that switching to or from Line 13 entails getting out of or into the corresponding Line 2 station, so you need to buy a new ticket.

Most convenient are the plentiful taxis that ply in Beijing. All of them bear stickers listing fare charges (2 RMB per km, beginning at a base fare of 10 RMB, with additional charges for waiting, night travel, summons by telephone, etc), and drivers seem to use meters very diligently. The only problem here is that cabbies almost never understand any English, so you need to have your destination written out on paper in Chinese if you don’t speak the language yourself.

An interesting (if touristy) option is to hire a rickshaw, especially to visit the hutongs. More intrepid travelers can hire bicycles – it’s a great way to blend in with Beijing’s hordes of cyclists! Walking, unless you’re a diehard walker, isn’t a good idea, simply because distances are so huge. In any case, most of Beijing’s main sights demand a lot of stamina from visitors, so it makes more sense to save your breath visiting a sight rather than walking to and from it.

We checked into Days Hotel and Suites after a tiring flight and were taken up to our 7th floor room within five minutes. Our twin room was decorated in cream and beige and came equipped with wardrobe and in-room safe, dressing table, chairs, two cosy sofa chairs, bedside tables, and warm golden lighting. The bathroom, unfortunately, looked slightly jaded – the polish had worn off part of the woodwork and there were rust stains on the outside of the bathtub. Otherwise, it was clean and had a hair dryer, shaving mirror, and a basketful of amenities: shampoo, soaps, body lotion, bath gel, et al.

In addition, our room had a minibar stocked with chocolates, aerated drinks, juices, beer, wine, and mineral water. A kettle and sachets of green, jasmine, and black tea let us brew a cup whenever we felt like it – and two small bottles of mineral water were placed daily in our room, complimentary.

Our beds were comfortable, with crisp sheets and perfect pillows. One word of caution, though: the mattresses are very firm. If you’re used to a soft mattress, you may find the ones here hard.

Although the TV only had three English channels – HBO, CNN, and ESPN – it was sufficient. We weren’t carrying our laptop, but if we’d been, free Internet access in the room was available.

Outside of the room, Days Hotel and Suites had more to offer. A recreation centre on the 3rd floor included a swimming pool, gym, shuffleboard, and indoor golf; a shop in the lobby sold souvenirs and postcards (also stamps); and there was a business centre with courier services. Other than that, transfers and tours (including trips to the Great Wall), left luggage facilities and currency exchange were available.

24 hour room service, a café, and an Asian-European fusion restaurant may seem like there were plenty of dining options, but unfortunately all three offered similar menus, with an emphasis on European cuisine. Chinese food, which we’d been looking forward to sampling, was conspicuous by its absence – except at the theatre restaurant, which specialises in local delicacies. We did, however, get a great value for money daily buffet breakfast (98 RMB per person) at the A+A Fusion Restaurant. It was such a huge spread of salads, cold cuts, cereal, fruit, eggs, sausages, bacon, potatoes, french toast, fried rice, noodles, and dimsums (among other dishes) that we usually ended up not needing lunch!

The staff at the hotel were helpful, although except for the front office staff, few were conversant in English. Among the most helpful were a bunch of cheery and conscientious trainees – including two lads called Michael and Berry, who were stationed at the entrance. They’d take special care in asking us where we wanted to go, getting a taxi, instructing the driver, making sure he understood – and when we returned at the end of the day, even asking us if we’d enjoyed ourselves! Immensely heartwarming, and definitely a reason why I’d recommend this hotel.

One of the first things we discovered on entering Dazhong Si ('Big Bell Temple’) was that in ancient China, a bell was not just meant to announce a visitor, the hour, or an alarm. Bells were used for just about every ceremonial and social ritual. From praying for rain to creating soothing music, Chinese bells tolled and chimed their way through all manner of purposes. And Dazhong Si is a fitting tribute to them.

Dazhong Si was built in 1733 and acquired its first bell ten years later, when Emperor Qianlong had a giant bell brought here from another temple, Wanshousi. Today, Dazhong Si devotes itself to bells, from thumbnail-sized midgets to leviathans that fill a building. Dazhong Si is a bell museum, which spreads across a series of quiet pavilions, all stone, painted wood and eaves of glazed tiles. Pine-shaded courtyards play host to sparrows, and you’ll find yourself mostly on your own.

Our saunter through the museum was a tour of discovery. I didn’t know, for instance, that Chinese bells are of two types: the ling (with a clapper on the inside) and the zhong (beaten with a hammer or similar device from the outside). I also didn’t know that many Chinese bells are surmounted by a carved mythical creature called a pulao, which is supposed to shriek when attacked by a whale (though I suppose lots of creatures – including me – would shriek when attacked by a whale). The pulao’s connection to the bell sounded obscure, until I discovered that the hammer used to strike the bell was often carved in the shape of a whale. Enlightenment dawns!

Dazhong Si has a small and none-too-engrossing collection of Japanese, Korean and Occidental bells, but it’s the homegrown lot that’s impressive. Musical bells, chime bells (hung in graded ranks outside noblemen’s homes) and Aeolian bells (hung from the eaves of temples and other buildings) are there by the dozen, but so are hundreds of other bronze and iron bells. They’re decorated in interesting patterns: dragons, clouds, Chinese characters (including names of donors – in some cases, wealthy eunuchs), phoenixes, cranes, flying apsaras, and the Buddha.

The museum’s pride and joy, however, is the Yongle Big Bell, which hangs in solitary splendour in the last pavilion. This behemoth is a two-storey high Ming bell which weighs 46,500 kg (50 tonnes) and when struck, could be heard at least 40 kilometres away. The museum bills it as China’s largest bell, but that seemed erroneous to me, since the bell at Beijing’s Bell Tower actually weighs 63 tonnes. Whatever – the Yongle Big Bell is worth it. Dazhong Si is worth it!

To get to Dazhong Si, take Line 13 from Xizhimen, and get off at the Dazhong Si station. Opposite the station exit is a pedestrian overbridge; cross it and turn left – Dazhong Si is about five minutes’ walk. An entry ticket costs 10 RMB per person, with nominal extras if you want to photograph the Yongle Big Bell, or climb its tower.

Like its twin the Bell Tower (which stands opposite the Drum Tower, separated from it by a paved square), the Drum Tower – Gulou – is a squat, solid structure made of grey stone and brick, with a roof of glazed tiles and paint. The Drum Tower is pretty historic. It was built in 1272 AD at the orders of Kublai Khan, and underwent repairs and renovations thrice (most importantly in 1420) during the reigns of the Qing and Ming dynasties.

Like the Bell Tower, too, the Drum Tower’s primary function was of telling time. The passage of time, marked by a clepsydra or water clock, was announced for all of medieval Peking by striking the 25 drums that stand within the Drum Tower. Today, Beijing’s citizens don’t really need to be reminded of the time, but a group of drummers bang away at the drums at regular intervals through the day. It’s all for the benefit of tourists, but nobody’s complaining.

We reached the Drum Tower shortly after 11.30, only to discover that the drummers had just finished their act and wouldn’t repeat their drumming till 1.30. In any case, we were keen to have a look at the drums, so we bought our tickets (7 RMB apiece) and climbed up the dizzyingly steep flight of steps to the tower. The large tower room is lined on three sides by 25 drums, all lacquered or painted bright red, with beige-cream drumheads made of cowhides. Nearly all of these drums are modern reproductions of the original 25 drums that were housed in the Drum Tower. Among the few original drums is a large one with a drumhead, 1.4 m across in diameter, and made of a single cowhide. The drumhead’s been slashed across and punctured – supposedly by the foreign troops who attacked Beijing in 1900 – but it’s still impressive.

Another interesting (though also not original) item kept in the Drum Tower is a clepsydra, consisting of four receptacles of water, one above the other. Water trickles down in a regulated flow from the topmost receptacle (named 'the Sky Pond’), through the other three – named, respectively, 'Calm Water’, 'Myriad Parting’, and 'Water Collecting’. Below the lowest receptacle is a rather regal metallic figure named the 'God of Cymbals’ – he’s clad in robes, and holds a pair of cymbals in his raised hands. At regular intervals, the force of the water forces the God of Cymbals to strike his cymbals. Neat!

The Drum Tower lies near the Gulou dajie subway station. Get out of the station at the Jigulou dajie exit, and then walk down Jigulou dajie; you’ll be able to see the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower away to the left within a couple of minutes.

Do note that the 80-odd steps leading to the Drum Tower are steep and slippery, and there aren’t any escalators or elevators – so give this sight a miss if you have a problem with heights.

Yonghegong is Beijing’s largest Buddhist temple, but was pleasantly uncrowded when we visited. These colourful buildings were originally the residence of Prince Yin Zheng. When he became the Emperor Yong Zheng in 1723, his old palace was renovated, its roofs glazed with imperial yellow tiles. 23 years later, it was converted into a lamasery for Buddhist monks from Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Today, the Yonghegong Lama Temple is a bright, vivid temple, all prayer wheels, clouds of incense, and colourful gilded statues.

Having paid the entry fee (25 RMB per person), we stopped at the first gate of Yonghegong. In front of this gate are the statues you see outside so many buildings in Beijing: a lion playing with a ball, and a lioness playing with a cub. Through the gate, we walked down a long, wide path flanked by trees in which greyish-blue birds (magpies?) fluttered. Another gate, and we reached the first pavilion. Yonghegong has a number of pavilions, all vividly painted and lacquered, with glazed tiles covering curving eaves. Pomegranate and persimmon trees laden with blush-red fruit curve picturesquely across courtyards, and prayer wheels stand outside each pavilion. Inside, the pavilions are even more colourful: statues of deities (including, obviously, the Buddha himself in his many avatars), all of them gilded and painted, often studded with semi-precious stones and draped with silk scarves, occupy most halls. Offerings of fruit, flowers and incense lie below the statues. To conserve the interiors, no incense is burnt inside the halls; incense burners stand outside each hall, scented smoke rising gently from the many joss sticks left by devotees.

Among the most notable of the halls at Yonghegong are:

Yonghedian (The Hall of Harmony and Peace): Built in 1694, this hall has a pomegranate tree drooping prettily on one side, covered with ripe fruit when we visited. The hall honours the three Buddhas: the past (Kasyapa Matanga), the present (Sakyamuni) and the future (Maitreya).

Falundian (The Hall of the Wheel of the Law): Screened by a garden of pine trees, this hall contains a large gilded statue of the Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Yellow Hat sect. The thrones next to the statue were meant for the Dalai Lamas when they came here to teach.

Wanfu (The Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses): This pavilion is Yonghegong’s pride and joy, for it houses the world’s largest statue carved from a single block of wood: an 18 m tall Maitreya Buddha of white sandalwood. Gilded and painted – so you can’t really see the wood, actually – the Maitreya was gifted to the emperor by the 7th Dalai Lama. It took all of three years to transport the statue from Tibet to Beijing. Very impressive.

The easiest way to get to the temple is by the subway: take line 2 to Yonghegong station. The back of the temple abuts the station, but a high wall runs right round, so you’ll have to walk about five minutes or so down Yonghegong Dajie to get to the temple entrance.

Chinese bells have fascinated me ever since I read Robert van Gulik’s historical detective novel The Chinese Bell Murders. In one scene, the detective, Judge Dee, discovers a corpse under a bell, and when his assistants lever up the side of the bell, a bunch of them (four, if I remember correctly) crawl in under the bell. Four grown men under one bell? Chinese bells, I decided, must be quite something.

The fact that we’d already visited Dazhong Si and admired its collection of bells, including the massive Yongle Big Bell, spurred us on to check out Zhonglou, the Bell Tower of Beijing. The bell here, as we’d already learnt during our trip to Dazhong Si, weighs all of 63 tonnes, and by all accounts is worth seeing.

The Bell Tower is a squat, wide tower of grey stone and brick with pretty glazed tile eaves and some sparse but pleasing paintwork along the top. Like the Drum Tower that sits opposite it, the Bell Tower looks what it is: a mighty and definitely functional piece of masonry, not one of those delicate and pretty palaces that dot the Forbidden City.

Having bought our tickets (15 RMB per person), we toiled our way up the seventy-odd stone steps that rise, in one long and vertiginous climb, to the top of the tower. The top of the tower is occupied almost completely by the bell that hangs from the rafters. A wide apron of stone – hemmed in by high parapets, so there’s no fear of anybody falling over – encircles the bell in its shaft, but other than that, there’s really not much. Just the bell, though that’s quite substantial in itself. The bell dwarfs everything, including the hammers that were once used to strike the bell to mark the hours. For the record, this is a Ming bell, which stands 7.02 m tall, has a rim thickness of 24.5 cm, and weighs 63 tonnes. It’s imposing, to say the least, and as we wandered around it, we couldn’t help but admire the people who could cast something like this. A lot of visitors try for a spot of good luck by flinging coins at the bell – apparently there’s a belief that if your coin lodges in the body of the bell, or even strikes it, you’ll be lucky. We expended a couple of coins, in the hope that they’d ensure a speedy return to China!

The Bell Tower lies near the Gulou dajie subway station. Get out of the station at the Jigulou dajie exit, and then walk down Jigulou dajie; you should be able to see the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower away to the left within a couple of minutes.

Do note that the staircase leading up to the Bell Tower is very steep, dark and rather scary. There isn’t an escalator or elevator either – so give this a miss if you’re prone to vertigo.

Tiantan was the first sight we visited in Beijing, and we couldn’t have hoped for a better introduction to the city. With its cool green environs (the temple spreads out across a large park) and its finely painted and lacquered buildings, you’d expect Tiantan to be besieged by tourists. Thankfully, it isn’t – or at least it wasn’t the day we visited. The fact that it was a very hot and sultry day may have had something to do with it, but I’m not complaining.

Work on the Temple of Heaven began during the reign of the emperor Yongle; it was finally completed in 1420. The centerpiece of the temple complex is one of Beijing’s most enduring images: the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest. The hall, topped by a golden sphere (more on this later!), is a three-eaved all-wood structure built without the use of a single nail. It stands atop a circular stone platform, with staircases and railings carved with auspicious motifs: dragons, phoenixes, and mountains. The hall, incidentally, isn’t original; it was rebuilt in 1889 after the earlier structure was struck by lightning and burnt down. The story goes that lightning struck because a lowly caterpillar had crawled all the way to the top of the hall, and had reached the golden sphere, defiling it and inviting the wrath of the Almighty. As quaint as that may sound, it’s not as shocking as the fact that thirty-two officials were actually executed for letting the caterpillar ever get to the top in the first place.

After admiring the red and gold lacquered pillars of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, we moved on to the Annexes that surround the hall. These rectangular buildings, their eaves covered with glazed tiles, are lovely in their own right, and house exhibitions on the many rituals that centred round the worship at the Temple of Heaven. The ceremonies were performed by the emperor himself, and spread over several days during which the emperor fasted, offered sacrifices (of grain, fruit, and animals), and prayed to the gods for the welfare of the empire – and good harvests, of course.

Included in the exhibition are interesting old photographs showing the renovations and restoration that’s been carried out on the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest over the years: in 1935, 1971, and as recently as 2005-6.

Also nestling next to the annexes is the Imperial Hall of Heaven, where the emperor would come to burn incense before proceeding to the Temple of Heaven. The left wall surrounding the Imperial Hall of Heaven is pierced by a modest door that’s known as the Seventy Year Old Door, and there’s an interesting story behind it. It’s said that the emperor Qianlong, getting on in years, found it difficult to walk all the way to perform the rituals at the temple, and so to make the route shorter for him, this door was created. Qianlong, fearful that this would be construed as a sign of frailty by his sons, decreed – in an attempt at assertiveness, no doubt – that only emperors who had reached the age of seventy could use the door. Interestingly enough, Qianlong turned out to be the only emperor to live till seventy.

After wandering around the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest and its surrounding buildings, we walked down the broad pathway (the Danbi Bridge) that leads past the Dressing Terrace. In imperial Beijing, the Dressing Terrace was where the emperor would change his robes prior to the ceremonies at the temples. Today, it’s degenerated into a souvenir shop that also sells ice cream and soft drinks – and was doing roaring business in ice lollies on the day we went. Having cooled off with a couple of orange ices (and watched a cleaning lady remove scraps of litter with a pair of huge chopsticks), we moved on.

The next major attraction along this axis is a gnarled old tree, over five hundred years old, known as the Nine Dragons Juniper. The trunk of the juniper is so twisted and thick, fanciful ad